Meet the 2023-24 Alumni Award Recipients

Patricia Dignan

Veteran educator Patricia Dignan (EdD ’82) is a trailblazer, innovator, and tireless advocate. Over six decades, she revitalized schools, shattered gender barriers, and championed community engagement. In a career that has spanned teaching students from preschool to college, Dignan has been an effective, groundbreaking leader.

“Every district or school that I've been involved with has gotten either state or national recognition for improved student achievement and parent involvement,” Dignan notes proudly.

Dignan’s life is steeped in rich educational experiences. After attending a one-room schoolhouse in Alpena, Michigan, she earned a teaching degree from Aquinas College and a master’s in education from Eastern Michigan University. She also earned an EdD in education with a focus on administration and supervision from U-M and a JD from the former Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State College of Law).

Her professional journey began in her hometown, where Dignan briefly taught fourth grade before being appointed community school director—the first women in the country to hold such a position. To engage parents in their children’s educational experience, she invited them to attend cooking and exercise classes and roller skating parties, offered parent education classes, and visited students’ homes.

"We opened the school to the community so that people felt more connected with their children’s school,” she explains. When parents and community members get involved, Dignan says, it increases student performance and success, so she has continued the practice throughout her career.

In 1968, Dignan (Bissonette) married fellow educator Patrick Dignan, an economics teacher and football and baseball coach. Hungry for a professional challenge in Ypsilanti, she joined another U-M graduate, Ken Burnley (BSEd ’64, TeachCert ’64, AM ’69, PhD ’77), to start the first alternative middle-high school for struggling teens in the country. She said students thrived in the small, nontraditional environment.

However, despite her early successes, Dignan still had to battle gender discrimination. She was once offered a lower raise than a male colleague. After giving birth to her daughter on a Friday, Dignan returned to work the following Monday. She had no formal leave and wasn’t allowed to use sick days. Undeterred, she continued to break barriers. Dignan became the first female principal in Ypsilanti in 1972, and was elected president of the Ypsilanti Principals Association two years later.

Reviving underperforming schools became one of Dignan’s specialties. Within a year of starting at Woodruff School, Phi Delta Kappa named it one of the country’s top 100 schools for improved student achievement and community involvement.

When she was appointed to Ypsilanti’s Ardis Elementary School, only half of the students read at the state level. With the help and enthusiasm of her teachers, Dignan revamped the curriculum, instituting one consistent reading system and conceptual instruction, and encouraged grade-level teachers to share in lesson planning. To boost outreach, Dignan launched weekly parent newsletters, workshops, and community education. The results were astounding: within two years, 82 percent of Ardis’ students were reading at the state level, and Ardis ranked as one of the top 20 elementary schools in the state. Dignan created special events at Ardis and other schools, including health, agriculture, vehicle fairs, and even a Renaissance celebration.

“We made school relevant to not just the community but to life in general,” Dignan says. “It was fun and interesting.”

In 1988, Dignan was named assistant superintendent for the Milan School District and then advanced to superintendent, the first woman to hold both positions. While working in Milan, Dignan enrolled at U-M for her doctorate, juggling parenting, schoolwork, and a full-time position. Her doctoral research centered on the role of principals. “In the school hierarchy, the principal is the most important figure at the fulcrum of kids, parents, and community,” she says.

Dignan has always embraced new challenges. In 1995, she joined Falls Church City Public Schools in Falls Church, Virginia, becoming the first female superintendent in the greater Washington, DC, region. Upon her return to Michigan, Dignan was named the first dean of Washtenaw Technical Middle College (WTMC), which was located on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. At the time, WTMC was the only middle college in the country dedicated to technical education. She later launched a series of Detroit-area charter schools. One was Beacon International Academy, a charter elementary school housed in a Detroit church. Dignan asked the teachers to keep journals documenting their challenges, and she shared suggestions and strategies to help.

“It was the most effective teacher education they ever had,” she recalls. “It was also the most fun I ever had.”

Beacon International Academy was an instant success: in six months, students improved their reading levels by three grades, and 98 percent of parents were involved.

In 2000, Dignan joined Detroit Public Schools Community District as executive director. She supervised 58 schools over five years, including Renaissance High School, which earned a coveted National Blue Ribbon Award, and all her schools posted improved reading scores.

Dignan has been featured in the Journal of American Health, Executive Educator and Instructor and was recognized by the American Association of School Administrators. The author of six books, she also taught at Eastern Michigan University. She was inducted into Aquinas College’s Hall of Fame in 2002 and Eastern Michigan’s School of Education Hall of Fame in 2005.

“Not only is Dr. Dignan a rare educator, but…[she] has been a trailblazer throughout the entire school hierarchy, creating highly successful programs in preschool, elementary, high school, and college,” says Emily Bryson, a family friend and Eastern Michigan University student who nominated Dignan for the award.

