Alexandra McGrath

Affiliation

University of Colorado Boulder

Biography

Alexandra Federico McGrath (she/her/hers) is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in Equity, Bilingualism, and Biliteracy in the School of Education at CU Boulder. A former secondary public school teacher and academic advisor in the South Bronx, Alexandra has worked closely with many first-generation and bilingual students in the college application process. Her research interests center around the access and persistence of historically excluded student populations in higher education, particularly first-generation, BIPOC, and bilingual students. More specifically she is interested in exploring students’ diverse language practices and how language can be used to disrupt and challenge “standard/academic English,” monoglossic language ideologies, and white normativity in higher education institutions. As a white, English-dominant bilingual, Alexandra is constantly reflecting on her own language practices and the ways that bi/multilingualism lands on different bodies in different spaces, particularly schools.