Sarah Lenhoff is a research grantee examining whether a federal housing initiative reduces educational inequality for low-income Black youth by transforming their social networks. Lenhoff has mentored a dozen junior scholars and chaired 17 dissertation committees, in addition to receiving an outstanding mentor award in 2023. Lenhoff will use this award to expand her toolkit of structures to support scholarly writing, develop process models for training her research team, and strengthen her cultural competence to discuss how identity shapes professional experiences. Lenhoff’s mentee, Adrianna Spindle-Jackson, is a postdoctoral fellow at Wayne State University. Spindle-Jackson’s goals include deepening her qualitative research skills, expanding her professional network, and strengthening her publication record in anticipation of the tenure-track faculty job search. Spindle-Jackson will support Lenhoff’s Foundation-funded project and extend this research with a critical historical analysis of the housing, demographic, and educational changes in the neighborhood where the federal housing initiative at the center of the study takes place. Under Lenhoff’s guidance, Spindle-Jackson will conduct interviews with residents, participate in team-based interview coding, and, over time, lead the coding team and support graduate student coders. Spindle-Jackson will also seek training in archival research methods and use these skills to conduct oral history interviews and document analyses for the extension project. Spindle-Jackson will be the sole author for at least one article and will co-author additional publications.
With this award, Lenhoff will expand her toolkit of structures to support scholarly writing, develop process models for training her research team, and strengthen her cultural competence to discuss how identity shapes professional experiences.
