Leadership
Shabnam Koirala-Azad, PhD
DEAN OF EDUCATION
Shabnam Koirala-Azad explores social and educational (in)equities through a transnational lens. Through ethnography and participatory research, her work critically examines the experiences of South Asian students and families in schools and society, as they experience shifting identities and navigate through structural inequities in various geographic, social and political spaces. By examining their realities in both home and host country contexts, she offers new ideas for transnational social action and highlights methodologies that directly address concerns with power and representation. As a mother-scholar, she is also interested in scholarship with an asset-based understanding of how mothering enriches careers in academia.
Colette N. Cann, PhD
ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AND FACULTY ADVANCEMENT
Dr. Colette N. Cann is an associate dean and associate professor in the School of Education. Dr. Cann earned her BA from Stanford University and completed both her MA and PhD at the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. Before coming to USF, she served for over ten years at Vassar College as an associate professor of Africana Studies and Education, as a class advisor, as a house fellow in a residence hall, and as the director of Exploring Transfer (a program to support community college students’ aspirations to transfer to four-year institutions). In addition, Dr. Cann worked with students over the past four years to establish the RISE Center for Racial Justice. RISE's most recent initiative focused on working with teachers to increase their racial literacy. Her scholarship has allowed her to collaborate with teachers, students, and community organizations and has appeared in journals such as Race, Ethnicity and Education, Whiteness and Education, Urban Education, Journal of Peace Education, Qualitative Inquiry, and Cultural Studies <–> Critical Methodologies. Dr. Cann's most recent publication is The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change. She is excited to join this leadership team of fierce scholar-mothers of color.
Dr. Leyla Pérez-Gualdrón
ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS
Dr. Leyla Pérez-Gualdrón is an associate professor of the Department of Counseling Psychology at USF. She holds a licensure in psychology from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Caracas, Venezuela. During her training in Venezuela, she provided mental health services and counseling in a variety of settings, including inner city schools K-12. She has a master's degree and a PhD in counseling psychology from Boston College. She has conducted group interventions in school settings such as a preventative acculturation stress intervention for immigrant children (CASA groups/Brookline Mental Health Center/Parks), career development programs for 9th graders (Tools For Tomorrow/Boston College), and racial identity development group for young African American and Latina girls (Jernigan Sankofa Program). She provided counseling and acute mental health services for diverse youth and adults at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pérez-Gualdrón has coauthored peer-reviewed journal articles in topics related to urban youth educational experiences and multicultural counseling. Her research interests include social justice orientation, transformational resistance and civic/educational engagement among urban youth.