Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

Thank you Alumni Panelists!

Leislie Godo-Solo, IRT ’91 and the IRT staff would like to send heart felt gratitude to the 27 alumni who participated in 10 Alumni Panels this advising season. Your time and expertise are greatly appreciated, and your encouragement of the next cohort of educators is unwavering. Please know that your continued support of IRT as an Alumni Panelist is vital to future cohorts and the organization! Again, a million thanks!

Alumni Accolades, January 2026

Donavan Ramon, IRT ’08
On February 11th, Dr. Ramon will be discussing a current book project on images of fight scenes in memoirs by Black men.

Fernando Tormos-Aponte, IRT ‘09
Congratulations to Dr. Tormos-Aponte who has been appointed to the Board of Directors for Women for a Healthy Environment. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Stay Connected. Pay It Forward. Get Involved with IRT.

Once IRT, always IRT.
As alumni of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, you know firsthand the power of community, mentorship, and shared commitment to educational equity. IRT is more than its programming, it’s a lifelong network of educators, scholars, and leaders who lift one another as we move forward in our careers.

Each summer, a new cohort of IRT Scholars arrives inspired, ambitious, and eager to learn from those who have walked this path before them. That’s where you come in.

We warmly invite IRT alumni to get involved as Summer Workshop Faculty and/or Statement of Purpose Advisors. These roles offer meaningful opportunities to reconnect with IRT, share your expertise, and make a tangible difference in the graduate journeys of emerging scholars. Whether you’re facilitating a workshop, offering thoughtful feedback on statements of purpose, or sharing lessons from your own academic and professional path. Your perspective matters! Serving in either role is also a chance to reflect, recharge, and reengage with the mission that brought us together. Many alumni have shared that returning to IRT renews their sense of purpose while strengthening the cycle of mentorship that defines our community.

Executive Director Letter, October 2025

Harlem
Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

To be transparent, the last few months have also been difficult – I have met with numerous scholars who have had to defer due to personal circumstances or concerns regarding the state of education. To that end, I struggled to imagine what I could say in this newsletter to fully encapsulate this moment, a tension of both hope, sadness, and awareness. However, during my second Jimmy Fund Walk, I think I figured it out.

As I waved to the young cancer patients at Dana-Farber and took my first steps of the 5K, I realized that is all we can do. Put one foot in front of the other, even though we are vulnerable. Throughout the walk, I thought of how so many people in our community are affected by cancer – and yet we all continue to do our best. Those lessons, however small, apply to my feelings about our current reality in higher education. We may not know the outcome, but we can continue to move forward as best we can. To some degree, that is what our scholars are doing.

“Chalk Talks” Series

IRT Alumni Come Together and Help Current Scholars During Critical Times

The IRT extended a warm welcome to the new IRT 2025 Cohort into its vibrant and dynamic community during the July Summer Workshop. The Summer Workshop is a major component of the IRT program, inspiring scholars to become future educators that PK-12 through higher education urgently needs. This year, the number of IRT alumni who came back to lend their experiences and insights during these critical times was phenomenal.

Heather Moore Roberson, IRT ’07 & ‘10, is a Co-Curriculum Coordinator for the workshop and hosted the “Chalk Talks”, a podcast-style series that is always engaging and insightful. The “Chalk Talks” delve into the complexities and nuances of graduate school life in today’s context. These sessions feature alumni and other higher education professionals. They share their research agendas, offer advice for navigating graduate school and the Academy, and discuss other relevant topics. The “Chalk Talks” are included in a content hub available to all current scholars as an integral resource to use as their own on-demand learning library; the topics and IRT Alumni speakers are featured below.