Jana Noel

Jana Noel is Professor of Education and former Director of Educational and Community Research Partnerships at Sacramento State. She served as a 2012-2013 American Council on Education Fellow, a national senior leadership program. She earned her PhD in Philosophy of Education from UCLA in 1991. Dr. Noel created and coordinated the Sacramento State Urban Teacher Education Center, which moved a teacher education program off the university campus and into a school serving children from public housing. Her book on this and other similar programs, Moving Teacher Education into Urban Schools and Communities: Prioritizing Community Strengths, received a 2013 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. Dr. Noel’s research expertise is in urban teacher education, multicultural education, university-school-community partnerships, and foundations of education. She has published numerous articles and several books, and has received both research and service awards. She has received grants from the Spencer Foundation to study the segregated "Colored Schools" of 1860s California and Native American Boarding Schools of the late 1800s. She currently directs two large, U.S. Department of Education funded grants preparing diverse students for educational research and preparing Latinx students to become teachers and advocates in their communities.