Kathryn J. Strom

Kathryn (Katie) Strom is a teacher-researcher-writer and faculty member at California State University, East Bay in the Educational Leadership for Social Justice doctoral program. She is also Director of CSUEB's Center for Research on Equity and Collaborative Engagement and holds an honorary Associate Professor appointment at University College London's Institute of Education. Her research engages a range of critical and complex theories to study teacher learning and practice (especially in service of multilingual youth) and co-constructs affirmative, relational academic counter-practices for “doing academia differently.” Her most current work is in partnership with the Smithsonian Institute’s Network for Emergent Socioscientific Thinking (NESST), exploring ways to support educators and their students in shifting to the complex ways of thinking needed to create sustainable futures in the Anthropocene era.

Dr. Strom is especially committed to supporting doctoral students and early career scholars to successfully navigate the hidden curriculum of writing a dissertation and publishing their research. In both teaching and field service, Dr. Strom uses her knowledge of social justice, scaffolding, and systemic functional linguistics to develop lessons and workshops to support doctoral students and junior academics in their writing. Her most recent book, Scaffolding the Language of Power: An Apprenticeship in Writing at the Doctoral Level, turns these lessons into a comprehensive, interactive, supportive guide for doctoral-level writing.

Katie received her Ph.D at Montclair State University in Teacher Education and Teacher Development. Before joining the faculty at CSU East Bay, Kathryn was a research associate at WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative, where she worked with leaders and teachers in school districts nationwide to develop equitable pedagogies for language learners. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Strom was a history teacher and school leader in San Diego, CA. In her spare time, she hosts a local book club in the San Francisco Bay Area, plays piano, plans her next travel adventures, and tries to get her partner to let her adopt more cats.