Our Team

Barbara Abel, Ph.D. is a Clinical Guest Lecturer at the University of Illinois Chicago. Barbara has worked in the field of infant and early childhood education for over 35 years. She has been a teacher of infants and toddlers, designed and directed programs for children from birth to five living in historically underserved urban communities, as well as taught undergraduate and graduate students.  Barbara recently co-authored Precursor Math Concepts: The Wonder of Mathematical Worlds with Infants and Toddlers.

David Banzer is a Bridge to Faculty postdoctoral research associate in Educational Psychology within the College of Education. He was a preschool teacher and an early childhood administrator supporting teaching staff within a community-based center supporting young children and families of primarily low-income Latinx and Black communities in Chicago, and developed and led early STEM professional learning communities for Head Start teachers. His research focuses on early math, science, and engineering teaching and learning within preschool settings, and early childhood teachers’ professional development and learning.

Sarai Coba-Rodriguez, PhD, CFLE, is an Assistant Professor in Human Development and Learning at the Department of Educational Psychology. Her research centers on presenting a more complex, dynamic, and resilient picture of how families with young children racially-linguistically support their children’s successful transition to kindergarten. Her qualitative research emphasizes families’ strengths, cultural resources, and agency in promoting their children’s education. She is also the Co-PI on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant that seeks to elevate the voices of parents whose children have been excluded from child care following a 2018 Illinois law barring the use of expulsion. To learn more about her work, please visit her lab page, The Diverse Families and School Readiness Lab, which Dr. Coba directs.

John Borrero is a doctoral student in Community and Applied Development Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include social- emotional teaching and learning, exclusionary school practices and racial equity in early childhood. John has enjoyed a long career serving families and children in both teaching and leadership positions. At the foundation of his career has been the desire to impact the lives of young children impacted by poverty.

John has held positions under the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, the Office of Head Start and the U.S. Maternal Child Health Bureau. John is also proud to have held early childhood adjunct faculty positions at several institutions, most recently at New York University and Bank Street College of Education in New York City, where he delivered instruction in child development, curriculum design, early literacy and equity issues in early childhood.

Christina Delgado, MEd. is a Visiting Clinical Lecturer at the University of Illinois. She teaches and coaches in the Early Childhood Education Alternative Licensure program. She earned an M.Ed in early childhood education from the University of Illinois Chicago and a B.A. in bilingual/bicultural elementary education from Northeastern Illinois University in 2005. She earned a professional education license through UIC’s alternative certification program. She has been in the early childhood field for over 15 years, and previously was a pre-k teacher in a community-based early childhood center, with a focus on bilingual education, STEM learning, and project-based approaches. Her work in the early childhood field has focused on teaching and supporting marginalized communities in Chicago and has shared her teaching experiences at early childhood conferences and in publications.

Cheryl Flores, MPA, is a second year doctoral student in the Policy Studies in Urban Education program at UIC. She has years of experience working with community-based organizations on youth development, youth organizing, community schools, and broader education issues. She also has experience working with preservice teachers in ensuring they had the academic and social-emotional supports to graduate and thrive as teachers in the classroom. Currently, she works on engaging communities and stakeholders on advocacy efforts focused on education policy across the B-20 continuum. Additionally, as a graduate assistant, she is project managing the UIC Collaborative for Young Children and Families website.

Anna Jerabek, MEd. is a Clinical Guest Lecturer at the University of Illinois Chicago and a 2001 graduate of UIC’s Master’s Program in Early Childhood Instructional Leadership. Working initially as a teacher in Chicago area preschool and kindergarten classrooms, for the last 16 years, Anna has focused her efforts on supporting early childhood teacher education and professional development. She is currently a full time instructional coach and leads content test preparation classes for teacher candidates in the ALP.

Sunny Kim, PhD, BCBA-D, is an associate professor of special education. Her primary research centers on instructional methods to support school readiness and successful inclusion of young children of color with disabilities. She is a PI of UIC Early Childhood Future Faculty program supported by IBHE/ECACE.

Catherine Main, MEd, has more than 30 years of work on behalf of young children and their families in the state of Illinois. Cathy is the Director of Early Childhood in the College of Education at UIC, the leader of the UIC Early Childhood Expansion and Innovation project and the PI on the federal Teacher Quality Partnership grant: Chicago Early Childhood Preparation & Pathway Project.

Larissa Mulholland, MS is a Clinical Lecturer at UIC and has worked in ECE in a variety of roles and settings for over 30 years. In addition to years of direct service working with diverse children and families, she also has extensive experience supporting the professional development of in- service and pre-service teachers as a coach and education coordinator and as faculty in teacher education programs. As an ECE professional committed to social justice and concerned with the political implications of dominant discourse around childhood and education, her focus is on supporting the agency and sense of belonging of children and teachers and centering their voices in both ECE and higher education classrooms.

