Join us in welcoming three new faculty!

José Del Real Viramontes, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Higher Education Administration and Policy program the School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. Prior to UCR, he was an assistant professor in the Higher Education/Community College Leadership program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Cultural Studies in Education from the University of Texas at Austin. 

As a former community college transfer student, his research explores the transfer receptive culture for Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x community college transfer students at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and highlighting how Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x community college transfer students navigate and negotiate the ideological, material, and structural conditions of the community college to four-year university process at PWIs. He is currently working on a co-edited book, tentatively titled Latina/o/x Community College Students: Navigating and Negotiating the Community College to Four-Year College/University Transfer Pipeline. The edited volume provides much-needed theoretical and empirical data on the experiences of Latina/o/x students who enter postsecondary education through the community college. The book will bring together research highlighting the experiences of Latina/o/x students during the pre-and post-transfer process to ensure that higher education institutions develop transfer policies and programming that support the specific needs of Latina/o/x students

Michael W. Moses II, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Higher Education and Qualitative Methods at UCR's School of Education. Drawing upon critical race and social theories, his program of research includes three interrelated lines of inquiry that seek to question and understand the mismatch between institutional diversity rhetoric and practice at traditionally white institutions. The first line of inquiry takes an asset-centered approach to ethnographically understanding the values and practices students and scholars of color employ to navigate institutional contexts. His second area of research draws upon Moses' training as a qualitative methodologist and uses conceptual and empirical methods to interrogate the racialized implications and taken-for-granted assumptions of qualitative methodological theory and practice. His third area of research meaningfully contributes to the scholarship on academic writing by theorizing and studying writing practices from the experiences of academic writers of color. In addition to his scholarship, Moses centers mindfulness practices to inform his approach to teaching and service as tools for minoritized community members to find possibilities of wellness amidst their lives in higher education. 

Moses earned his Ph.D. from UCLA's School of Education and Information Studies, after which he was a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCR's School of Education from 2020-2022. He also holds a Master’s in African-American Studies from UCLA and Bachelor’s in English from Georgia Southwestern State University where he played NCAA Division II men's soccer. Moses is from the suburbs of Atlanta, GA, and in his spare time, you can find him teaching yoga, attending concerts from his favorite music artist, and trying to be a better dog-dad to his puppy Rose Thunder. 

 

Suneal Kolluri, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School of Education teaching courses on Education Policy, Social Studies Teaching Methods, and the Sociology of Education. His research looks at how curriculum and college readiness practices in high schools produce social stratifications by race, ethnicity, gender, and class.