Johari Harris-Ward, an alumna of the College of Education & Human Development (CEHD) in educational psychology, appears on a TV news program on the formation of Freedom School. The virtual program serves third through fifth-grade students in Virginia and is serviced by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education alongside Charlottesville City School (CCS).
She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Georgia State University in 2018. During her graduate studies, she was a CEHD Dean’s Fellow in educational psychology and the recipient of a Georgia State Provost’s Dissertation Fellowship.
In 2016 she was awarded the Amy R. Lederberg Award for Outstanding Research at CEHD Honors Day and in 2017 she received the CEHD Ron Colarusso Urban Education Dissertation Award.
In 2016 Harris-Ward competed against a number of young scholars from across the U.S. and was the national first-place winner in the American Educational Research Association Division E (Counseling and Human Development) “DivE In” Seed Grant Competition. Johari’s research examines how social identities, specifically race and gender, along with cultural values systems, like Afro-centric values, influence African American adolescents’ social-emotional competencies.
After graduation from Georgia State, Harris-Ward became a postdoctoral researcher at the UVA Curry School of Education in Youth-Nex, the UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development. She is now a research assistant professor there.