Helen Albertson is pursuing an Ed.D. in Higher Education Management. Research interests include the relationship between pre-college outreach programs for under-represented minorities and attendance at law school. Helen is the Associate Dean for Students and Administration at the University of Idaho College of Law. Prior to joining the University of Idaho, Helen was the inaugural Assistant Dean of Admissions at Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law. She previously worked at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and Widener University School of Law in Delaware and Temple University School of Law. She is also a retired Navy Reserve Commander. Helen received a J.D. from Temple University School of Law and a B.S. in Industrial Relations and Economics from Mankato State University in Mankato, MN.
Elaine Allard is a Ph.D. student in Educational Linguistics. Her research interests include secondary education for language minority students in the US, ESOL and bilingual curriculum and materials development, teacher training, and education in the new Latino Diaspora. She has contributed to and presented papers at AAAL, AERA, AAA and Penn TESOL East. Before coming to GSE, Elaine worked as a high school ESL teacher in North Philadelphia, and taught EFL in Rome, Italy to children and adults. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Latin American Studies from Swarthmore College and is also completing her MsEd in TESOL at GSE.
Joy Anderson is a Philadelphia native and a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership division at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. She is a former elementary school teacher who has worked extensively to support the development of partnerships between school and community based organizations designed to improve community life. Her research interests include problem solving learning, teacher training (esp. inservice), school reform, and effective ways to support school leadership through the process of change. When away from Penn, she enjoys singing and touring with an all female gospel group called AGAPE.
Shannon is a doctoral candidate in TLC and plans to graduate in May 2011. Her research interests include single-sex public schools, girls' education, participatory research collaboration with schools, and teacher education. Shannon is a senior research assistant for the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives, a non-profit research organization. She has also worked as a researcher on Dr. Kathy Schultz's Learning to Teach project for the past four years. Prior to coming to GSE Shannon was a high school English teacher and earned her Masters degree in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD.
Marni Baker Stein is a part-time Ph.D. student in Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum, and the Director of Program Development at Penn's College of General Studies. Her dissertation research is on the role of organizational structure in the responses of low-performing urban high schools to district and state policies aimed at English Language Learners. Over the past fifteen years, Marni has worked for universities, both in the United States and abroad, on the conceptualization, design and implementation of cutting-edge educational programming for a diverse array of student audiences. Most recently these programming efforts include work on Penn's http://www.sas.upenn.edu/CGS/graduate/mapp/>Master of Applied Positive Psychology and http://www.sas.upenn.edu/CGS/graduate/mmp/>Master of Medical Physics. Marni is married and is the devoted and exhausted mother of three – Eva, Lila and Neve – all currently under the age of four.
Gillian Bazelon is a doctoral student in the Educational Policy program at GSE. After serving as a Teach For America corps member in a public elementary school, Gillian returned to her hometown of Philadelphia to research the educational and societal benefits of the community school model. Her dissertation focuses on the work of Penn medical students at a free health clinic that has recently opened at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia.
Katie Barghaus is a doctoral student at the University of
Pennsylvania studying Policy Research, Evaluation and Measurement at the
Graduate School of Education. Prior to attending GSE, she spent two years
working as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
There she worked on several projects including a study that explored
racial differences
in the mental abilities of young children, an evaluation of a reading
incentives program, and a project that examined the development of the
gender gap in math achievement from 1st through 5th grades. She is also
coauthoring a paper that, among other things, examines the role education
plays in creating and perpetuating health disparities. Katie's main
interests are in evaluating and developing educational reform programs
intended to help close achievement gaps. Katie holds a B.S. in Economics
from the Pennsylvania State University.
Catrice Barrett is a doctoral student in the Educational Linguistics program at the University of Pennsylvania. Catrice is interested in issues concerning meta-linguistic awareness, language attitudes and identity among dialect-speaking students, namely speakers of AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and CCE (Caribbean Creole English). On a global level, Catrice is interested in the spread of English through AAVE-influenced discourse. Along these lines, Catrice has begun exploring the process of hip-hop identity construction and its implications for the English language learning experience both inside and outside the classroom environment. Recently, she conducted a study on the effects of foreign participation in the construction of Chinese hip-hop identity. As a speaker of Spanish and English, Catrice has taught English as a Second Language largely to young Latino adults for the past three years. In a past life (that is, prior to formally pursuing studies in language education), Catrice earned a master's degree in Information Technology from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a software engineer.
Jessica K. Beaver is a PhD student in the Education Policy program, and an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Her research interests include decision-making in educational organizations, as well as the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on student academic achievement. Her current primary research project is a mixed methods study of the impact of NCLB student subgroups on school responses to accountability. Previously, Ms. Beaver worked for a Member of Congress on education policy and education appropriations issues, and before that for a government relations firm specializing in education advocacy. She holds a B.A. from Cornell University.
Like Merlin, NancyLee lives life backwards. With only a BA in Biology (Penn), she started teaching science while waiting for “her turn” for graduate school. (Intended as a temporary job, teaching was captivating – she stayed 29 years.) She got her MS from Penn the hard way: while living in Connecticut. NancyLee has taught teachers since 1982, starting at Penn. Currently Coordinator of the MS Ed - elementary and Urban Education Minors, she teaches science methods and field seminars in both. In one innovative methods course, NancyLee and her students work asynchronously in the same classroom. Shared context has permitted deep conversations about teaching. This may well become NancyLee’s thesis work. She is a first year, part-time EdD student, with two kids in college and a very understanding husband.
Linda L. Branch holds a dual Bachelor of Science degree in Early Childhood and Elementary Education from Clarion University; she also holds both a Masters degree in Elementary Education and a reading specialist certification from Arcadia University. She is currently (and has been for the past 11 years) employed as a Reading Specialist for the Pennridge School District in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Prior to that she taught in the Strawberry Mansion area of the School District of Philadelphia for approximately six years: Seventh Grade, First Grade and Kindergarten, respectively.
Linda is an Ed.D. student in the Reading/Writing/Literacy division in the Graduate School of Education and is in the final (FINALLY) stages of her program, after having completed her qualitative research study this past summer. Her focus is on the exploration of emergent literacy practices, pedagogies and philosophies of the staff who offer Pre-Kindergarten programs in two privately-owned childcare centers, as they navigate towards the ever-increasing demands and academic accountability measures of this current political climate, while still dealing with the realities of limited funding, materials, training, not to mention the overall economic slump that affects teachers and parents alike.
In the future, she hopes to use her expertise and education to support childcare centers and their efforts to provide quality, effective literacy educational opportunities on a larger level, as well as to support parent/center communication and to facilitate dialogue among those parties and their local school districts. Another prime interest is the use of therapy dogs in classrooms to support and motivate struggling readers, as she has been doing with her Books N’ Barks program for the last seven years or so.
Phillip Buckley is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture, and Society program. His research interests include education law, particularly the impact of litigation on education policy and practice, the philosophy of education, education and politics, and the relationship between education, citizenship, and civic participation. Phillip teaches Education Law at GSE and U.S. Law and Society/Law and Language to international LLM students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Prior to coming to Penn, he served for three years in the US Department of State English Language Fellowship program, teaching law students at universities in Ukraine and Serbia. He holds a Juris Doctor degree, an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership, and a B.A. in International Affairs.
Quinn Burke is a doctoral student in the Foundations and Practices in Education program. His research interests include the use of virtual technology as a pedagogical tool as well as a variety of urban education initiatives, particularly those pertaining to charter school reform. He is currently working with Dr. Yasmin Kafai, focusing on innovative ways to introduce middle school children to the basics of computer programming using game-making technology. Prior to his studies at Penn, Quinn completed a MA in Comparative Literature at Columbia University and taught high school English for a number of years both at a Philadelphia charter school and at a private school in South Carolina.
Jodi H. Buyyounouski is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Management. Her
dissertation topic focuses on how institutional financial aid guarantee programs
shape the college-going behavior of low-income students. Buyyounouski earned her
Master of Arts in Student Personnel Administration from Teachers College,
Columbia University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Lafayette College where
she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Art. Following
graduation, Buyyounouski worked at both Columbia University and the University
of Pennsylvania’s Offices of Undergraduate Admissions for nine years. She
presented at the 2005 Ivy Plus Admissions Conference on topics related to
strategies for increasing the positive experiences of campus visitors. In 2006,
Buyyounouski was nominated to attend the Association for the Study of Higher
Education Graduate Student Policy Seminar. Buyyounouski has published several
book reviews and an encyclopedia piece.
Christina Costanzo Clark is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Management. Her dissertation topic focuses on the factors leading to the creation of a practice doctoral degree in the field of nursing education, particularly in relation to how professions develop and use educational credentialing to gain legitimacy and parity. Christina earned her MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education in Higher Education Administration in 1998 and her BS in Management and a minor in Psychology from Rutgers College/School of Business at Rutgers University – New Brunswick in 1997. After earning her MSEd at Penn, she worked for Harcum College as the Director of Student Activities. She returned to Penn's School of Nursing in 2000 as the Associate Director of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. In 2001, she was named the Director of Student Services. Since 2004, she has served as the Assistant Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the Penn School of Nursing.
Betty Chandy received her M.S.Ed from Penn in 2006 and is presently in her second year pursuing an Ed .D in Teaching Learning and Curriculum. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi, India, and has a Masters Degree in Political Science from Madras Christian College, India. Before coming to Penn, she worked as a Social Studies teacher in an Indian school in Kuwait. Her research interests include exploring the use of technology within classrooms, creating technology mediated learning environments, and supporting teachers in the use of technology in schools through professional development programs.
Carolyn Chernoff is a joint Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. An ethnographic and qualitative researcher, Carolyn's research interests center on cities, social change, and the arts as well as broadly-defined issues of difference, inclusion, and democracy. As a teacher, consultant, and program director, she has worked with a wide variety of nonprofit and community-based organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Oaxaca, Mexico. Carolyn is also co-founder of The Girls' DJ Collective.
Kelly Cleary is pursuing an Ed.D. in Higher Education. Her primary research interests include the impact of international experiences on career development and employability and, more generally, career development for liberal arts students. She is currently a Senior Associate Director of Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Penn Career Services, she was director of Career Services at Stetson University in Florida. She has also worked as a trainer for the U.S. State Department's Irish Peace Process Cultural & Training Program in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Washington, D.C.; a career counselor at the University of Iowa; an advisor for student-athletes at George Washington University; and as a teacher at Marymount International School in Rome, Italy. She has a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, and an M.A. in Community Counseling from George Washington University.
Scott Cody is a doctoral student in Educational Leadership whose interest is in the intersection of health, communities, and schools. In particular, he is investigating how community schools can act as a hub to provide social services, especially in mental health, for students and community members. While completing his Ed.M. at Harvard, Scott worked with Dr. Michael Nakkula on researching academic identity in the Early College High School model. Prior to arriving at Penn, Scott was a Literacy Coach for Los Angeles Education Partnership, a nonprofit that provides resources within schools and communities in L.A., and taught middle school for six years.
