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Sophia Rodriguez

Sophia Rodriguez

Associate Professor, Educational Policy Studies & Sociology

Administration, Leadership, and Technology

sr7704@nyu.edu
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Sophia Rodriguez is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Sociology of Education. Her integrated research agenda addresses issues related to racial equity, urban education, leadership, and policy, and centralizes minoritized youth voices. Her current longitudinal projects, funded by the Spencer and W.T. Grant Foundations (2019-2027), utilize mixed-methods and ethnographic designs to investigate how community-school partnerships, teachers, leaders, and critical school-based personnel promote equity and advocate for immigrant youth. Her scholarly work has appeared in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, AERA Open, Educational Policy, Educational Researcher, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Teachers College Record, and Urban Education, and published in media outlets such as the Washington Post, the Conversation, and Chalkbeat as well as covered in Education Week. She founded and directs the ImmigrantEdNext Research Lab, a public-facing research hub that involves mentoring doctoral students in multiple projects about how districts, schools, community-based organizations can create spaces of belonging for immigrant youth. As a first-generation college student and PhD, she values mentoring as part of her collaborative approach to research and has been recognized for her efforts to support junior researchers and graduate students of color in this effort.

Rodriguez's scholarly work as been recognized nationally. In 2022, Rodriguez received the Early Career Award for Division G (Social Contexts of Education) in the American Educational Research Association. Rodriguez was also named an Outstanding Reviewer for the American Educational Research Association journal AERA Open (2022). In 2022, she was also named a William T. Grant Scholar by the William T Grant Foundation, which is a prestigious five year fellowship to conduct a longitudinal study about how community based organizations and school districts facilitate welcome and belonging for immigrant youth. In 2023, she was awarded a Mentoring Grant from the William T. Grant Foundation to support her mentoring of junior researchers of color on pressing racial and social justice issues in social science research. In 2024, she received the Douglas Foley Early Career Award from the Council for Anthropology & Education as part of the American Anthropological Association for her significant contributions to critical, change-oriented ethnographic research.

Prior to joining NYU, Dr. Rodriguez held appointments as a tenure track faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and College of Charleston. While at the University of Maryland, Rodriguez won several awards for her scholarship including the Maryland Research Excellence Award (2023), which is a prestigious university-level award for raising the visibility of research at the University of Maryland, and the Catalyst Grant to support research that centers racial and social justice (2022) as well as the recipient of a 1.5 million dollar grant (2023) to support a university-community based partnership for her engaged research about Latino youth and families' mental health. holds a PhD from Loyola University Chicago in Educational Policy Studies and Sociology, an M.S. in Teaching and Curriculum and English Education for Adolescence from Fordham University, an MA in American Literature and Literary Criticism from Sonoma State University, and a BA in Political Science and English with Honors from Marquette University. 

Grants and Projects (Selected)

  • Mentoring Grant, William T. Grant Foundation (Principal Investigator, Funded, $60,000). Mentoring activities with doctoral student Lisa Lopez-Escobar. “Latinx youth belonging in community-based organizations.” (2023-2024)
  • William T. Grant Scholars Program (Principal Investigator, Funded, $350,000). “The educational welcome of newcomer immigrant children: A mixed-methods study of school-community partnerships to reduce inequality.” (2022-2027).
  • Abell Foundation, Improving Retention and Success of Baltimore City Students Graduates in Maryland. (Sub-contract).
  • William T. Grant Foundation, Officer's Research Grant (PI, Funded $50,000). Equity for immigrant students in community-based organizations.  (2020-2022).
  • Spencer Foundation, Small Grants Program (Co-PI, Funded $49,661). "Equity for immigrant students: Examining the influence of school social workers in K-12 settings" (2018-2022).
  • Institute for Museum and Library Services. "Linking learning and belonging: A collaborative approach to narrowing the achievement gap for new arrival immigrant teens." (Sub-contract). 

Honors & Awards

  • Douglas Foley Early Career Award, Council for Anthropology & Education, American Anthropological Association (2024)
  • Dean's Distinguished Alumni Award, School of Education, Loyola University Chicago (2024)
  • William T. Grant Scholars Award (2022-2027)
  • Early Career Award Recipient, Division G (Social Contexts of Education), American Educational Research Association (2022)
  • Outstanding Reviewer, AERA Open, American Educational Research Association (2022)
  • Excellence in Scholarship Award (Pre-Tenure), College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park (2022)
  • Visiting Scholar, Center for the Social Organization of Schools and School of Education, Johns Hopkins University (2020) 
  • Recipient, Library of Congress Literacy Award for "Linking Learning and Belonging" project (2019)

Selected Publications

  • denotes graduate student co-author

Books

  1. Rodriguez, S. & Conchas, G. (2022). Race Frames: Structuring Inequality and Opportunity in a Changing Educational Landscape. Teachers College Press. 
  2. Magno, C., Lew, J., & Rodriguez, S. (2022). Transnational Migration and Education. Brill Publishers. 
  3. Rodriguez, S. (In press). Undocumented in the South: How Youth Navigate Racialization and Immigration Status in Policy and School Contexts. Rutgers University Press.