Kristy Ulrich Papczun, MEd, is a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and now a doctoral candidate in the College of Education. She serves as a graduate assistant for the Pelino Gift and the BA Urban Education: Elementary Education program. In these roles, she provides administrative support to the team. Additionally, she coordinates with different ECE team members to directly support graduate students and undergraduate students who are working toward the early childhood education endorsement, through the scholarship program and course offerings.

Michelle Parker-Katz, PhD is Clinical Professor in the Department of Special Education where she also coordinates the master’s programs and clinical fieldwork. She teaches doctoral and master’s level courses in the College of Education, and courses in the UIC Certificate in Foundations of College Teaching and related CIRTL programs. Her research focuses on teacher inquiry, teacher learning, and participation in authentic urban collaborations of educators, students, families and an array of community stakeholders. She is co-PI of the UIC Early Childhood Future Faculty program supported by IBHE/ECACE.

Yesenia Popoca, MEd, is an Assistant Director of Recruitment and Retention in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) for Early Childhood Education. She has a Masters in Urban Higher Education and a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American and Latino Studies from UIC. She assists students in the College of Education with the ECACE Scholarship. She works on recruitment and yield strategies for prospective and recently admitted students and engagement programming for current College of Education students.

Kathleen Sheridan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at UIC, studying early STEM literacy and professional development for early childhood educators. She teaches Child Development Health and Wellness, Early Childhood Curriculum, Classroom Assessment, and Cognitive Development courses to future teachers in our early childhood and human development programs. She is the lead developer and designer of the Early Math Counts and Early Science Matters professional development websites and PD courses. In addition, her newest resource, The Ready Child was developed for families and PreK-Kindergarten teachers, and focuses on Kindergarten Readiness.  She also facilitates professional development for teachers on STEM in nature and focuses on the importance of access to nature for young children as well as how to set up indoor and outdoor STEM in Nature activities for preK children.

Joanna Skourletos, M.S.Ed., is the project coordinator of the Social-Emotional Teaching and Learning (SETL) Lab and the data coordinator of the UIC Alternative Licensure Program. She has worked in the field of early childhood for over 10 years as an educator, administrator, coach, and instructor. She is also a doctoral candidate in the hybrid Child Development program between Loyola University and Erikson Institute. Her research focuses on the ways that early childhood administrators influence teacher psychological well-being.

Tanginia Southall, M.S.Ed., is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Psychology program at UIC. Tanginia currently serves as a coach for residents in the UIC Early Childhood Alternative Licensure program and has led professional learning communities for the first two cohorts in the program. Tanginia has worked in the early childhood field for the past 20 years. Beginning her career in the Chicago Public Schools, Tanginia has taught in a variety of early childhood settings, including pre-k, early childhood special education, and 2nd grade. More recently, Tanginia has taught early childhood education at the post-secondary level, preparing both two- and four-year college students to enter the early childhood workforce.

Victoria Trinder, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor in the College of Education at UIC. She is the Program Coordinator and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the BA Urban Education: Elementary Education program. As co-PI of the Pelino Gift, she has worked with Cathy Main through this collaborative to extend the licensure grade range of elementary pre-service teachers to include children aged birth through kindergarten. This has included building new coursework and redesigning the licensure program with early childhood content for elementary-level teachers. The number of teachers graduating from UIC and being able to teach in early childhood settings has tripled because of this work, which furthers educational justice in urban settings. Her book, Teaching Toward a Decolonizing Pedagogy: Critical Reflections Inside and Outside the Classroom, focuses on decolonizing teacher education through a reflective narrative.

Natalie Vesga is the Director of the Chicago Early Childhood Preparation and Pathways Project at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), which supports teachers working in community-based organizations and Chicago Public Schools, achieve IL state licensure.

In addition to her work at UIC, she has extensive experience working in a variety of non-profits that have championed multiple causes impacting many communities, including work with immigrant integration, education policy and Indigenous rights in Latin America. She holds a Masters in Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago Jane Addams College of Social Work, and Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from DePaul University. She also holds fellowships from Erikson Institute as a Barbara Bowman Early Childhood Policy Fellow, and the Aspen Institute Workforce Development Fellowship.

Kate Zinsser, PhD, is an Associate Professor at UIC in the Psychology Department and studies early childhood social-emotional school readiness.

At UIC, Dr. Zinsser directs the Social-Emotional Teaching and Learning (SETL) Lab which conducts multi-method research on settings, systems, and policies that impact young children’s learning including teacher-child interactions, classroom processes and discipline practices, and emotion socialization practices that promote children’s social-emotional school readiness. She is the co-developer of the EMOTERS tool, an open-access observational assessment of emotion-focused teaching, and the author of No Longer Welcome: The epidemic of early childhood expulsion.