Cheryl Bowen is an Education Department faculty member at Santa Clara University. She conducts local and international research investigating patterns of resilience and effective reading instruction for migrant youth and their families. Her research explores the academic and social effects of The Transactional Learning Community Model (Bowen, 2018) in various educational settings. Additionally, she studies the cognitive and sociocultural effect of Transactional Literature Circles (TLC) on the development of academic language skills in intermediate grade learners. Her research projects have included work with several northern California school districts, community housing foundations, and nonprofit counseling agencies.

While she continues to pursue research opportunities that employ ethnographic fieldwork with Latinx students and their families, Cheryl also enjoy teaching graduate students who are interested in working with Spanish-speaking migrant children living in marginalized contexts. Participatory research projects that transform students on multiple levels are her passion, therefore all of her classes are infused with projects that require real world social input.  

Cheryl lives in Los Gatos, California and enjoys intercultural learning experiences, wine making, and riding her bike.