Jeremy Cutler is a doctoral student in Educational Leadership. Prior to coming to Penn, he was an elementary and middle school teacher, school counselor, and Dean of Students in Boston, MA and Washington, DC. During the summer, Jeremy also directs an 8-week residential program for boys in Vermont. Jeremy holds a masters in Urban Education from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree in English from Middlebury College. His research interests include the ways in which schools respond to and plan for students' social and emotional needs, as well as the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. Jeremy serves as a Penn Mentor for first-year TFA teachers, and is a research assistant at The Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives.
Heather Curl, M.S.Ed, is currently an Ed.D student at GSE and a certified teacher in Pennsylvania. She has experience teaching English and social studies in a number of educational institutions and currently mentors first year Teach for America teachers while pursuing her degree. In the fall, she will teach Educ 301: Curriculum and Pedagogy and Educ 302: Practice Teaching Seminar at Bryn Mawr College. Her research interests include social class, upward mobility, youth culture, and education as international development.
Julia Deak is a Ph.D. student in Educational Linguistics. She received her BA in Sociology and Music at Brandeis University and taught English as a Foreign/Second Language both abroad and in the US before beginning graduate studies. Julia's research interests include: theories of Second Language Acquisition, Heritage Language Learning, supporting bilingualism and biliteracy in Americans with home languages other than English, and using teacher education to close the school achievement gap in speakers of African-American English.
Mariam Durrani is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Linguistics program. She is originally from Lahore and spent her formative years between Bavarian Germany and the American Southwest. While receiving her M.A. in English, concentration in Rhetoric, Mariam taught first-year university composition courses at the University of New Mexico. From 2006-2009, Mariam taught first-year writing courses at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, organized and coordinated the first student-run academic writing center at LUMS and worked in educational public/private partnerships in Lahore and Karachi. She is fluent in Urdu-Hindi and semi-fluent in Punjabi. Her research interests include but are not limited to ethnographic research in multilingual educational settings; communicative repertoires of diasporic students; the application of linguistic anthropological theory and methodology for multilingual education research; public/private education partnerships in urban Pakistan; language policy and curriculum development that address the needs of multilingual student populations.
Bill Dunworth is an Ed.D. student in Higher Education at PennGSE. His research focuses on how Chinese executives learn, and how western schools of management have to adapt their executive education approaches to continue working with Chinese corporate clients over the long term. Prior to undertaking his research full time, Bill worked for five years on the design team of Wharton Executive Education, most recently as Senior Director of International Programs. Prior to Wharton, Bill spent most of his career overseas, working or studying in Germany, Russia, the UK, France, Hungary and Romania. He speaks Chinese, German, Russian and French. He has his MBA from Emory University, an MSc from Edinburgh University in Scotland, and a BA from the College of Mount St. Vincent.
Cécile Evers is a doctoral student in Educational Linguistics. She is originally from San Francisco and received her B.A. in Development Studies and Linguistics from UC Berkeley. She is interested in Islam, language policy concerning Muslim immigrants, and Middle Eastern and West African oral traditions. How do oral traditions develop in diaspora contexts and how are they dealt with by the public school system? Cécile enjoys studying Arabic and Wolof, and loves phonetics and phonology! She has taught Spanish at a high school in San Francisco and worked in Senegal for an NGO that localizes software in Senegalese national languages. She hopes to be involved in bilingual education (with immigrant minority languages) in the near future.
Jami Fisher is a doctoral student in the Higher Education program. She has a master’s degree from Penn GSE in Education, Culture, and Society with a research focus in Deaf culture in education. Her current research focus is the integration of ASL and Deaf Studies in International Study Abroad/Service-Learning settings. In addition, she is the ASL Program Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania and teaches courses throughout the ASL Program continuum. She is a native speaker of both ASL and English and comes from a Deaf family.
Ellie Fitts Fulmer, Ed.M., is a doctoral candidate in Reading/Writing/Literacy with anticipated graduation in 2012. Her interests include multicultural education, teacher research, literacy education, and elementary science methods. Currently she is a professional developer at the Da Vinci Science Center, and teaches courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Moravian College. Since 1998, Ellie has worked for urban schools and organizations, including as a classroom teacher in Allentown, PA and Worcester, MA, and most recently as a mentor to Teach For America first-year teachers in the School District of Philadelphia. Ellie serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Seven Generations Charter School.
When she is not on campus or in the classroom, Ellie enjoys spending time outdoors with her son and husband in the Lehigh Valley.
Mr. Gillis is a global performance, leadership and talent management consultant, complementing his diversified consulting experience with an MBA, and is currently a doctoral student in the Executive Program in Work-Based Learning Leadership at the Wharton School/Graduate School of Education. With a focus on strategic business value, Mr. Gillis builds collaborative business relationships with client executives to successfully deliever impacts to human capital. Mr. Gillis was a certified IBM management consultant in Strategic Change and Business Transformation, a human performance consultant with Accenture, Leadership Resources for Center for Creative Leadership, a Global Talent Management Consultant for Convergys, the Performance Consulting Practice Area Lead for Element K, and a Partner with First Order Consulting.
Greg Glasheen is a doctoral student in the Reading, Writing, and Literacy department of the Graduate School of Education. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in 2003, he taught elementary school in the Philadelphia area for three years. While teaching, Greg recognized the enormous challenges facing both students and teachers in an era of high-stakes testing, limited definitions of literacy, and teacher accountability. Consequently, his interests focus on alternative pedagogies that will both enable students to thrive in the current school culture and equip them with the thinking and literacy abilities necessary to maximize their agency as participants in a global and multicultural society.
