Congratulations, Class of 2023!

Samuel L. Radford III is an education advocate and community and parent leader who has dedicated his career to advocating for the rights of students and families. With extensive experience serving on various levels of parent leadership, including as chairperson for Head Start Policy and Overall Policy Council, president of Buffalo Schools Parent Organization, and president of District Parent Coordinating Council, Mr. Radford was appointed to serve on a Statewide Education Commission by then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and served nationally on President Barack Obama’s White House Community Leadership Briefing Series for Education.

As the past president of the District Parent Coordinating Council and current co-chair of We The Parents of WNY, Mr. Radford has worked tirelessly to empower parents and engage them in their children’s education.

Currently, as the director of the Community Action Organization of Western New York Better Schools Better Neighborhood Masten Resource Center, he oversees and manages the center’s programs and services, which promote educational and economic opportunities for residents.

Apart from his education and community organizing work, Mr. Radford is a well-respected community leader who serves on various boards and committees at the Citizens Advisory Council of Buffalo, the National Parents Union and the Education Trust New York, the Buffalo Urban Think Tank and the Buffalo Education Equity Task Force.

Melodie Baker serves as the national policy director at Just Equations, where she works to advance math education policy through national partnerships, policy initiatives and research. She is also a policy fellow for the Rockefeller Institute of Government, where she leads the research and evaluation for a Medicaid partnership project with the New York State Department of Health.

A nationally recognized education leader and advocate, she has published several articles, op-eds and a report on math education and policy in higher education. Baker has also spoken widely at conferences for the US Department of Education and the American Educational Research Association and has been interviewed by various media outlets, including The 74.

Baker serves on various national and state-wide councils, including Rasing New York and The Equity Coalition for the Education Trust New York, SUNY Erie Board of Trustees (Vice Chair), First Hand Learning, Launch New York and was recently tapped to serve on Governor Hochul’s Early Childhood Advisory Council. Prior to joining Just Equations in 2020, she was director of education for the United Way in Buffalo, and founded Q&A STATS, a research and evaluation firm that partners with government, nonprofits and philanthropies to provide technical assistance and quantitative analysis.  

Baker will earn her PhD in educational psychology and quantitative methods from UB in May 2023. She has a master’s in executive leadership and change from Daemen University and a bachelor’s in public relations from Buffalo State University.

Robert O. Davies became the 15^th president of Central Michigan University in September 2018, bringing nearly 30 years of higher education experience to the institution.

He previously served as president of Murray State University in Kentucky and Eastern Oregon University, and held several prior leadership roles in university relations, alumni relations and advancement.

Davies received his Bachelor of Science in management degree from the University of Nevada, Reno; a Master of Business Administration in finance and marketing from the University of Oregon; and PhD from the University at Buffalo.

Davies is known for his tireless championship of the transformational power of higher education and the importance and impact of regional public comprehensive universities.

Danielle Vegas Lewis is a doctoral candidate in the University at Buffalo’s Higher Education program. She earned a BA in political science from SUNY Cortland in 2005 and a MEd in higher education and student affairs from the University of South Carolina in 2007. She is currently the SUNY PRODiG Fellow at SUNY Fredonia, where she teaches sociology and gender courses. She also serves as a research associate for Dr. Linda DeAngelo at the University of Pittsburgh.

During her time in the doctoral program, she has published with Drs. Megan Iantosca, Sara A. Robert and Margaret Sallee, presented independent research at national conferences, served as the President of the ELP GSA, was awarded third place in UB’s 2022 Three Minute Thesis Competition, and served as the managing editor of the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education. She has also served on a number of local boards.

Her research agenda aims to understand and disrupt the ways in which socially constructed identities allow for the reproduction of social inequality, with a focus on understanding the ways institutions of higher education and other social structures challenge or uphold hegemonic environments in which majority populations accumulate power that harms students underrepresented in certain contexts. When Lewis is not engaged in her research, she enjoys spending time with her two greatest joys, her daughter, Grace and husband, Mike.

Michele Agosto is the director of arts for the Buffalo City School District, serving the children of Buffalo since 1994, with 10 of those years as an art teacher in the Black Rock area. Agosto’s passion for the arts and education is notable as she is dedicated to ensuring equity in the arts for all students in Buffalo and WNY. Agosto is also the co-founder and exhibiting member of Los Artistas del Barrio Buffalo (LADB). Established in 2016, LADB is an arts collaborative whose intent is to promote and highlight the talents of Latino/a/x artists of every genre in WNY Latino/a/x, celebrating our cultural roots, heritage and community.

Agosto serves as a board member and/or committee member of many local arts and cultural institutions, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House, Buffalo Arts Studio, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Diversity Council, El Museo Art Gallery, Juneteenth Festival, Inc., and Friends of Broderick Park.

Currently, under the leadership of NYS Assemblymember Crystal Peoples-Stokes and local philanthropist Alice Jacobs, Agosto is part of a group of Western New York women working to support this region’s collective voice and input in the developing Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Museum.

