Faculty Spotlight: June Lee

June Lee is an Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, and International Business at University of San Francisco’s School of Management, and recent recipient of the 2020 Emerging Scholar Award from the Women in the Academy of International Business. This award recognizes one female AIB junior scholar for her potential and high-quality research in international business and gender. Our conversation discusses her research interests and how she became a professor at USF.

Briefly describe your research and recent work. How did you first become interested in this topic?

Before I began my career in academia, I was working in financial services. During the global financial crisis in 2008, I noticed that entrepreneurship was withstanding the weight of the crisis; in fact, entrepreneurship was booming. So I became interested in the discipline academically, and decided to pursue graduate degrees at Stanford University where I studied entrepreneurship and innovation.

How have the themes or focuses of your research changed over time? Are the discourses changing in international entrepreneurship and gender?

In recent years, I became more interested in the international aspect of entrepreneurship. Everything is becoming global these days, and unsurprisingly, entrepreneurship is at the forefront of this phenomenon. This leads to interesting topics that we can study and observe. For instance, immigrant entrepreneurs that I interviewed were utilizing cross-border resources and networks, and their outcome and performance would vary greatly because of the institutional contexts that they were faced with. I also became interested in the journey undertaken by female immigrant entrepreneurs—how and why they were choosing to become entrepreneurs, and how their multi-faceted identity shaped the type of entrepreneurship activities that they were engaged in.

What research or work are you most proud of?

I am most proud of my recent publication on female transnational entrepreneurs. In this study, my co-author and I developed a qualitative case study of Korean American female entrepreneurship in the San Francisco Bay Area and explored the intersectionality dynamic of ethnicity and gender. My study establishes a specific ‘gendered’ trajectory of female transnational entrepreneurs whose entrepreneurial motives and performances are influenced and shaped by a number of different individual and structural factors (e.g., gender, family role, immigrant status, ethnic identity, and transnational networks and resources).

Lee, J. Y., & Lee, J. Y. (2020). Female Transnational Entrepreneurs (FTEs): A Case Study of Korean American Female Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 6(1), 67-83.

When you earned your PhD from Stanford University, were you focused on becoming an academic or did you consider another career?

My focus was to find an opportunity with which I could apply my knowledge, skills, and interests in the areas of entrepreneurship. In particular, an academic position that would allow me to engage in entrepreneurship research and education was compelling to me.

What brought you to USF?

I discovered this USF faculty position through a professional association to which I belong. I did like the proximity to San Francisco Bay Area, which is considered as the hub of entrepreneurship and innovation. In addition, it would allow me to leverage my existing network of entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and other professionals in this area. Finally, I liked the balance of both teaching and research at USF and how the two could be aligned to inform each other.

What does the Emerging Scholar Award mean to you?

It was definitely a humbling experience to receive the 2020 Emerging Scholar Award from the Women in Academy of International Business. It motivates me to keep learning from more experienced scholars and senior researchers, and to make greater contributions to the field.

What are you looking at next?

I am working on numerous exciting research projects in the field of international and gender entrepreneurship, with faculty members at both USF and other institutions. For example, one study examines how female immigrant entrepreneurs utilize social media platforms in their entrepreneurship journey; another project assesses the impact of COVID-19 on the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues

Photo of Judy PaceJudy Pace, Professor in the School of Education, has published a new book. It’s based on a cross-national study–funded by the Spencer Foundation–that examines teaching controversial issues, teacher educators’ methodology for teacher preparation, and novice teachers’ efforts in secondary classrooms. Pace was recently selected to be part of a pilot cohort of grantees in the Spencer Foundation’s Research Communications Grant Program, aimed at broadening the impact of research.

Teaching controversial issues in the classroom is now more urgent and fraught than ever as we face up to rising authoritarianism, racial and economic injustice, and looming environmental disaster. Despite evidence that teaching controversy is critical, educators often avoid it. How then can we prepare and support teachers to undertake this essential but difficult work? Based on a cross-national qualitative study, Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues, examines teacher educators’ efforts to prepare preservice teachers for teaching controversial issues that matter for democracy, justice, and human rights. It presents four detailed cases of teacher preparation in three politically divided societies: Northern Ireland, England, and the United States.

Pace developed a grounded theory that explains an organizing principle across teacher educators’ approaches called “contained risk-taking.” As a group, the teacher educators taught a set of eight strategies for exploring controversial issues in classrooms while containing the potential risks, such as classroom conflict, harm to students, and recriminations from parents or administrators. Contained risk-taking is particularly relevant for teaching controversial issues in a highly contentious and polarized political climate.

The book traces graduate students’ learning from university coursework into the classrooms where they work to put what they have learned into practice. It explores their application of pedagogical tools and the factors that facilitated or hindered their efforts to teach controversy. The book’s cross-national perspective is compelling to a broad and diverse audience, raising critical questions about teaching controversial issues and providing educators, researchers, and policymakers tools to help them fulfill this essential democratic mission of education.

In the following interview, Professor Judy Pace discusses her new book with Valentina Sarmiento, a recent graduate of the USF Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. They talk about how the book speaks to the current political moment, differences in approaches to teaching controversial issues, and generative ideas for applying the book’s lessons to curriculum development and teaching in today’s classrooms.