Claudia Saavedra Smith ’17MSA, ’24EDD  to Join NC State College of Education as Assistant Teaching Professor of Educational Leadership

Claudia Saavedra Smith ’17MSA, ’24EDD will join NC State’s College of Education as an assistant teaching professor of educational leadership, effective August 16, 2024. Currently, she is a cohort director for the Red/Wake Cohort in the College of Education’s NC State Educational Leadership Academy (NELA).

Smith is a two-time alumna of the College of Education, having earned her Master of School Administration in 2017 and her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership in 2024. 

“I am honored to continue being a part of the educational leadership program. I owe a large part of my success to the caring and devoted professors at NC State. I am thrilled and immensely grateful to be able to serve the next generation of school leaders as an assistant teaching professor,” Smith said. 

Smith’s research interests include educational leadership, bilingual education and equity in education. Her latest publication in Leadership and Policy in Schools focuses on district leadership responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

She earned an undergraduate degree in elementary education with double minors in French and Hispanic studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While working as a classroom teacher, she earned her English as a second language (ESL) licensure. She also holds a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Teaching from Columbia University and interned at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP). 

Her previous roles include leading her school’s Response to Intervention (RTI) team as a K-5 bilingual RTI specialist, working as a dual language instructional coach and running her own consulting company. While earning her doctorate at NC State, Smith graduated from the nationally-recognized North Carolina Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP).