EduCon 2025

6:00–8:00pm In a more and more divided world, in an era when students and teachers feel more isolated than ever before, how can schools build a deep and meaningful sense of community where all member know they are valued? Join a group of world-class educators as they tackle the question of creating community in our schools.

This event will take place in the SLA Auditorium and be simulcast via our YouTube Channel

Panelists:

Dr. Roderick L. Carey - Roderick L. Carey, PhD, is a scholar, teacher, and artist who has devoted his entire career in education to uplifting youth voices in his scholarship, teaching, and service to the community. Currently, Dr. Carey is Dean's Faculty Scholar and associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Delaware. He teaches undergraduate courses on mentoring and helping relationships and families and children placed at-risk and a graduate course on critical qualitative methods. He is the founder and director of The Black Boy Mattering Project, a partnership with Delaware schools that studies how youth perceive their significance to others and creates contexts for them to imagine mattering more robustly. He also publishes widely in top tier academic journals on how family and school factors influence adolescents’ ambitions. His articles have been published in outlets like the American Educational Research Journal, Harvard Educational Review, Race Ethnicity and Education, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Urban Education, to name a few. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Equity & Excellence in Education and Urban Education and is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Adolescent Research. Dr. Carey co-created www.findingfutureselves.org, a website filled with resources to help educators support youth imagine and plan their lives after high school. He has presented at dozens of academic conferences locally, nationally, and internationally, serves on multiple editorial and community boards, and has offered commentary on new stories that have appeared in outlets such as USA Today and PBS News Hour.Prior to earning a PhD at the University of Maryland College Park, Dr. Carey taught high school English in Washington, DC for four years. He also holds a Master of Education in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education and English.

Dr. Vivian Gadsden

Dr. Young-Moo Kim - Youngmoo Kim is Vice Provost of University & Community Partnerships at Drexel. He is founding director of the ExCITe Center, Drexel's institute for technology, creative expression, and digital equity. His research spans AI for music, creative robotics, and integrated STEAM learning, particularly the exclusionary structures at the core of technology-centered education. He co-authored “Making Culture” a national study of implicit bias in education makerspaces, and his TEDxPhiladelphia talk in 2019 focused on the lack of progress in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the technology fields in both higher education and industry. The ExCITe Center is a leader in advancing digital equity, particularly in West Philadelphia, spearheaded by a Digital Navigators team and supported by the City of Philadelphia and industry partners.

He is the recipient of Drexel's Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and is a member of the Apple Distinguished Educator class of 2013. Youngmoo received his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab and holds Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music from Stanford and undergraduate degrees from Swarthmore. He has extensive experience in music performance and currently sings with The Tonics, an a cappella ensemble in Philadelphia.

Dr. Linda Nathan - Linda F. Nathan is a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Cambridge College, Puerto Rico, where she teaches courses in designing democratic schools and organizational change. She brings her four decades of experience in creating and leading schools and nonprofits to her classroom and mentorship. She was the founding principal of Boston Arts Academy, the city’s first public high school for the visual and performing arts and the co-director of Fenway High School, one of the first Pilot Schools in Boston. She also founded the Tobin Bilingual Middle School for the Arts. Additionally, Linda co-founded three distinct non-profits (El Pueblo Nuevo, Center for Collaborative Education, Center for Artistry and Scholarship) which focused on arts advocacy and youth development, systemic education reform and creativity. She was the co-founder and co-director of the Perrone Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership which has prepared over one hundred educators for leadership roles in schools and nonprofits.

Linda is the author of two widely praised books: The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test and When Grit Isn’t Enough and she is the co-editor of a new open access book Designing Democratic Schools and Democratic Learning Environments: A Global Perspective.

She blogs about many of these ideas at www.lindanathan.com

She is the mother of three children, all involved in education or medicine and the proud grandmother of three wonderful children.

Dr. Nathan holds a Doctor of Education degree from Harvard University, Master’s degrees from Emerson College and Antioch University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.