Research Team

Teresa L. McCarty is the G.F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology and Faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research, teaching, and outreach focus on Indigenous education, language education policy, and ethnography of education. She currently serves as coeditor of the Journal of American Indian Education. Her books include A Place To Be Navajo – Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (2002), “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (with K. T. Lomawaima, 2006), Ethnography and Language Policy (2011), Language Planning and Policy in Native America (2013), Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism (with L.T. Wyman and S.E. Nicholas, 2014), Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (with S. Coronel-Molina, 2016), and A World of Indigenous Languages (with S.E. Nicholas and G. Wigglesworth). She lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband John Martin, and is passionate about her family, music, and language revitalization.

Tiffany S. Lee is Dibé Łizhiní (Blacksheep) Diné and Oglala Lakota. Dr. Lee is a Distinguished Professor of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Her research examines educational and community/culturally-based outcomes of Indigenous language schools and Indigenous-centered education, the relationship of Diné language learning to wellbeing, and Native youth perspectives on language reclamation. She and colleagues created the Diné Language Teacher Institute to grow the pool of Diné language immersion teachers. She is a co-founding member of Saad K’idilyé Diné language nest serving infants to toddlers in Albuquerque. She is a former high school social studies and language arts teacher at schools on the Navajo Nation and at Santa Fe Indian School.

Sheilah E. Nicholas is a member of the Hopi Tribe. An Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona, she teaches courses on Indigenous oral traditions, culture-based education, language and culture in education, and teacher research. The focus of her scholarly work includes Indigenous/Hopi language maintenance and reclamation, Indigenous language ideologies and epistemologies, and cultural and linguistic issues in American Indian education. Her current scholarship draws on her work in planning and implementing a Hopi language teacher education and professional development program as consultant-instructor for the Hopi Tribe’s Hopilavayi Summer Institute (2004-2010). As a field consultant-instructor for the Indigenous Language Institute, she assists tribal communities interested in Indigenous-language immersion teaching. She lives in Tucson, Arizona—the place of Saguaro cacti, beautiful sunsets—with her husband, Joseph LaMantia, and is committed to language revitalization.  She has relearned her heritage language of Hopi to gift the language to her future grandchildren.

Michael H. Seltzer (co-Principal Investigator) is a Professor in the Social Research Methodology program in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in the use of multilevel models in investigating variation in treatment effects in multi-site studies of educational programs, and in analyzing longitudinal data. His methodological work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics and Evaluation Review, and his collaborative work on substantive projects has been published in journals in Reading Research Quarterly, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Research on Mathematics Education. He teaches courses in multilevel modeling and causal inference, and an interdisciplinary course focusing on the philosophical underpinnings of inquiry. He lives in Los Angeles and shares a passion for music with his wife Shelley and daughters Sarah and Kaela.

James McKenzie completed a PhD in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona, with focus on maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous language and culture, and Indigenous language and culture-based education. He has worked in academic and community settings in his homelands, and with other Indigenous peoples, contributing to initiatives to see Indigenous languages and cultures thrive, including with the Diné Language Immersion Institute and the Center for Diné Studies at Diné College. He has contributed to research on instructional strategies for oral language development in Indigenous immersion education, addressing historical trauma and healing in Indigenous language cultivation and revitalization, Indigenous language immersion and student achievement, and Diné language and wellness. His dissertation used Diné and Indigenous knowledge and principles and Critical Indigenous Qualitative Research approaches to draw from multiple relative perspectives in shining light on schools that ground the education they provide in Diné language, knowledge and lifeways.

Kyle Halle-Erby studies language policy and planning using critical Black and Indigenous frameworks. He received his PhD in Education (Social Research Methodology) at UCLA and is currently a postdoctoral scholar working with Dr. Teresa McCarty. Kyle also works directly with the Los Angeles Unified School District as a coach for principals and classroom teachers, and provides professional development on supporting literacy, integrating language & content, and translanguaging pedagogies for recently arrived immigrant students.

Thomas Jacobson has worked on the ILI Study since 2018 when he joined the team as a Graduate Student Researcher. He is currently employed as a Research Analyst at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools where he works on various research-practice partnerships in collaboration with educational agencies in Los Angeles County and across California. Thomas’s methodological interests include multilevel modeling, causal inference, and innovative uses of administrative data for policy analysis and program evaluation. Thomas holds an MPP from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, an MS in Statistics from UCLA, and a PhD in Education from the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

Leandro Holanda is a Brazilian educator and researcher who has been part of the ILI Study since 2024, contributing as a Graduate Student Researcher. He is currently a PhD candidate in Education at UCLA, where his research focuses on culturally sustaining approaches to STEAM and science education, emphasizing community-based learning and educational policy implementation. Leandro holds master’s degrees in Education from UCLA and in Sciences from Universidade de São Paulo. He is also the co-founder of Tríade Educacional, a initiative that supports state and municipal education departments across Brazil through private-sector initiatives focused on teacher development, science education, and community-based education.