Born to Puerto Rican parents, Agosto was raised in Washington Heights, New York, but has made Buffalo her home, raising her two amazing boys, Alexander and Anthony.

Ebony E. Bullock has over 20 years of experience teaching and leading in the Buffalo City School District (BCSD). She holds certifications from New York State for teaching and leadership at both the school building and district levels. While pursuing her master’s in education, she earned certification for teaching and leading for diversity from the University at Buffalo. In June 2015, she was among the first cohort of school leaders to earn an Outside Educational Expert credential from the New York State Education Department. During the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, Bullock decided to return to the classroom to earn an EdD in educational administration in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy.

In her current role as the BCSD chief accountability and information officer, she oversees initiatives that aim to improve the culturally appropriate and effective use of data to drive decision making, teacher and leader effectiveness, and overall school and district effectiveness.

Bullock’s mission is to advance the moral imperative of education that all children can and must learn by applying an equity and social justice overlay in all aspects of her work. However, her most proud accomplishment is being a wife to her husband and a mother to one adult child and two teenagers.

Melodie Baker serves as the national policy director at Just Equations, where she works to advance math education policy through national partnerships, policy initiatives and research. She is also a policy fellow for the Rockefeller Institute of Government, where she leads the research and evaluation for a Medicaid partnership project with the New York State Department of Health.

A nationally recognized education leader and advocate, she has published several articles, op-eds and a report on math education and policy in higher education. Baker has also spoken widely at conferences for the US Department of Education and the American Educational Research Association and has been interviewed by various media outlets, including The 74.

Baker serves on various national and state-wide councils, including Rasing New York and The Equity Coalition for the Education Trust New York, SUNY Erie Board of Trustees (Vice Chair), First Hand Learning, Launch New York and was recently tapped to serve on Governor Hochul’s Early Childhood Advisory Council. Prior to joining Just Equations in 2020, she was director of education for the United Way in Buffalo, and founded Q&A STATS, a research and evaluation firm that partners with government, nonprofits and philanthropies to provide technical assistance and quantitative analysis.  

Baker will earn her PhD in educational psychology and quantitative methods from UB in May 2023. She has a master’s in executive leadership and change from Daemen University and a bachelor’s in public relations from Buffalo State University.

Margaret (Maggie) Manges is a PhD student in the counseling psychology/school psychology program in the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology. Her research and clinical interests are focused on marginalized and at-risk populations. She has also been involved in several grant-funded projects focused on the prevention of child sexual abuse, bullying and sexual harassment.

In addition, Manges has published six peer-refereed articles in highly regarded journals, one book chapter, one technical report, and one published proceeding, and was the first author of an article published in Prevention Science.

Manges has served on multiple committees at UB, including two search committees, grievance committees and program committees. She is also a long-standing member of the GSE Committee for Social Justice and Inclusion. On a national level, she is the student representative for the Society of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Issues, a student ambassador for APA Division 44, a member of the student advisory board for the Psychology of Women Quarterly, and part of the APA Division 17 student leadership collective. In recognition of her excellence, Manges has received multiple awards, scholarships and travel grants.

“I can say without hesitation that in my 20 years as a faculty member, Maggie is a shining star—and the most involved student I have ever supervised. She engages in research and service activities because she is deeply committed to her chosen field of study. I have no doubt that she will go on to be a stellar faculty member given her intelligence, commitment, conscientiousness, interpersonal skills, and leadership,” said Amanda Nickerson, professor and Manges’ advisor and research supervisor. 

Dr. Tiffany Karalis Noel is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction. She currently serves as director of the learning and teaching in social contexts (LTSC) EdD program, which she has been instrumental in designing, launching and now directing. It is widely known that she is the key figure in the early success of the EdD. In addition to her exceptional overall management of this new academic program, Dr. Karalis Noel is also extremely engaged in providing service to GSE and LAI (serving on school and department executive committees, admissions and assistantship committees and many other ad hoc initiatives over the years). She is likewise a very active researcher. She frequently collaborates and co-authors with students as well as colleagues on issues of teacher education, professional socialization and identity development, often with an emphasis on equity and inclusion.

Dr. Karalis Noel is beloved by the students she teaches and advises. She is famous for her detailed and rapidly returned feedback on drafts of research as well as her insightful and constructive critiques of qualitative methods. In the past several years, she has mentored many doctoral students, serving as chair and committee member on their research projects and guiding them at earlier stages through her teaching of courses in the department’s qualitative research methods sequence. At all stages, Dr. Karalis Noel is just as skilled in coaching students through their research designs and expression of their ideas in writing as she is in guiding them more broadly in shaping their professional goals. For these reasons, Dr. Karalis Noel is routinely cited by students, in program surveys and through departmental awards, as being an extraordinary educator, advisor and mentor.