Dignan remarks that her 59 years of achievements would not have been possible without the love and support of her husband, Patrick, who “kept the home fires burning” while she traveled to make presentations, did in-service training sessions around the state, and attended classes at Detroit College of Law and U-M. She is also grateful for the support of her children—John and Cassandra, and her late son, Jimmy—whom she raised while pursuing her career.

Dignan says U-M’s Marsal Family School of Education gave her a foundation for her administrative career, bolstered her research, and honed her leadership skills. She remains a dedicated Wolverine.

“The University of Michigan has a special cachet,” she said. “You can be out of the country and see people wearing their Michigan gear and instantly feel a kinship. I’m proud to have gotten a degree from U-M.”

Julian Vasquez Heilig

Julian Vasquez Heilig (AB ’97, AM ’99) is an ardent believer in the power of community, data, and innovation to effect change. Throughout his distinguished career in higher education, public policy, and civil rights, Vasquez Heilig has deployed research and worked with like-minded partners to improve educational access and nurture a new generation of educators.

As an undergrad at U-M, Vasquez Heilig studied history and psychology. He found a home in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), where he investigated educational equity and higher education policy. The experience led him to pursue a master’s in higher education at U-M’s Marsal Family School of Education.

After graduation, Vasquez Heilig joined the Houston Independent School District (HISD) as a research specialist. At the time, HISD claimed it had solved the achievement gap and achieved 0 percent dropout rates; it was called the “Texas Miracle.”

“I wanted to be part of that. At first blush, it appeared to be an ideal place to engage in educational policy and leadership focused on equity,” Vasquez Heilig notes. However, the data behind the scenes at the district told a very different story. Upon closer inspection, Vasquez Heilig found glaring inconsistencies. To delve deeper, he enrolled at Stanford University for a PhD in educational administration and policy analysis and a master’s in sociology, where he collaborated with Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond.

After graduation, Vasquez Heilig joined the University of Texas’s College of Education as an assistant professor. He continued to champion educational equity and access for underserved students, tackling rigorous—and sometimes controversial—research, such as investigating charter schools’ claims about success for Black students and challenging Teach for America’s model. While there, Vasquez Heilig and colleagues crafted a new idea for a locally based approach to school accountability. With Darling-Hammond’s advocacy and support of community-based accountability, the California legislature enacted Local Control and Accountability Plans, or LCAPs, into state law.

Seeking an outlet for his research and advocacy, Vasquez Heilig launched a blog, Cloaking Inequity, which attracted more than 1 million users from 200 countries. “The blog has been a remarkable gateway to opportunities in my career that I never could have envisioned,” says Vasquez Heilig, who continues to write new posts.

He was invited to advise the NAACP and state and federal policymakers on education. He has appeared in national media on hot-button education reform issues, has traveled widely to community convenings and universities, and has delivered more than 100 talks on civil rights and educational access.

Two years after gaining tenure at UT-Austin, Vasquez Heilig continued his academic work by joining the College of Education at California State University, Sacramento, as a full professor and director of the doctorate program in educational leadership.

“As a researcher, he has been fearless in tackling the toughest issues, using data and research to shine a light on both inequality and hypocrisy,” says Darling-Hammond, now President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. “As a leader in higher education, he has transformed institutions to focus on equity, to support high-quality research, and to transform practice in powerful ways.”

Vasquez Heilig has also contributed his expertise as a volunteer policy adviser for the Obama campaign and co-chaired the Biden campaign education policy committee. Additionally, he advised Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign, served as the NAACP’s Education Chair, and was a member of the organization’s Executive Committee in both California and later Kentucky.

But academia has always remained his cornerstone. When the University of Kentucky (UK) offered him a position as Dean of the College of Education, he accepted the opportunity to serve. “As an academic leader, you can do community engagement and change work and innovation at scale,” Vasquez Heilig explains. “You can be that voice for students, families, and other stakeholders that have been voiceless.”

In his three-year tenure, the UK College of Education doubled freshman enrollment and increased its racial/ethnic diversity by 150 percent, improved faculty diversity by 20 percent, and increased its national ranking to its highest point in recent memory. Vasquez Heilig and his team launched an educational policy center with the NAACP, the first of its kind, and assembled the school’s first Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) student advisory council after the murder of Breonna Taylor in nearby Louisville. In 2022, Gov. Andy Beshear named him a Kentucky Colonel, the state’s highest honor.

Upon joining Western Michigan University as Provost in 2023, he became the first underrepresented minority to hold the position. Vasquez Heilig, who identifies as Latinx and African American, has since devoted his work to collaboration, change, and community. “This is service work,” he says. “We commit to the work on behalf of students, staff, and faculty because we want to improve access and equity for communities.” To facilitate growth, Vasquez Heilig is focused on increasing faculty and student diversity and raising retention and graduation rates. In one year, retention for Black and Latine students increased by about four percentage points, and the graduation rate is at the highest level in 25 years.

