Faculty profile: Mildred Boveda

Name: Mildred Boveda

Title: Associate Professor of Education (Special Education)

Department: Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education

Phone: 814-863-7501

Email: mbb5694@psu.edu

Office address: 140 CEDAR Building

Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-mildred-boveda

Boveda comes to the College of Education from the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, where she was assistant professor of special education and cultural and linguistic diversity. She earned her doctorate of education in exceptional student education from Florida International University, and her master of education in education policy and management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In her scholarship, she uses the terms "intersectional competence" and "intersectional consciousness" to refer to educators' understanding of diversity and how students, families and colleagues have multiple sociocultural markers that intersect in complex and nuanced ways. She designed the Intersectional Competence Measure to assess teachers’ preparedness for an increasingly diverse student population.

Boveda’s research interests are special education, teacher education, intersectionality and Black feminist epistemology, and urban education. Her research focuses on establishing the theoretical and empirical evidence of validity of the intersectional competence construct. Drawing from Black feminist theory and collaborative teacher education research, she interrogates how differences are framed across education communities to influence education policy and practice.

Boveda started her career as a special education teacher in Miami Dade County Public Schools. She engages in various professional activities that allow her to examine the research, practice and policies involved with educating students with diverse needs. She is a past president of the Division for Diverse and Exceptional Learners of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and past chair of the Diversity Caucus for the Teacher Education Division of CEC.