University of Michigan School of Information doctoral candidate Mez Perez has earned a 2024 National Academy of Education (NAEd) Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. The fellowship is awarded to early-career scholars whose projects address critical issues in the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education at the national and international level. 

Perez’s research aims to better understand how youth and communities of color work to redefine, reorganize and reimagine making and makerspaces, especially as they are used with STEM-oriented learning environments. Her dissertation studies how arts-based interventions can be used as a tool for participatory design within STEM learning environments.

“This fellowship will provide space for me to really sit with some of the ideas I’m encountering in my analysis and data generation,” Perez says. “I'm also excited to get the chance to be in conversation with the other fellows in this cohort. My graduate career has been sustained by communities of people who care about similar issues that I do, so this will be an opportunity for me to cultivate and be part of a new academic community. To get this kind of support for my work is an incredible honor, and it makes me feel even more grateful for the network of support I have around me.” 

Perez is a fifth year doctoral candidate. Her thesis advisor at UMSI assistant professor Patricia Garcia. She is co-advised in the Marsal Family School of Education by professor Angela Calabrese Barton. 

“I am extremely proud of Mez for receiving the nationally competitive Spencer Dissertation Fellowship,” Garcia says. “The fellowship is a testament of how authentically her STEM education research empowers Black and Latinx youth to enact social change in their communities. Her innovative research engages communities, honors their histories, and situates technology as a tool, not a solution, for creating the futures they want to live in.” 

Perez is expected to graduate in 2025.  After graduation, Perez hopes to continue working with communities she has partnered with to continue expanding equitable and justice-centered forms of STEM education.

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Learn more about Mez Perez by visiting her UMSI doctoral profile. 

Check out UMSI’s PhD in Information program and apply today! 

— Noor Hindi, UMSI public relations specialist