About the Spencer Foundation and Panelists

In honor of the Spencer Foundation’s 50th anniversary in 2021, the Foundation launched a new Racial Equity Initiative with a goal to foster research that will support equity in education through scholarship, research, policy, and practice. Senior Vice President Megan Bang oversees all Spencer Foundation grant programs and serves on its executive team. A professor in the Learning Sciences and Human Development at Northwestern University, Dr. Bang studies the dynamics of culture, learning, and development with a focus on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in an effort to create more effective and just learning environments, with a specific focus on STEM education.

Dr. Bang will be joined by Dr. Melinda Mangin, Associate Professor in the Department of Education Theory, Policy, and Administration in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. Dr. Mangin’s scholarship is informed by her previous experience as a public high school Spanish teacher in New York City; her scholarly interests are teacher leadership and inclusive schools for transgender people. Dr. Mangin is a Spencer grantee, having recently been awarded support for her project, “Transgender Education: Building a Field of Study.”

Dr. Andrea Conklin Bueschel will moderate the discussion. Dr. Bueschel recently joined Rutgers as Senior Vice President for Administration and Chief of Staff, Office of the President, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Previously, she served as Associate Provost for Strategy and Policy at Northwestern University, Associate Vice President at the Spencer Foundation, and a research scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.