The Social Power of Studying Education
As a teenager growing up in Portland, Maine, MJ Uzzi ’23 enjoyed coaching younger kids for a local children’s circus. “I always loved coaching,” she says. Uzzi was so good at working with children, people assumed she would someday be a teacher.
“Everyone my whole life has always told me that I would be a good teacher, and so I think I tried to avoid that as a result,” she says.
When the time came to choose a college, she applied to Grinnell on a whim but focused on another small liberal arts college closer to home. “I actually had pretty much written Grinnell off,” Uzzi says. Then she received her Grinnell financial aid package — it was so good, she says, her parents encouraged her to at least visit campus.
That trip to Grinnell made all the difference. “I loved it,” Uzzi says.
At Grinnell, she declared a double major in economics and gender, women’s, and sexuality studies (GWSS), with a concentration in European studies. After returning to Grinnell after studying abroad during the fall of her third year, Uzzi took an education class taught by Associate Professor Deborah Michaels.
“A really great situation kind of fell into my lap,” Uzzi says. The course content focused on critical race theory and other recent educational issues, such as school prayer and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms. She discovered that the education class helped her put her studies in economics (which focuses on efficiency) and GWSS (which focuses on sharing resources equitably) in context.
Uzzi liked her education course so well, she chose to take more classes in the department, including Comparative and International Education. She even worked as Michaels’ research assistant in her senior year. Uzzi says the skills she learned have proven valuable in her current work at NERA Economic Consulting, where she is a researcher in the health care antitrust group. Uzzi especially values the communication, research, and problem-solving skills she learned through her education classes, as well as the ability to exist in a space where there may not always be a right answer.
“Education helps me conduct myself in the world and be a better communicator,” she explains. “When you think about how to teach something to someone else, it deepens your own understanding.
“I think education has an impact on the way I conduct my day-to-day life,” Uzzi says. “I want to be a person who can consider equity and efficiency when I make decisions.”
Uzzi says she’s glad she took that first education class, even though it wasn’t in her original plan. “I wanted to try to push myself academically,” she says. “I wanted to do things that I otherwise might not.”
She encourages all students to take a course in education (or in the new education studies concentration), especially those majoring in the social sciences. “Education can be a complement to any field of study. I think it has a lot of social power,” she says. “Grinnellians often really care about that, so that, in itself, can be enough to get people interested.”