Larisa Warhol, a PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies within the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education has been awarded a $25,000 Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education for the 2008-2009 academic year. Titled “Native American Language Education as Policy-in-Practice: An Interpretive Policy Analysis of the Native American Languages Act (NALA) of 1990-1992, Warhol says her dissertation “focuses on the development and implementation of the NALA through ethnographically informed research. In particular, I am interested in how this policy has operated as social practice at the local/tribal and national levels,” she said.

Warhol’s dissertation committee consists of her chair, Teresa McCarty, Alice Wiley Snell Professor of Education Policy Studies, David Beaulieu, professor and director of the Fulton College’s Center for Indian Education, Mary Eunice Romero-Little, assistant professor in curriculum & instruction, and Terrence Wiley, professor of educational leadership and policy studies.