Bridget Goodman is a doctoral student in Educational Linguistics. Her research interests are Sociolinguistics, Language Socialization, and World Englishes. Bridget earned her Master’s Degree in TESOL from Penn GSE in 2001. She was a U.S. Department of State English Language Fellow in Ukraine (2001-2003) and in nearby Moldova (2003-2004). She has also conducted teacher training in Togo and Peru with grants from the State Department, and taught at Samsung in South Korea. Prior to entering the Ph.D. program, Bridget taught conversation, pronunciation, and TESOL conversation methods at the University of California, Riverside.
Laura Gorgol is a doctoral student in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include civic engagement, academic governance in higher education and organizational change. Prior to her study at Penn GSE, Laura served as the Assistant Director of Service-Learning in an immersion program along the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, MX as well as the Campus Minister at Cabrini College. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Saint Joseph’s University and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kimberly Guyer is pursuing an Ed.D. in Higher Education Management. Research interests include access and choice, college success, retention, career development, and college completion for first-generation college students. Kimberly is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs within the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University. Prior to joining Temple, Kimberly worked at Drexel as the Director of the Student Resource Center, which is the Financial Aid Office, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Penn State University in the Division of Student Affairs. Kimberly received an M.S.Ed. from PennGSE in Higher Education Management, an M.A. in Human Resources Management from Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, HI, and a B.A. in French and Spanish from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA.
Lynnette Harris-Scott is currently an Ed.D. student in the Reading, Writing and Literacy program. Her career in education began in 1991 as a classroom teacher in Houston, Texas. Four years later, she went on to pursue her master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology and became a practicing clinician in the Boston Public Schools for nearly a decade. Along the way she received an Ed.S. in Language and Literacy from Simmons College. Her interest in doctoral studies stemmed from her notice of a profound lack of engagement with
school in general and literacy, in particular among her female students. Her current research interests include exploring responsible womanhood through literacy in urban classrooms and mentoring of first year teachers.
Laura Hawkinson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Education Policy program at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow. In the 2010-2011 academic year, she is a visiting fellow at New York University, working with Dr. Pamela Morris on child development research that includes a large-scale study of social-emotional development interventions at MDRC. Ms. Hawkinson’s research interests are focused on the effectiveness of early childhood education programs and policies, particularly for disadvantaged children. Her dissertation research investigates the effects of child care subsidies on child development. Previously, Ms. Hawkinson conducted research on state-funded pre-kindergarten programs at the National Institute for Early Education Research, and worked on several Head Start studies at Mathematica Policy Research. She taught in an early education program for homeless children, and worked as a volunteer in a Head Start classroom. She holds an M.P.A. from Columbia University with specialization in social policy.
Amy Hecht is pursuing her Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration. She also
earned her M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Amy currently
serves as the Associate Dean of Students at Temple University. Her
responsibilities are Division-wide and include strategic planning,
assessment and program evaluation, and leadership development. Amy's research interests include accountability in higher education,
organizational change management, use of business practices in higher
education, and leadership development.
Joan Buchanan Hill resides in Columbus, Ohio and is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Joan is the Director of Lower School at Columbus School for Girls, an independent day school. She has taught elementary and middle school grade levels and held leadership positions in other independent schools in Ohio. She is researching ways to improve instruction in the areas of math, science and technology for girls. Recently she conducted a study to understand the impact of higher level questioning by teachers on student achievement. Additionally, she is involved in the Columbus community as a member of the YWCA Board of Trustees Governance Committee and a member of the Board of Trustees for Columbus College of Art and Design. She and her husband Zachary have two adult children.
Eric Hochberg is a Ph.D. student in the Educational Policy program at the Graduate School of Education. His research interests include the effects of local, state, and federal education policies on K-12 teaching and learning; systems of teacher certification, accountability, and evaluation; and the use of assessment systems to complement instructional programs and facilitate student achievement. Currently, he is involved in a study of the features of middle school mathematics teacher induction and mentoring that are associated with improvements in instructional quality and student achievement. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Eric taught fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in Connecticut and New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in psychology and an M.S.Ed. in elementary education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Don Huesman is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education’s Higher Education Management program. Don currently holds the position of Senior Director, Wharton Computing, overseeing technology support for faculty research and teaching at the Wharton School. Previously Don directed technology support for Wharton Executive Education, implementing e-commerce solutions, as well as online and distance education systems. Don has taught in Wharton’s graduate and executive programs as a lecturer and adjunct in the Operations and Information Management department. Prior to joining Wharton Don was an entrepreneur and software pioneer in the personal computer industry. Don’s research interests are in the area of non-traditional adult post secondary education and organizational learning.
Dorothea Lasky is a doctoral student in Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum. Her dissertation research centers around ways in which teachers can harness creativity in their students in order to aid their learning and school success. She does this work as part of the ITEST-Nano research team, with Dr. Susan Yoon. Her other research interests include education policy and school reform initiatives concerned with closing the achievement gap, arts education, informal learning, and issues surrounding reading, writing, and literacy. At Penn, in addition to her current research, she has done work with the Executive Education team, working with Dr. Douglas Lynch. Prior to coming to Penn, she worked as an English teacher and did research in a variety of informal learning environments, including Harvard's Project Zero. She is also a poet and is the author of two full-length poetry collections.
Roseann Liu is a joint Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program and the Anthropology department. She is interested in the cultural production of diasporic youth and the role of media in these communities. Roseann previously taught in New York City public schools and worked at the charter school unit in the state education department. Most recently, Roseann was research associate at Research for Action. She has published and presented in the areas of state-wide school reform, data use, and participatory action research.