To foster deeper connections and support for students at WMU, Vasquez Heilig founded a student advisory council, plays weekly basketball games with migrant students, and championed the Student Success Hub, a group of students and staff that helps students navigate and solve academic, wellness, and other challenges that have negatively impacted their educational journey. He also supported initiatives for the university to forge ties to communities that WMU serves. That push is evident in the school’s new Spanish-language marketing strategies, a newly created prison education program at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, Michigan, and newly appointed leadership and work groups to address recruiting, retention, and climate for Native Americans, Latinx, Black, military personnel and veterans, and other stakeholder groups.

Vasquez Heilig has also prioritized tackling broader societal issues such as the teacher shortage. Western Michigan is a frontrunner in the state’s “Grow Your Own” program, which trains school staff and community members to become certified teachers, accounting for one-quarter of program attendees across the state.

Vasquez Heilig remains undeterred in his pursuit of excellence. “Our journey is far from over. Satisfaction eludes us. To lead and to educate is to embrace a perpetual dissatisfaction with past achievements, coupled with an unwavering resolve to do even more for communities.”

Andrew Kwok

On his first day as a new teacher in 2007, it wasn’t just Dr. Andrew Kwok (BS ’07, PhD ’15) and his students in the classroom. A reporter and photographer from the Oakland Tribune were there on assignment, following Kwok’s every move throughout his first year of teaching. Kwok, who had recently graduated from the University of Michigan, had moved to northern California to live with friends. He got a job through the Oakland Teaching Fellows, and after six weeks of preparation, was placed in Oakland’s Excel High School, where he was to teach science.

Several weeks into the school year, the first of what would be a series of articles profiling Kwok ran in the Tribune. “New teacher survives first two weeks of high school” read the headline on the front page. “Kwok struggled to teach over the banter and back talk,” the article noted, going on to report that he wondered what he’d gotten himself into. When Kwok read the piece, he was horrified.

“That got back to the administration and the district, and even to my students,” he recalls. His students wondered if they were the reason he was struggling. Well, yes, he told them, but he was also struggling because he was new to the profession. In response, the administration provided Kwok with instructional and classroom management coaches. Peers came into his room to check on him. Kwok credits these supports with ultimately helping him succeed early on in his career. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that the additional help he had benefited from was rare for new teachers.

By no means does he consider his three-year tenure at Excel long, but Kwok says during his time there, he saw many other new teachers leave after one semester, or even one week.

“It ultimately led me to think about two aspects. One was the importance of classroom management as an opportunity for new teachers to succeed in the classroom right away. The second was figuring out what else it may take to have new teachers stay in underserved schools.”

He recalls a cohort of math students that had three teachers in a single academic year. “They could have left for non-pedagogical reasons, but regardless, it still had the same impact on the students.” The students were deprived of appropriate math instruction that year.

“That really propelled me to go back to school to think about how we can better support new teachers and how we can make sure they have the proper training to succeed,” says Kwok, who returned to his alma mater to pursue his doctorate at the Marsal Family School of Education.

Today, Kwok is a professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on beginning teachers and making sure they have the proper preparation and support to succeed in any school, but particularly in underserved schools. He explores the classroom management beliefs, actions, support, and eventual effectiveness of beginning teachers, with the primary goal of having these teachers focus more on building relationships instead of maintaining behavioral control.

In another line of inquiry, Kwok studies teacher preparation policy and practice, aiming to improve teachers’ preparation. This area of investigation suggests that teacher education programs should shift their curricula toward more equity-oriented objectives to better prepare teachers for diverse K-12 classrooms. Additionally, Kwok explores the perceptions and experiences of beginning teachers. His multiple publications on this topic have led to programmatic change in how leadership offers continuous teacher feedback, coaching supports, and additional professional development.

Kwok’s work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Texas Education Agency, and departments of education in various counties. His research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Journal of Teacher Education, Urban Education, and Teacher and Teacher Education. Additionally, he serves as an associate editor for Journal of Teacher Education and on the editorial board of Urban Education, informing future scholars and guiding the field. He is a current EdResearch for Action Writing Fellow through the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and recently won research awards from the Association of Teacher Educators, two American Educational Research Association Special Interest Groups, and Texas A&M University.

Just as he hopes his own work will help improve the educational system by influencing changes that will better prepare new classroom teachers, Kwok credits the Marsal School, specifically his mentor Associate Professor of Educational Studies Matthew Ronfeldt and Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje, with preparing him to succeed in academia.

“Michigan trained me beyond what I thought was possible. It helped me think about research in innovative and rigorous ways, and that training has meant everything to me. That’s why I constantly keep in touch and give back, because Michigan provided me with such essential tools to succeed in educational research.”