Education – Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

IRT on the Road: Summer & Fall 2026

Breakthrough Greater Boston Careers in Education Fair, UNCF/Mellon Programs Conference, International Conference on Education & Justice and more…

The IRT team has been busy these past few months connecting at events. Highlights on the team’s travels below. Any IRT Alumni who plan to attend annual conferences or local events, let us know!

LaShawnda Brooks
Executive Director, IRT

Breakthrough Greater Boston held their annual Careers in Education Fair this August at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. LaShawnda connected with talented teaching fellows exploring their paths to a career in education.

LaShawnda also attended Boston University’s Fall 2026 Education Policy Seminar Series in September. Dominique Baker, an associate professor from the University of Delaware presented on “Examining the Higher Education Policy Discourse Through 75 Years of Congressional Hearing Testimony.”

Leislie Godo-Solo, IRT ‘ 91
IRT Education Programs Specialist

On October 1, Leislie presented at the UNCF/Mellon Programs Conference in Atlanta. The theme was Scholars Transforming the Academy: Centering and Stabilizing Scholar Activism
in Times Like These. Additional IRT Alumni participating in panel discussions included Dominick Rolle, IRT ’09 is the Director of Undergraduate Research Programs, The Pathways Center, at Emory University, Julius Flemming, IRT ’08 Associate Professor of English at Washington University, Saint Louis, and Bria Paige, IRT ’18 a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College.

Leislie will also be representing IRT and its program on October 22 at a Virtual Internship and Postbaccalaureate Research Programs Expo, hosted by Morgan State University and The Leadership Alliance.

2026 UNCF/Mellon Programs Conference

Impactful Leadership of Schools of Education in Difficult Times

Catherine Wong, Associate Director & Manager of Programs attended a virtual workshop with Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. on transformative frameworks for educational leadership

What if the very act of supporting a scholar through their graduate school application is fundamentally transforming educational institutions? That’s the powerful realization that emerged from Catherine Wong’s three-day virtual intensive with Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. this January. Over the course of the workshop, “Impactful Leadership of Schools of Education in Difficult Times,” Kumashiro didn’t just share leadership strategies, he challenged participants to fundamentally rethink what it means to lead for justice. His central provocation? That we must name and engage with contradictions rather than resolve them, that resistance is inevitable and must be worked through rather than avoided, and that transformative change happens through collective movements, not siloed actions. For those of us committed to supporting aspiring scholars at IRT, these insights landed with particular resonance. After all, when we sit with a scholar crafting their personal statement, aren’t we doing exactly what Kumashiro describes: historicizing their journey to reveal enduring paradoxes, reframing their experiences to illuminate what others might miss and creating space to work through the discomfort of unlearning limiting narratives about who belongs in graduate education?

The IRT Effect: Charting Ph.D. Completion

Leislie Godo-Solo, IRT ’91
Education Programs Specialist, Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

Recently, I was chosen to participate in the 4^th annual cohort of the Phillips Academy Head of School Leadership Development Program (HOS-LDP) alongside 11 other individuals from the following schools: Pomfret School, St Paul’s School, Deerfield Academy, Lick- Wilmerding High School, and Phillips Academy. The 8-month program consisted of an in person, two-day leadership retreat, twice-monthly cohort meetings with guest lecturers and readings, 10 hours of professional coaching, the opportunity to enroll in a leadership course taught by Harvard’s online Business School, a capstone project and presentation that addressed a departmental or institutional priority, and a closing dinner including a certificate award ceremony.

IRT Alumni Access to Career Pages

The online IRT Alumni Network is an exclusive space for alumni engaging with each other in many ways. Did you know there is a job board, which includes postings from schools and institutions within the network that you can use to reach our online community or apply for a position yourself?

NCORE: May 28 – June 1, 2024

IRT Associate Director and Manager of Programs Catherine Wong attended the 36th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE®) held on the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i. The IRT has attended NCORE® over the last few years, engaging in the five-day conference focusing on community engagement, exchanging knowledge and ideas as it relates to race and ethnicity on campus, and meeting up with IRT alumni and colleagues.

Do you have a conference whereby you feel that you can show up as your full scholar activist self without being second guessed, silenced or stereotyped? Do you have an annual conference or national forum that allows you to embrace your growing edges with other fellow changemakers?

NCORE® has been that conference for me since my entry into higher education more than 2 decades ago. I feel fortunate to have found a conference where critical dialogues are the norm, not the exception, where friendships grow from collegial relationships, and where creativity is a collective effort. Therefore having NCORE® select my home state of Hawai’i for its conference site for the first time in its 36 year history and during API month was wonderfully affirming and exciting.