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When Marisa Mendoza-Maurer moved from Hawai’i to Colorado to begin her PhD, she didn’t come alone. She brought with her a husband, two young children and a decade's worth of classroom experience as a secondary English teacher. The leap, across an ocean and into a rigorous doctoral program, was nothing short of monumental.

Before stepping into the world of academia, Loraine Glidewell was waist-deep in the waters of the San Luis Valley, sometimes literally. The photo of Glidewell proudly holding a trout on the Arkansas River says it all: “The level of stoke on my face is basically the same level of stoke I feel when I get to talk about rural education!”

Esperanza Zarate is junior at CU Boulder junior majoring in Elementary Education with a passion for bilingual education, justice and community empowerment. Growing up in Arvada, Zarate attended a bilingual school where she first began to understand the transformative power of language and identity. 

When Golda Harris applied to colleges, she thought she knew exactly what she wanted: a chemistry major. But the more she wrote about her love for science in her admissions essays, the more she felt a pull in a different direction: merging environmental science and teaching.

Through his belief that “relationships and community are the bedrock of meaningful teaching and research,” Devon Hedrick-Shaw would come to know he had found himself in the right place when he joined the PhD program at the School

With her new master’s degree from the CU Boulder School of Education and learning experiences in the Education Foundations, Policy and Practice program under her belt, Chelsea Mohr is merging her two worlds of teaching and education policy. For her thoughtful leadership and exceptional research in her capstone project, “Public Education At Risk,” she has earned the Outstanding Capstone Award

Abi Wirbel is originally from Colorado, but has always had a strong sense of wanderlust and with a deep passion for seeking new cultural and linguistic experiences in diverse, urban environments. Abi’s nomadic drive led her on a journey of over a decade, living in metropolitan centers within Spain, Los Angeles and Mexico City before returning to Boulder to pursue her MA+ teacher licensure in English Language Arts. Abi received the 2025 Outstanding Graduate Practices in Process Project Award.

As an eighth grader growing up in Carson City, Nevada, just a short drive from Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Hannah Kaiser had dreamed about attending CU Boulder ever since she had searched for colleges in the mountains and saw the Flatirons in the backdrop. Kaiser received the 2025 Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Award.

Iliana De La Rosa’s graduation from the University of Colorado Boulder fulfills a promise she made to her grandfather when she was 8 years old. De La Rosa received the 2025 Outstanding Undergraduate Contribution to Community Engagement Award.

Some of Ashley Kim’s greatest inspirations and biggest cheerleaders were her teachers while growing up in nearby Longmont, Colorado. It was those teachers who continued to welcome her back into the classroom, encouraged her, and inspired her desire to do the same for new generations of students. Kim received the 2025 Outstanding Undergraduate Contribution to Teaching Award.