Aimee is a doctoral student in Human Development at Penn GSE. She has research interests in metacognitive development (cognition about mental states and processes) and learning through self-regulated thinking in children and youths. Her focus is on developmental (i.e. cognitive & social-emotional) and socio-cultural variables influencing children and youths’ ability to think and inquire about their own thought toward individual self-development. Her interests are also in relation to children’s learning from mistakes; generalization of metacognitive control across tasks and domains; self-knowledge; and one’s construal of cognition. Currently, she is working with Dr. Douglas Frye on a project exploring preschoolers’ understanding of learning intention and theory of mind. She hopes to inform educational practices, to foster learning to think, and therefore maximizing children’s own learning.
Erika Kitzmiller is a doctoral student in Education, Culture, and Society. Before coming to Penn, she worked for the Steppingstone Foundation and taught social studies. Her research interests include: youth civic engagement, university-related schools, and the politics of urban school reform. For the past three years, she has been Doug Lynch's research assistant and has worked on special initiatives, such as a partnership with PennGSE and Facing History and Ourselves. She received her B.A. in history and Italian from Wellesley College and her M.G.A. from the Fels Institute of Government at Penn.
As a Doctoral student in Educational Linguistics, Haley is pursuing research in comparative Indigenous language education policy, bi/multilingual education for minority immigrant and Indigenous communities, and drama in language learning. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Luxembourg (2009-2010), participating in the Language, Culture, Media and Identities Research Unit and teaching a class on 'Performance, Presentation and Communication' for undergraduate students. She received her MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Victoria, Canada (2009), and her BA in Combined Social Science (Anthropology, Linguistics and Human Geography) from Durham University, U.K. (2005). Originally from Michigan, Haley studies Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) and is active in Indigenous language education and revitalization initiatives.
Katie Krimmel is currently pursuing an Ed. D. in Higher Education Management at GSE, where she also received her Master's in Higher Education Management in 2008. Katie graduated with honors from Pennsylvania State University (B.S., Psychology) in 2003. She is currently Associate Director for the Wharton Graduate Leadership Program, responsible for student programming related to community leadership and has been part of the Graduate Leadership Program staff for three years. Prior to working at Wharton, Katie’s career began at Target as an Executive Manager where she developed an interest in leadership through managing diverse personalities and teams. Her research interests are in the area of university community partnerships, civic engagement, and experiential learning.
The theme of Alison LaLond Wyant’s dissertation (in progress) is an insistence that campus partnerships with West Philadelphia be respectful and mutually beneficial – and she is trying to figure out what that means, how it can be operationalized, and what gets in the way. Alison’s day job – which includes frequent nights and weekends – allows her to advise and support a community of about 300 undergraduates as House Dean of Stouffer College House. Before Stouffer, Alison worked in positions dedicated to nurturing university-community partnerships at Penn, as well as in both hands-on and behind-the-scenes positions in community-based organizations in Baltimore. Alison earned her B.A. at Loyola College and her M.S.Ed. at Penn.
Dan Lazar is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership division at the University ofPennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. He received his masters in Ed Leadership from Penn in the Spring of 2007. He currently is a Principal in Residence in Academy for Leadership in Philadelphia Schools, and is working at the AB Day School in Northwest Philadelphia. Prior to matriculating at Penn GSE, Dan was a classroom teacher in Oakland and San Francisco California, where he worked to bridge the home-school divide. His research interests include parental involvement and the establishment of a positive, nurturing, safe and academically rigorous school climate and culture. Outside of Penn, Dan is an avid runner and ultimate Frisbee player as well as a die-hard Red Sox and Patriots fan. He also enjoys hanging out with his wife and one and a half year old son.
Whitney LeBoeuf is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Educational Policy at the Graduate School of Education. While working for the non-profit organization Ambassadors for Literacy in Denver, Colorado, Whitney earned her M.A. in Quantitative Research Methods from the University of Denver in 2006. She enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania in order to develop a better understanding of the potential impact of research on education policy decisions. Her current research interests include risk and protective factors that define resilient children, impacts of childhood cumulative risk on academic success, and neighborhood risk factors and their effects on child outcomes. In her previous life, Whitney earned a B.S. in Radio, Television and Film from Northwestern University.
Jiyoon Lee is a doctoral student in the Educational Linguistics program at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include speaking assessment, second language acquisition, task-based language learning, and second/foreign language pedagogy. She is studying the reliability and validity issues of test-taker paired speaking assessment for her dissertation. She also received her M.S.Ed. in TESOL from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kathy Lee is a doctoral student in the Educational Linguistics program at GSE. Her research interests include dual language bilingual programs, heritage language education, and World Englishes. Prior to GSE, she taught ESOL in Arlington, VA and EFL in Seoul, Korea. She earned a B.S. in Linguistics and an M.A.T. in TESOL and Bilingual Education at Georgetown University.
Genevieve Leung is a doctoral student in Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the use of written vernacular Cantonese in Hong Kong, Cantonese popular music and rap, heritage language maintenance, and East Asian sign languages. She holds MA degrees in both Linguistics (TESOL) and Education (Language and Literacy) from UC Davis and a BA in Linguistics from UC Berkeley. At Davis, she worked on a longitudinal study on early literacy of immigrant children in California. She has also taught English to high school students in Japan as well as to international students at Stanford University and UC Davis. Genevieve enjoys playing Scrabble and eating good food, sometimes simultaneously.
