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layout: about title: about permalink: / subtitle: Berkeley School of Education. Aspiring Computational Social Science studying Education Policy & Education
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Jose R. Aguilar Jr. is a scholar, educator, and policy advocate committed to expanding educational opportunity for historically underserved communities. Drawing on his experiences as a first-generation college student and former public school teacher, Jose studies how education policies, institutions, and emerging technologies shape students’ access to higher education. His work combines education policy with computational social science to examine questions of equity, institutional decision making, and public discourse.
Jose is a doctoral student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership program at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. His research interests include postsecondary access, organizational politics, artificial intelligence and algorithmic fairness, and the use of large-scale data and natural language processing in education research. His current projects examine public discourse surrounding ethnic studies and curriculum reform, the framing of rigor and equity in STEM education, and how colleges and universities communicate ideas about access and social mobility.
Before beginning his doctoral studies, Jose taught computer science and mathematics at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. He taught courses ranging from Algebra II and Precalculus to AP Calculus and AP Computer Science. His teaching emphasized culturally relevant pedagogy, anti-racist practices, and the development of learning environments in which students could connect technical ideas to their identities, communities, and experiences. He has continued teaching at UC Berkeley in courses addressing project-based STEM instruction, data ethics, and educational inequality.
Jose has held research and policy positions with Education Trust–West, the Campaign for College Opportunity, and Lumina Foundation. He is also a Data Science & AI Fellow at UC Berkeley’s D-Lab and a 2026 Wheelhouse Summer Scholars Fellow. His research has been presented at the Education Data Science Conference at Stanford and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Leadership Conference.
Service and student advocacy are central to Jose’s work. He has represented graduate students through the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly and the University of California Graduate and Professional Council. For academic year 2026–27, he was reappointed as the graduate student representative to the University of California Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools and appointed Student Observer to the UC Board of Regents’ Committee on Academic and Student Affairs.