Refereed Journal Articles [Selected]

  1. Rodriguez, S. & Murillo, K.,** & Roth, B. (2024). “Like they're my same people. They've probably been in my shoes..”: Community-based organizations’ role in fostering belonging and organizational ties for Latino/x immigrant youth. Journal of Adolescent Research. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07435584241280265
  2. Rodriguez, S., Lopez-Escobar, L.,** & Pippin-Kottkamp, S.** (2024). Toward healing care-systems to support relational well-being for Latino immigrant youth in and out of school spaces. Educational Policy. https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048241265
  3. Rodriguez, S. & Wy, G.** (2023). Struggling to belong: Evidence from a survey with middle and high school youth in public schools. Educational Researcher. 53(2). https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X2312169
  4. Rodriguez, S. & Macias, E.* (2022). Even being a citizen is not a privilege here.” Undocumented Latinx immigrant youth and perceptions of racialized citizenship. Sociology of Race & Ethnicity. https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492221114812
  5. Rodriguez, S. (2022). “Immigration knocks on the door. We are stuck.”: A multi-level analysis of undocumented youths’ experiences of racism, system failure, and resistance in policy and school contexts. Teachers College Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681221093286
  6. Rodriguez, S. & Crawford, E. (2022). Educational leaders’ perceptions of advocacy for undocumented students in New York City and Baltimore public schools: A comparative case study. Journal of Research on Leadership Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/19427751221081887.
  7. Rodriguez, S., Roth, B. & Villarreal Sosa, L. (2022). “Immigration enforcement is a daily part of our students’ lives”: School social workers’ perceptions of racialized nested contexts of reception for immigrant students. AERA Open, 8. 
  8. Rodriguez, S. (2021). “They let you back in the country?”: Racialized inequity and the miseducation of Latinx undocumented students in the New Latino South. The Urban Review, 53, 565-590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00594-8. 
  9. Rodriguez, S. (2020, Online First). Community-school partnerships as racial projects: Examining belonging for newcomer migrant youth in urban education. Urban Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085920959126.
  10. Rodriguez, S. & McCorkle, W.^ (2020). On the educational rights of undocumented students: A call to expand teacher awareness and empathy. Teachers College Record, 122(12), 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146812012201203. 
  11. Rodriguez, S. (2020). “I was born at the border, like the ‘wrong’ side of it”: Undocumented Latinx youth experiences of identity, belonging, and racialized discrimination in the U.S. South. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 51(4), 496-526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12357. 
  12. Rodriguez, S. (2019). “You’re a sociologist, I am too”: Theorizing disruption in fieldwork with undocumented youth. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 49(2), 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241619882075.
  13. Rodriguez, S. (2019). “We're building the community; it’s a hub for democracy”: Lessons learned from a library-based program for newcomer immigrant and refugee youth. Children and Youth Services Review, 102, 135-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.025. 
  14. Rodriguez, S., Monreal, T.*, & Howard, K.J. (2018). “It’s about hearing and understanding their stories”: Teacher empathy and socio-political awareness toward newcomer undocumented students in the New Latino South. Journal of Latinos and Education, 19(2), 181-198. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2018.1489812. 
  15. Rodriguez, S. & Monreal, T.* (2017). “This state is racist”: Policy problematization and undocumented youth experiences in the New Latino South. Educational Policy, 31(6), 764–800. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904817719525. 
  16. Rodriguez, S. (2017). “People hide, but I’m here. I count”:  Examining undocumented youth identity formation in an urban community-school. Educational Studies, 53(5), 468-491. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2017.1322970. 
  17. Rodriguez, S. (2017). “My eyes were opened to the lack of diversity in our best schools”: Re-conceptualizing competitive school choice policy as a racial formation. The Urban Review, 49(4), 529-550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0415-z. 

