Melissa Colon
Biography
Melissa Colón is an Assistant Professor at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston in the program of Urban Education Leadership, and Policy studies. She is also a Research Associate at the Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy (UMass Boston), and at Tufts Interdisciplinary Evaluator Research (TIER) (Tufts University), where she co-developed the Community Evaluators Project.
Area of Expertise
Educational Equity, Latino students, Puerto Rican Students, CRT, Qualitative, Program Evaluation, Disasters and Schools, Cultural Sustaining Pedagogies
Degrees
PhD, Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University
M.P.P, Urban and Environmental Planning, Tufts University
BA, Education and History, Boston College
Additional Information
Melissa is an applied, participatory, and community-engaged educator and scholar who is committed to democratizing knowledge. Her research largely focuses on schooling as a developmental context for Black and Latine youth, and in particular what the educational lives of youth can teach us about how race and gender, in the shape of ideologies, policies, and programs are lived. Most recently, her work with communities that are contending with political, health, and/or environmental disasters led her to explore the disaster schooling experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Latine students and what these experiences can teach us about critical, sustainable, and culturally empowering disaster management and recovery efforts.
Her latest book project, entitled, Critical Perspectives of Latino Education in Massachusetts, co-edited with Dr. Lorna Rivera, will be published in August 2025.