Creating Spaces for Growth and Equity

The Intellectual Contribution Award recognizes graduating Ed.M. students (one from each master’s degree program) whose dedication to scholarship enhanced HGSE’s academic community and positively affected fellow students. All recipients were nominated by their classmates based on who inspired them, helped them gain a different perspective on education's challenges, and contributed to shared learning and intellectual growth, both inside and outside of the classroom. Each program's faculty directors, in consultation with other faculty and staff, selected the final honorees for their program based on the nominations and on demonstrated academic success.

Keshav Bhatt and Helena Martinez Bravo will be honored with the Intellectual Contribution Award for the Human Development and Education (HDE) Program during HGSE Convocation exercises on May 22. Below, our faculty members comment on the selections, and we asked the winners about their time at HGSE, their future goals, and their approach to impacting the field of education.

Keshav Bhatt

"Keshav Bhatt came to HGSE with a decade of experience delivering programs for youth from marginalized communities. Houman Harouni states that Keshav 'was a tremendous Equity and Inclusion Fellow this year. To me, Keshav embodies the capacity to practice intellectual rigor while maintaining hope and humor. That’s no easy feat.' Adriana Umana-Taylor adds, 'Keshav’s comments in class were consistently raised from a frame of curiosity and beautifully communicated the respect he had for his peers while unapologetically advocating for ethnoracial equity in our work with young people.' And, Josephine Kim shares, 'There are those who continuously create work for themselves because they are as talented as they are passionate and as compelling as they are imaginative. Keshav is a stand-out thought leader whose sense of vision is decorated with intelligence and balanced by intentionality, authenticity, and cultural humility. He exemplifies all that an HGSE graduate is and more.'" — The HDE Faculty Team

What is something that you learned this year that you will take with you throughout your career in education? One thing I learned from this year was the importance of a collective vs. individually focused approach. For example, in MLD-201C I learned to think about leadership as an activity and finding ways to collectively "give work back to a system." Prior to this, I thought about leadership more from an individualistic perspective of building skills and a focus on one person's efforts, whereas now I think a lot more about how we leadership across a community.  

What surprised you about your time at HGSE? I think how supportive and transformative the culture is. I had an extremely traumatic time during my undergraduate degree at the University of Reading and this made me believe that I wasn't capable of succeeding in a higher education institution setting. Even though it was a long time ago and I've healed since, I still held some trepidation as I started Foundations classes.  

As an international BIPOC student from an immigrant working-class background, I thought I was going to really struggle to keep up with my classmates and the content of classes — even more so as I'd been out of academia for 12 years. I was surprised however, at just how forward thinking the professors and faculty at HGSE are, where the emphasis is not just on grades, standardized testing, assignments and "outputs" but more on a holistic approach which prioritizes learning as well as practicality. This allowed me to not only succeed, but flourish and enjoy it in a supportive environment.  

Is there any professor or class that significantly shaped your experience? I thoroughly enjoyed the Human Development core program because of its flexibility and breadth in allowing me to self-curate my focus through the master's program, whilst considered the throughlines we learned in the core program experience. As a result, I opted to continue working on my HDE101 paper in the Spring semester through S999: Independent Study with so much support from my faculty adviser Vanja Pejic. Her mentorship and wisdom really shifted my thinking on the topics I was researching in S999. It's meant I've created a real shift in the way I not only review academic material and so-called "expert-opinion," but also the way I view people, cultures and context as a whole.  

The second class that significantly shaped my experience is doing something that felt the entire polar opposite to my whole identity and personality — a course on statistics (S012 and S030) with Lecturer Hadas Eidelman. As someone who labored through anything mathematical in my adolescence, I was so fearful of taking a statistical course like this. However, I knew if I was going to challenge myself, I needed to take classes I would be uncomfortable in and the best environment to learn in would be at HGSE. Dr. Eidelman is a role model to me when it comes to embodying thoughtful teaching pedagogy and exemplary teaching and I'm amazed at how far I've come in my learning now.  

What are your post-HGSE plans? Where are you hoping to make the most impact? Post-HGSE I first plan to spend the summer relaxing (!) as well as reviewing all the concepts I learned this year while they are still fresh. I'll also be working as a teaching fellow for Evidence 101 during the Foundations classes, and plan to TF during the fall semester for a few other courses at Harvard. Beyond this, I want to continue my journey in academia by completing a Ph.D. back in the U.K. so I'll be applying for this in 2025 as I'd like to one day become a professor as well as conduct my own research.  

Helena Martinez Bravo  

"Helena Martinez Bravo entered HDE with the goal of learning more about how art can support human development and needs. Both peers and professors noted their many intellectual contributions to our community. One fellow HDE student stated, 'Helena pushes the conversation in every class they are in and does so in a way that doesn't make anyone feel alienated or as if the comment was made just to seem smart. Helena transfers meanings from one class into topics from other areas in life and the world, and also does so with a curiosity and compassion that keeps the conversation flowing.' Faculty members share this enthusiasm for Helena as a thought-leader. For example, Louisa Penfold states: 'Helena is an artist in the truest sense of the word — they see and feel the injustices and inequality that play out in education — and responds to these by creating spaces where people can come together through making, playing, and performing.” — The HDE Faculty Team

What brought you to HGSE, and what was your goal in coming here? I wanted to learn more about how art could help children regulate their stress and anxiety in educational settings. I had been working as a preschool art teacher and volunteering with local grassroots immigrant women-led organizations, and I saw potential to connect my art education practice with my desire to promote social justice. Also, I had studied human development themes broadly, and I was excited by the opportunity to more deeply understand certain cognitive functions such as curiosity and motivation.  

What is something that you learned this year that you will take with you throughout your career in education? This year I kept a journal of outstanding concepts, aha moments, and vocabulary terms that I wanted to remember. The list currently has 45 items. The most impactful direct pedagogical influence I’m taking from HGSE is the educator’s commitment to hope, particularly the critical hope posed by Cornel West. You can present children with knowledge, but if you aren’t nurturing a practice of hope, you are missing an opportunity for learning.  

What surprised you about your time at HGSE? I didn’t have to compartmentalize myself as much as I expected. The academic environment is interdisciplinary and I felt this reflected in the social atmosphere. People actually wanted to know the real me — not just a polished version.  

Is there any professor or class that significantly shaped your experience? I am forever changed by my experience in Lecturer Louisa Penfold’s course, Contemporary Art in Early Childhood. The opportunity to delve deeply into art education theories while also embodying them was transformative. The whole-body opportunity to invoke the young child’s exploratory style of learning and the contemporary artist’s unconventional approach to materials was enlightening and nourishing. I wish every art teacher could have this experience. I will always treasure this class and the community that bloomed from it.  

Associate Professor Elizabeth Bonawitz’s Curiosity in Learning and Development course was awe-inspiring, surprising, and fascinating. Getting a glimpse into the mechanisms surrounding curiosity helped me much more clearly see the young child’s process of perceptual reasoning and understanding.  

Professor Catherine Elgin fearlessly led us in untangling complex philosophical puzzles in Art and Understanding. Her expansive approach to epistemology inspired us to seek and recognize learning opportunities in new and unexpected places. She provided a space to challenge false dichotomies such as those between science and art, emotions and knowledge, and expert and novice.  

Senior Lecturer Rick Weissbourd’s course Becoming a Good Person and Leading a Good Life was also greatly influential on me. I was moved by the idea that a sturdy sense of self is necessary in order to care for others in a generative way, challenging the altruistic model of service. It was in this course that I began to see hope as directly relevant to education and not just as a symptom of circumstances.