On January 30, doctoral students Anna Lim Franck and Jessica Koslouski became the first presenters of the Doctoral Student Open Forum for Works in Progress. The forum, which is slated to recur on the final Wednesday of each month this spring, gives BU Wheelock doctoral students and candidates the opportunity to present their work to an audience of peers, postdoctoral associates, faculty, and staff.

The forum is organized by Jeana Morrison, who joined BU Wheelock this past fall as one of the inaugural members of the AACTE Holmes Postdoctoral program. The model for the forum came from experiences she’d had as a doctoral student at Drexel University, where students and faculty participated in a similar type of forum.

“It was a chance to present our own work, to speak to a diverse audience, and to get used to being in front of people,” says Morrison.

Jessica Koslouski, who is pursuing a PhD in applied human development, presented her in-progress study of trauma-informed teaching practices, “Promoting Well-Being for Students Experiencing Adversity and Trauma: The Everyday, Yet Profound, Actions of Teachers.”

“I am very grateful to Dr. Jeana Morrison for creating this opportunity for us,” says Koslouski. “It was a wonderful experience to present my work in such a supportive and collaborative space. I strongly believe that this Open Forum will foster connections between faculty and students within and across our departments and these monthly sessions will contribute to an ongoing culture of support, collaboration, and growth here at BU Wheelock.”

Anna Lim Franck is pursuing her doctorate in BU Wheelock’s Literacy & Language Education program, and specializing in ASL and Deaf studies. Her presentation, “Master Narratives and Counterstories in US Deaf Education,” connects directly to her research goal of facilitating efficacy of multilingual education in the deaf classroom and to promote heritage language acquisition and literacy of Deaf people of color in the US.

“The open forum has been a wonderful exercise in adapting and sharing my work to a wider audience,” says Lim Franck. “The responses I received have been very helpful for figuring out how I want my work to evolve and to which direction I could take it to.”

Reflecting on the first forum, Morrison emphasized the value of actively supporting connections among doctoral students. “It ended up being a great way to bring those students together, and also a way to bring faculty members from across the school together,” says Morrison. “It’s an opportunity for us to figure out our identity, and to figure out what we can do to support our doctoral students as a community.”