Policy and Research Briefs/Reports/Essays 

  1. Ishimaru, A. & Rodriguez, S. (Expected, 2024). Supporting Families and Communities in Children’s Academic Thriving and Well-Being in the Wake of the Pandemic. [Invited]. National Academy of Education. 
  2. Carson, N.*, Bill, K. & Rodriguez, S. (2024, April). Navigating the crisis:  School district approaches to alleviating behavioral health staff shortages. [Policy Brief]. Maryland Equity Project Policy Brief Series, University of Maryland, College Park. https://education.umd.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/inline-files/MBH%20staff%20shortages%20brief_in%20template%20-%20Google%20Docs_0.pdf
  3. Rodriguez, S. (2021, November 30). School-personnel support for newcomer unaccompanied children and youth in urban schools [Policy Brief]. William T. Grant Foundation. http://wtgrantfoundation.org/the-system-makes-it-hard-for-them-exploring-the-challenges-and-strategies-for-schools-in-supporting-newcomer-unaccompanied-immigrant-youth
  4. Roth, B., Villarreal Sosa, L., & Rodriguez, S. (2018-2021). What is the Role of School Social Workers in Advancing Equity for Immigrant Students? ]Research Report Reference #201900046]. Spencer Foundation. https://www.spencer.org/
  5. Rodriguez. S. & Zapata, M.* (2022).“The system isn’t built for us.” Exploring Black and Latinx parent experiences of educational exclusion in a local district to reduce inequality [Research Report]. Seek Common Ground. https://seekcommonground.org/covid-19/bbceee
  6. Rodriguez, S., Roth, B., & Villarreal Sosa, L. (2021). School social workers and equity for undocumented students [Policy Brief]. Immigration Initiative at Harvard Issue Brief Series, 1(8). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. https://immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu/knocking-down-barriers-inclusion-school-social-workers-advocacy-and-equity-immigrant-students?admin_panel=1
  7. Rodriguez, S. (2019). “Educator and school-based personnel’s advocacy for undocumented youth in K-12 settings” [Policy Brief No. 06-2019]. Sociology Policy Briefs. https://www.policybriefs.org/briefs 

Significant Works/Mention  in Public Media

  1. Najarro, I. (2024, September, 27). What works to help students of color feel like they belong at school. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-works-to-help-students-of-color-feel-like-they-belong-at-school/2024/09
  2. Cohen, L. (2023, July 19). Portland schools embracing multilingual education. Press Herald. https://www.pressherald.com/2023/07/16/portland-schools-embrace-multilingual-future/#:~:text=The%20district%20enrolled%20a%20record,extremely%20limited%20knowledge%20of%20English.
  3. Rodrigues, M. (2023, Mar 22). The post-DACA generation faces steep barriers to college in the South. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/dreams-derailed?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6461852_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230324&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh
  4. Washington Post. (October 12, 2022). Challenges that young immigrants face in US public schools. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/12/challenges-immigrants-face-public-schools/
  5. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (January 13, 2022). Midwestern community colleges work to lure, and keep, students struggling with poverty. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2022/01/13/midwestern-community-colleges-work-lure-impoverished-students/9177551002/?fbclid=IwAR3fu7TQd5yU_QJvgKeE-STTGViqGRoVtoXwvan3ET0zquAHqOou1bBb8cU
  6. Borderless Magazine. (December 16, 2021). Immigrant Community College Students Struggle to Find Support During COVID. City Colleges of Chicago immigrant students balance extra work hours, technology issues and limited English proficiency with remote learning. https://borderlessmag.org/2021/12/16/immigrant-community-college-students-struggle-to-find-support-during-covid/
  7. USA Today and Greenville News. (March 8, 2021). She thought she was adopted. Now, her fight to stay in the US is just beginning. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/03/08/immigration-adoption-woman-fights-stay-us-nicaragua/6890100002/
  8. William T. Grant Foundation - Reflections from the Reducing Inequality Convening: Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Media Contributions, Blogs, Podcasts, and Other

  1. Rodriguez, S. (Oct, 2024). For many immigrant students, school is their one safe splace. Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/10/09/immigrant-students-have-harrowing-journeys-to-us-school-is-a-safe-place/
  2. Rodriguez, S. (April, 2024). “Nobody is listening to us.” : Latinx immigrant youth perspectives on race, discrimination, and racial equity in schools. William T. Grant Foundation Blog. https://tinyurl.com/3zku9vsh
  3. Rodriguez, S (April, 2024). “We’re all, like, one community”: Latinx youths’ sense of belonging in community-based organizations. Perspectives, Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, NYU. https://tinyurl.com/23tr6f7e
  4. Rodriguez, S. & Wy, G.* (March, 2024). Do I belong? Isolation and identity among minoritized youth. Council on Contemporary Families Blog. https://thesocietypages.org/ccf/2024/03/05/do-i-belong-isolation-and-identity-among-minoritized-youth/
  5. Rodriguez, S. (January, 2024). “I hate it here”: How minoritized youth perceive school and social belonging in contested racial climates of public school. Perspectives, Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, NYU..
  6. Rodriguez, S. (2023). Latino youth struggle with a sense of belonging in school. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/latino-youth-struggle-with-sense-of-belonging-in-school-203385

Podcasts & Interviews

  1. Garcia, A. and Rita Kamani-Renedo. (Hosts). (March 28, 2024). Racialization, Immigrant Identities, and "a broad process of othering in La Cuenta. [Audio interview]. https://lacuenta.substack.com/p/racialization-immigrant-identities
  2. Green, Terrence. (Host). (February, 2024). How To Equitably Support Immigrant Youth in Schools w/Dr. Sophia Rodriguez (#44). [Audio podcast episode] in Racially Just Schools. https://www.raciallyjustschools.com/how-to-equitably-support-immigrant-youth-in-schools-w-dr-sophia-rodriguez/

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