The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) is pleased to welcome two State Policy Interns for the summer. Mya Haynes and Jaden Mikoulinskii joined SHEEO’s team this week.
Over the next few months, Mya Haynes will support SHEEO’s Holistic Advising for Student Success project, including analyzing baseline assessments of seven states’ advising ecosystems and identifying research on best practices at the state level. Jaden Mikoulinskii will aid SHEEO’s efforts in creating a state higher education governance database to better document the complexities that SHEEO agencies function within, and she’ll develop a tool to help SHEEO agencies identify peers from a functions perspective.
Jaden is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. She currently serves as a Research Assistant with the University System of Georgia’s Division of Research and Policy Analysis, where she conducts quantitative and policy analyses to support system leadership and state decision-makers. Her research interests exist at the nexus of higher education policy, political economies, and funding.
Jaden earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Jaden also holds a Master of Arts in Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park. While at Maryland, Jaden engaged with institutional, state, and federal higher education governance systems, learning valuable insights to bridge policy, research, and practice.
Mya is a Ph.D. candidate and Provost’s Fellow studying education with a concentration in higher education at the University of Southern California. She is also a Research Assistant at the Race and Equity Center and the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Mya draws on interdisciplinary perspectives from higher education policy, psychology, sociology, and critical studies to examine how sociopolitical contexts and policy shifts shape students’ experiences on campus. Her research focuses broadly on issues of race and equity in higher education, examining how racial disparities shape access and success for marginalized students, faculty, and staff. Mya’s commitments to equity in higher education are directly informed by her identities as a Black woman and first-generation college graduate.
Mya earned a bachelor’s in sociology and a master’s in higher education with a concentration in public policy from the University of Michigan, where she was a Rackham Merit Fellow. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Mya worked as a Senior Analyst at Ithaka S+R.
Learn more about SHEEO’s staff and current work at sheeo.org.