Dr. Lateasha Meyers (née Lewis), is an Eastern Washington University TRIO McNair alum who completed her McNair research internship with Dr. Sue Wright in summer 2012: A Data Analysis: Bullying from Current Middle School Students Perspective as well as co-presented with Dr. Wright and Trevor Liebing: Keep Reaching for More Success: Engaging Middle School Youth Academically at the Hawaii International Conference on Education in winter 2013. After graduating from EWU in spring 2013 with dual bachelor’s degree in children’s studies and sociology, Dr. Meyers earned her master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Washington State University in 2015 and completed her Educational Leadership PhD from Miami University in May 2020, with a focus on Leadership, Culture, and Curriculum, and a Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Her dissertation: Seeing Education Through a Black Girls’ Lens: A Qualitative Photovoice Study Through Their Eyes, uses a Black feminist and Black Girlhood Studies lens in a qualitative photovoice study exploring the ways in which Black girls construct and make meaning of self and their educational experiences. In the project, five Black adolescent girls from a leadership and mentoring after-school experience took pictures, interviewed, and participated in group discussions to co-create knowledge about themselves and their experiences. Click for link to abstract.
As a Miami University doctoral student, Dr. Meyers taught at the college level for four years as well as co-wrote a grant to create a summer institute for girls at Miami University called the Developing Intellectual Vibrant Advocates (D.I.V.A) Institute. The D.I.V.A. Institute’s mission is “to provide a creative and safe space for adolescent girls from a diversity of cultural, linguistic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds to meet, learn, and discuss ways to become advocates for social change in their communities.” This is a mission to which Dr. Meyers is dedicated, working to advocate for youth and promote social justice wherever she can.
She has co-authored two articles: “Lies My Teacher [Educator] Still Tells: Using Critical Race Counternarratives to Disrupt Whiteness in Teacher Education” in Teacher Educator, (click for link to abstract), and “Critical Race Theory and the Teacher Education Curriculum: Challenging Understandings of Racism, Whiteness, and White Supremacy” in Whiteness in Education (click for link to abstract). She has also written a book chapter on the history of racism in Washington State for A State by State History of Racism in the United States and is currently working on a piece that focuses on Black girlhood in education.
Having recently returned from Ohio to Washington State, Dr. Meyers has begun a new position as STEM Student Support Services Coordinator at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. We’re so glad to have her back in the area, and working for TRIO.
As she remembers her time as an Eastern Washington University McNair Scholar, she wants to thank the TRIO McNair community for preparing her for research and graduate work by exposing her to the necessary skills early on. And we at EWU McNair want to thank you, Dr. Lateasha Meyers, for continuing to dedicate your talents and energy to promoting equity and opportunity in education!!!
TRIO Works!!!
Congratulations Dr. Meyers. May you continue to grow in your craft. Thank you for being a leader and a great role model to not only African American young ladies; But to all young ladies To let them Know they too can be a voice in our communities.