Stephanie Levin is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Educational Policy at the Graduate School of Education. Prior to attending GSE, Stephanie worked for 12 years as a policy analyst and consultant focusing on a variety of issues including education funding, comprehensive school reform, public health, health care financing, tax policy, housing policy, and labor. Earlier in her career, she served on the NYC Office of Management and Budget directing staff in the preparation of the annual budget and financial plan for Medicaid, Public Assistance, Child Welfare and Day Care. Stephanie’s research interests include: the use of student outcome data as a means of evaluating teachers; the efficacy of greater support for teachers (i.e., professional development, financial incentives, etc.); and inequities in the distribution of resources. She holds an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.S. in Architecture and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sarah Lipinoga is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education. While working for an educational non-profit within a predominantly Latino/a Boston public middle school she became interested in how families’ familiarity with U.S. school systems and access to linguistic resources to support their children impact their children’s educational pathways. She is currently interested in ethnographic research in communities that are part of the New Latino Diaspora to understand how schools work with and adopt to changing community needs (including linguistic needs), and how voices in the community (especially undocumented, recently arriving immigrants) shape change within these schools. Sarah holds a M.Ed. from Lesley University in Curriculum and Instruction and a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Bowdoin College.
David Low is a Ph.D. student in the R/W/L program at Penn GSE, beginning his coursework here in 2010. His research interests include such old standards as learning and literacy, but through new lenses. Specifically, David is interested in how certain technologies foster the development of critical consciousness and creative problem solving skills when used in language arts classrooms. He’s also interested in the ways that multimodal (non-print-based) media shape and change the learning process by making it less linear, more exploratory, more student-centered, and more democratic.
Before attending GSE, David received degrees in English Education from The University of Arizona and New York University, and taught high school composition and literature in Tucson, Arizona. He has worked as a designer of educational video games, is a published cartoonist, and perhaps most importantly, is an avid baseball watcher.
Tanya is a doctoral student in the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum program. Her research interests broadly include teacher education, practitioner-based inquiry, and mathematics education. More specifically, she seeks to learn more about the ways teachers critically engage with issues of race, class, and diversity both inside and outside their classrooms. Tanya is the Mentor Coordinator for GSE’s Teach For America Master’s and Certification Program. In addition, she is a senior research assistant for the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives, a non-profit research organization. She also works as a researcher on Dr. Kathy Schultz's longitudinal Learning to Teach project. Prior to coming to GSE, Tanya was a high school mathematics teacher and earned her MAT at National-Louis University in Chicago, IL.
Carlos R. Martínez began the Ph.D. program in Education, Culture and Society at Penn GSE in 2008. He is simultaneously pursuing a joint degree in Anthropology from the School of Arts & Sciences and a Graduate Certificate in Urban Studies. His research interests include dialogue as utilized in critical pedagogy, educative activity across liminal spaces, and the negotiation of identity in community settings. Previously, Carlos instructed Spanish-English bilingual classes at the elementary level and E.S.L./Reading classes at the secondary level. He holds an M.A. degree in Foreign Language Education from The University of Texas at Austin. Currently, he is developing panaperture.com, scheduled to launch summer 2009, the purpose of which is to provide an avenue for discourse in the fields of Education and Anthropology, as well as to disseminate research and publication opportunities for graduate students within these fields.
Leya Mathew is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture and Society program. After earning a Bachelors degree in Education and a Masters degree in Media and Communication, she assisted film directors in India like Sai Paranjpye and Ajay Raina. The projects she worked on include the award winning documentary film ‘Wapsi (The Returning)’, about the cultural heritage and politics of the India Pakistan divide.
During her media career, she worked extensively in conflict regions in India, often going beyond documentation, to participation. The video
documentation work during the 2002 Gujarat riots overlapped with
relief and rehabilitation efforts, and extended to trust building
through non-formal education. Her later experiences with successive
documentary film projects in and about Kashmir nurtured her interest
in ethnographic research methods and Democratic Education in conflict regions. Her research interests
also include multicultural education and de-segregated education.
Mark McCormick is a part-time student in the Ed.D. Program in Higher Education. He has one course left to take (Fall 2010) and working on my dissertation proposal. He plans to study the effects of legislation in New Jersey on the rate of transfer between two- and four-year public institutions of higher education in New Jersey. Mark has worked in higher education for 25 years--first as an adjunct, then as a full-time instructor, and for the past six years as an academic administrator. He is currently the Dean of Academic Affairs at Salem Community College in south Jersey.
Tara McGowan is a fourth year graduate student at GSE in Language and Literacy in Education. Her research interests include picture-storytelling and multimodality, second-language acquisition and multiliteracies, performance studies and the ethnography of communication. She is also a professional storyteller and my book, The Kamishibai Classroom: Engaging Multiple Literacies through the art of "Paper Theater" (2010), was published by Libraries Unlimited in January.
Tryan L. McMickens is an Advanced Doctoral Candidate and Assistant Director of the National Black College Achievement Study in the Higher Education Division at Penn GSE. He is an alumnus of Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Alabama, where he obtained baccalaureate degrees in Sales & Marketing/Business Administration, while engaging in cross-cultural exchanges in 13 countries around the world. Mr. McMickens obtained a masters degree from Suffolk University in Administration of Higher Education with an emphasis on institutional advancement. His postsecondary professional experiences are primarily in fundraising at various colleges, universities, and educational foundations across the country. His dissertation-in-progress is entitled: “Racism Readiness as an Educational Outcome for Graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”
Michael-Joseph Mercanti-Anthony is a doctoral student focusing on educational leadership. Mike has spent the last ten years as a high school social studies and English teacher after earning a masters degree from GSE in 1999. He possess an undergraduate degree in history and English from Georgetown University, where he once high-fived Alan Iverson and Bill Clinton during the same basketball season. Currently, he is the social studies supervisor for the Lindenwold School District and a member of the Haddonfield Board of Education. Mike’s interests center on the community school movement and notions of community ownership of community schools.
