Ruth Facun-Granadozo

Dr. Ruth Facun-Granadozo’s journey to ETSU began when she was living in the Philippines. And it all started with an Internet search.

“I was employed in the early childhood education field, where I worked with pre-service teachers and also traveled around doing seminars for early childhood practitioners, and I had this desire to learn more, so I decided I would pursue a Ph.D. degree,” said Facun-Granadozo, who graduated from ETSU this past Saturday.

“So I did an Internet search, and that is when I first learned about ETSU and its Ph.D. program in early childhood education. I was very impressed by the program’s online brochure, as well as the number of research courses that were taught,” she said.

“In the beginning, I emailed back and forth a lot with Dr. Pam Evanshen about the program,” Facun-Granadozo said.  “I was very impressed by her and she was very helpful in answering my questions about the program.”

Facun-Granadozo left the Philippines in the fall of 2010 and moved to the United States to begin the Ph.D. program, which ETSU launched in 2008.  She is the program’s third graduate.

While at ETSU, she was a doctoral fellow in the Department of Teaching and Learning and received two scholarships from the School of Graduate Studies.

“Tennessee is such a wonderful place to call home and everyone has been so friendly,” she said.  “When I first arrived here, I participated in the International Family Program, which places new international students with families. That helped so much.”

Facun-Granadozo, who had lived in the Philippines all her life, came to the U.S. alone, but her husband joined her in 2012.

She says one of the reasons she wanted to pursue a Ph.D. was because she wanted to obtain cutting-edge information about early childhood education, and so many of the textbooks and journals in the Philippines would be considered outdated in the United States. 

Her passion for teaching children to read and her desire to give teachers the best preparation for literacy instruction became the foundation for her dissertation, which she completed under the supervision of Dr. Kathryn Sharp from ETSU’s Department of Teaching and Learning.

Her dissertation, “Developing Mastery in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Morphemic Awareness: A Multiple Case Study of Preservice Early Childhood Educators,” was profiled in the graduate student research magazine, Illuminated, published by the ETSU School of Graduate Studies.

Facun-Granadozo has been hired to teach at ETSU for the spring semester and will then return to her job at Harris Memorial College in the Philippines.