Our Research Team
Our research team is a diverse and collaborative group that embraces faculty and interested students from different cultural, regional and academic background. We focus on research, professional development, and service to schools and educators to promote evidence-based practices that result in improved mental health outcomes for culturally and socially marginalized individuals, their families, and communities. Directed and supervised by Dr. Cirecie West-Olatunji, the center staff, affiliated scholars, and research team members will collaborate on funded research projects related to real world problems in partnership with community stakeholders and disseminate timely research reports and practitioner-based resources.
We embrace the idea that “students are critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher”. We value and trust in individuals’ ability of conscious thinking and critical transformation in reality. We hope that our research team can serve as a platform for team members to a) consciously think about what they are curious about and dialogue with teammates; b) co-construct new knowledge; c) take transformative actions within a dialogical and collaborative team setting. In the weekly research team meeting, members actively reflect and have dialogue about research process, provide feedback to each other and co-construct new knowledge.