Ali is a Ph.D. student in Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum.
Her research interests include culturally relevant pedagogy, teacher
education and race, with a specific focus on whiteness. She earned her
B.A. in African Studies and Political Science from Williams College and
her M.A. in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia
University. In her spare time, she is completing her manuscript, My
Scar, My Road, the biography of South African feminist activist
Gertrude Nonzwakazi Sgwentu, with whom she has collaborated since 1998.
Vanessa J. Morris is an Ed.D. student with the Reading, Writing
and Literacy program at GSE. She holds a master's degree in library science
and worked with the Free Library of Philadelphia as an adult/teen librarian
for 7 years. She now teaches graduate level library science courses as an Assistant Professor at the iSchool at Drexel University. She also facilitates
teen book clubs and librarian professional development programs at libraries
across the tri-state area. Her primary research interest is the
literary and hermeneutical responses of inner-city Philadelphia teens
to reading the genre of street fiction. Vanessa's website is located at:
www.vanessajmorris.com.
Katie Murphy is a first-year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development and is interested in ways to improve developmental, educational, and health outcomes for children in low-income and impoverished settings. For the past four years, Katie was based at the Earth Institute at Columbia University as the Deputy Director of the Master’s in Development Practice Secretariat, working with university partners around the world to launch cross-disciplinary training programs for practitioners in the field of sustainable development. Prior to working at the Earth Institute, Katie was the Education Manager for the International Rescue Committee in Chad, working with Darfurian refugees to build and improve educational and recreational programs for children and youth. Katie was also a health, sanitation, and education volunteer with the Peace Corps in El Salvador, where she lived in a rural community for 2 years working in education, health and income generation. While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, Katie was also president of the Gender and Development (GAD) for El Salvador, leading the development of national youth leadership workshops and teacher trainings on gender, self-esteem and HIV/AIDS. Katie has a M.Ed in International Education Policy from Harvard and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University.
Laura Murray is a doctoral student in the Applied Psychology and Human Development division at the Graduate School of Education. Prior to attending GSE, Laura worked for ten years as a documentary producer, director, and editor on social issue films, with an emphasis on mental health. She also taught social justice media production to college students. Laura’s research at PENN is currently evolving, but her work focuses on adolescent optimal development. Current projects include an investigation of intergenerational communication between “baby boomer” custodial grandparents and the “net generation” adolescent grandchildren in their care (with Dr. Diana Slaughter-Defoe); a study of early college high school students and their academic identity development (with Dr. Mike Nakkula); and a review of international curricula designed to teach adolescents about mental health and mental illness. Laura holds a B.A. in Film and Drama from Vassar College, a M.A. in Communication from Stanford University, and a M.S.Ed. in Human Development from the University of Pennsylvania.
Thai-Huy Nguyen is a California native and student in the Higher Education Division. He is interested in the history of American higher education and seeks to document the historical narratives of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students. He believes that juxtaposing these narratives with disaggregated data will provide a stronger argument in supporting AAPI education policies and initiatives. Prior to Penn, he has spent time in public accounting and graduate admissions. During his down time, Thai-Huy keeps active with half-marathons and yoga.
Jesse Nickelson is a doctoral student in the Mid Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership and Organizational Managementat GSE.
Jesse Nickelson serves as the Director of International Baccalaureate (IB) Programs for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Mr. Nickelson had previously served as a teacher and the IB Diploma Programme Coordinator for The Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C. Mr. Nickelson has participated in Project Bridge (Korea), the Japan Fulbright Teacher Program, LearnServe Ethiopia, the U.S. China Discovery Program, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Master Teacher Program to bring his students closer to the world. Mr. Nickelson has served as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education, and the American University School of Education, Teaching, and Health. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Newseum and the Steering Committee for the D.C. Geography Alliance.
Aaron Olson is pursuing an Ed.D. in Higher Education beginning Fall
2009. He previously received an M.S.Ed. from the same program in 2008,
and is an '04 alumnus of Brandeis University. His research interests
are centered around the concept of leadership, but range from disaster
management to curricular programming to information management. Aaron
is currently the Assistant Director for Communication at the Center
for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships at Penn, where he is in
charge of all print and electronic publications for the center as well
as developing outreach and awareness efforts.
Kathleen Overly is an Ed.D. student in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Kathleen earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and Sociology from Wake Forest University and her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan. After practicing corporate law in Illinois and Washington, DC, Kathleen accepted her current position as the Associate Director for Student Development at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Kathleen is particularly interested in professional student development and the practice of student affairs within professional schools.
Matthew Parker is currently pursuing an Ed.D. in Higher Education at GSE. He is currently Assistant Dean, Graduate Programs at Penn Law School. Prior to that he worked as an attorney in Philadelphia and Washington DC. Matthew graduated from Cornell University in 1995 with a BA in Government/International Relations, and from Penn Law School with a JD in 2000. His research interests include comparative international higher education systems.
Xiaolin Peng is a doctoral student majoring in Educational Linguistics in the Graduate School of Education. Originally from China, she completed her masters degree in Language Education at the University of Georgia. She has also taught English and Chinese to adult learners in China and in the US. Her main research interests include adult second or foreign language acquisition, task-based language instruction and language assessment.
Nancy Peter is the Director of Penn’s Out-of-School Time Resource Center (OSTRC). The OSTRC promotes out-of-school time student achievement by conducting research on and providing access to staff resources and professional development. Nancy has a Bachelor's Degree in Animal Behavior and a Masters Degree in Education. She is a certified teacher, and is an instructor in the Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System. Before coming to Penn, she worked as the After-School Project Manager in The Best Practices Institute, Philadelphia ’s Senior Policy Specialist for Youth and Afterschool, Curriculum Manager for The Fairmount Park Commission, and Director of Education at the Academy of Natural Sciences . Nancy lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia . Among other projects, the Peters coordinate a group of neighborhood families who explore Philadelphia public school for their children’s education.
