Valerie Marsh

Biography

Valerie Marsh directs the secondary English teacher preparation program and is an assistant director of the Center for Urban Education Success, a hub for driving research and sharing findings and best practices with practitioners and researchers in K-12 education. She also directs the University’s Guaranteed Rochester Accelerated Degree (GRADE) Program, a five-year Bachelor of Arts and Sciences plus Master of Education program for students interested in becoming educators. As a combined-degree program, GRADE offers an expedited pathway to a future career in education.

Marsh’s research interests explore urban school transformation, leveraging and supporting the educational partnership organization (EPO) of the University of Rochester and East High School in Rochester, NY. Additionally, she researches adolescent literacies, particularly how students access literacies of power to advocate for change in their communities. Marsh also studies how the new literacies students practice in online affinity spaces connect to school-based learning spaces, in an effort to make classrooms more inclusive and relevant to the values and priorities students experience in their everyday lives.

Marsh began her career in Brookline, Massachusetts, teaching English Language Arts at the secondary level.