What Are Our Recent Graduates Doing Now?

What are our recent graduates doing now?

Millie Alspaugh recently started a therapy company serving children and adults with autism in Virginia Beach. She studied Communication at Virginia Tech and worked in a school setting with students with autism prior to attending the M.Ed. program. While studying at Curry, she was able to broaden her understanding of educational psychology. She selected elective courses related to special education, and an internship experience that allowed her to learn from the expertise of the director of The Faison School for autism in Richmond. This experience helped to shape her future career goals.

Holland Banse is a doctoral student in the EP-ADS program at Curry. Previously, she received an A.B. in Psychology from Georgetown University before teaching preschool for two years at a public charter school in Washington, DC. She now works with Dr. Natalia Palacios, focusing specifically on mathematics learning for English Language Learner students. She originally began this work with Dr. Palacios during the master’s program.

Jordan Buckrop is currently continuing her graduate work as a doctoral student in Curry's Reading Education program. She was an elementary general and special education teacher in North Carolina prior to beginning the Master's program. As a Master's student, she combined both research experiences and course work to study the quality of children's classroom experiences and the impacts of these experiences on their future educational trajectories.

Amy Keegan is currently an upper elementary co-teacher at a public charter Montessori school in Denver. While in the EP-ADS master's program at UVa, she conducted and analyzed qualitative research on the middle school Environmental Service Learning Project with Eileen Merritt and worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Sara Rimm-Kaufman's Childhood Learning and Development course for pre-service teachers. Her interests center around motivation and children's mindsets, specifically in mathematics. She is pursuing advanced study at the Montessori Institute of Atlanta each summer through August 2016 to receive her AMI diploma.

Alyssa Parr is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Before she came to the EP-ADS program at Curry, she received a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish from Lake Forest College. Through her studies as well as her experience teaching English in Spain while studying abroad, she realized her passion for education and helping students be the best they can be. While completing her M.Ed., Alyssa worked with Dr. Palacios on a mixed-methods research project looking at mother-child interactions among Latino families with children entering kindergarten to learn more about their language development.

Mai Pham is currently working at the Virginia Institute of Autismas an instructor.

Mai is an alumnus of VCU's School of the Arts and received her M.Ed. in EP-ADS at UVA's Curry School of Education with a focus on mentorship and leadership. During her time at UVA, she worked as a Research Assistant in the Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) with Joanna Williams and as a Fellow for YWLP with Melissa Levy at the Women’s Center.