Ed.D. in Educational Administration & Leadership, 2007
School of Education
January 1, 2009
Graduate Balances Research, Evaluation, Grant Writing, Lobbying, and Family Life
Over the past eight years, Kirran Moss has been a lecturer, adjunct professor, director of testing and placement at the university level, and doctoral student. She is passionate about the art of teaching, employing culturally sensitive pedagogy to ensure that her students, regardless of race, class, gender, religious preference, sexual preference, or ability, feel safe and empowered to learn in her classroom.
In August 2007 Dr. Moss completed her dissertation and earned her doctoral degree in the CSU/UCI Joint Ed.D. Educational Administration and Leadership with an emphasis in Higher Education and Community College Leadership. Her dissertation, “Preventing the Storm from Gathering,” was a policy analysis of California’s Math and Science Teacher Initiative (MSTI).
Dr. Moss believes her decision to return to school and pursue a terminal degree was an excellent one. She describes her experience while in the UCI/CSU Joint Ed.D. program as:
nothing short of perfect. I had the opportunity to be taught by some of the best scholars in the world while developing relationships with peers that I now call friends. The advisers and staff were exceptional, and I sadly miss not being a student.
During her time in the doctoral program and through her professional employment in the field of education, Dr. Moss accumulated extensive experience in developing mixed methodologies in research including: surveys, observation protocols; creating, linking, and analyzing large electronic data files; and report writing. Consequently, the data Dr. Moss gathered and analyzed for her dissertation have shaped and are continuing to shape the funding mechanisms determined by the Governor. They are informing the recommendations for funding from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) and improving programmatic components at all but one California State University campus. In addition, these data were and are used by the CSU Office of the Chancellor to apply for and receive private, state, and federal grants, some of which include: The Federal Institutions for Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) grants, National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grants, California Department of Education (CDE) grants, the Bechtel Foundation grants, and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) grants.
Currently Dr. Moss is pursuing several areas of interest. As either a grant writer or evaluator/report writer, she is working on several of the afore-mentioned CSU grants and additional grants related to K-12 math and science teacher. She is the lead evaluator in a National Science Foundation supported “Aspiring Science Teacher Research Internship” (ASTRI) program, a collaborative project between CSU and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She also is the lead evaluator for the Science Teacher and Researcher (STAR) program, a partnership between California State Universities and four Federal Laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), NASA, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Additionally, Dr. Moss currently working with several CSU campuses on a mixed-methods pipeline study. This longitudinal analysis is focusing on high school and community college transfer students as a measure to assess the impact of innovative practices to recruit and train increased numbers of highly qualified math and science teachers.
Dr. Moss also lobbies on behalf of the California State University system. During last summer, she traveled to Washington D.C. and met with Congressman George Miller III, the Chairman the Education and Labor Committee, to share her dissertation findings with him.
Now that her doctoral studies have concluded, Dr. Moss seeks a balance between the professional and personal components in her life. As a native Australian and a former Olympic aspirant, she is reserving time for some of the simpler things, such as a run with her husband and playing peak-a-boo with their seven-month old daughter, Lydia Rose.