She earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Michelle’s research focuses on space and race, and she currently is engaged in two research projects. An extension of her dissertation research, the first project draws on archival research and visual methodology to offer an updated framework for thinking about and understanding what it means to be Asian American in the 21st Century, and to provide greater insight into the role of higher education in individual and collective racial transformations. Michelle’s second project draws on spatial approaches to examine university-community partnerships in Southern California. She currently is exploring the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of engaged scholarship, service-learning, and civic engagement approaches and mapping how various practices and programs under these banners are carried out.