Brian Peterson is a doctoral student in the Education, Culture, and Society program. His research interests include the achievement gap, technology in education, and youth culture. He co-launched a Saturday academic and cultural enrichment program for West Philadelphia secondary students, and wrote a study guide geared towards African-American college students. He holds a B.S.E. and M.S. Ed from Penn.
Luke is a doctoral student in Teaching, Learning and Curriculum interested in issues of equity and curriculum in K-12 mathematics education. Before coming to Penn, Luke taught middle and high school math and science in North Carolina and Philadelphia. He is currently working with the MetroMath research team investigating the role of homework in facilitating communication between elementary school teachers and parents.
Catherine R. Rhodes is a joint Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program at GSE and in Linguistic Anthropology in the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds an M.A. in the Social Sciences (specialization in Linguistic Anthropology) from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Latin American Studies (specialization in Anthropology, History, and Political Science) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Catherine’s research interest include semiotics, language diversity and cognition, bi- and multilingualism, social identification, discursive self-making, narrative, and discourse analysis. Specifically, Catherine seeks to explore the relationship between language diversity and thought and the implications this may have for bi- and multilingual speakers’ discursive selves. She has conducted research in Latino communities in the U.S. and in Mexico, and has lived, worked, and traveled widely in Latin America and the Caribbean. Catherine has worked as a Writing Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently a Research Assistant for Dr. Stanton Wortham on an ethnographic research project that investigates phenomenon related to new Latino diaspora communities in the U.S. Before coming to Penn, Catherine worked for over six years as a bilingual (Spanish-English) audience researcher and exhibit and program evaluator in museums and other non-formal learning institutions across the U.S.
Rachel Robinson is pursuing her doctorate in the Work-Based Learning Leadership Executive program offered by the Wharton School and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Rachel currently serves as the Director of Physician & Clinician Adoption, Communication, and Education at Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in Nashville, Tennessee. HCA is one of the nation’s leading healthcare service providers, with 169 hospitals, 115 outpatient centers and more than 180,000 employees in the US and Great Britain. In her current position, she is responsible for directing the adoption, communication, and education and training initiatives for HCA’s clinical services group in the Electronic Health Record program office. She is currently completing her dissertation and is examining physician perceptions and behavior towards clinical transformation, or significant change in workflow, through the implementation of a comprehensive Electronic Health Record (EHR). Her research focuses on the behavioral aspects of change amongst physicians related to clinical transformation and user adoption. In her spare time, she serves on the board of directors at Health Assist Tennessee and the Center for Supply Chain Management at Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. Rachel holds a Master’s in Work-Based Learning Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s in Educational Leadership and Conflict Resolution from Florida International University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Advertising from the University of Florida.
Jamey Rorison began the Ph.D. program in higher education in Fall 2009. His research interests include bridging the gap between K-12 and postsecondary education systems, pre-college academic preparedness and information diffusing initiatives, and need-based financial aid programs at the federal, state, and institutional level. Jamey is planning to use mixed methods in his dissertation. In his abundant spare time, Jamey likes to play tennis, read fiction, and enjoy the company of his awesome friends and family. Jamey also has a BA in Elementary Education and an M.S.Ed. in Higher Education from Penn.
Sonia Rosen is a doctoral student in the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum program in the Graduate School of Education. She received her M.S.Ed. from Penn in 2003 with a master's paper on social justice education. From there, she became interested in democratic learning environments and youth civic engagement, doing research on the Philadelphia Student Union and Youth United for Change, as well as the exploration of various alternative schooling models. With a background in teaching English and Social Studies in New York City and Philadelphia high schools, founding an afterschool program for Palestinian youth, and directing a summer camp, Sonia is currently focused on out of school and afterschool learning in contexts that support youth civic engagement. She has also taught courses for Penn GSE's Teach for America master's program and Penn School of Arts and Sciences' undergraduate education minor.
Ning Rui is a Ph.D. candidate in Policy Research, Evaluation, and Measurement. He is currently the Project Manager for a quasi-experimental evaluation of South Jersey Math/Science Partnership, an intensive teacher professional development project involving 20 school districts in South Jersey (funded by USDOE), and an external consultant for a school finance quantification project that examines the relationship between school resource allocation and student standardized test performance for Math and Science Partnership Greater Philadelphia, a $12.5 million Math and Science Partnership grant funded by NSF. Ning has also been working with colleagues at the Chinese Cochrane Centre on an international comparative study of evidence-based disaster management in South Asia (the 2004 Asian Tsunami), the U.S. (the 2005 Hurricane Katrina) and China (the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake). In his spare time, he serves as a consultant for Philadelphia Presbytery Head Start Learning Tree, a non-profit local organization that aims to provide quality center-based programs to promote cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of 3 to 5 year old children from low-income families.
Tracey Rush is pursuing her Ed.D. in Higher Education Management. Tracey currently serves as the Coordinator of Learning Resources and Student Disability Services at Swarthmore College. She works with undergraduate students, facilitating their transition from high school to college and their progression through college academics to graduation. As the Director of the Student Academic Mentor Program, a large part of her job focuses on first-year students and their acclimation to the very different college climate. Students with ADHD represent a segment of her practice. She speaks across the country on practical strategies for a successful college experience for students with ADHD. Tracey's research focus is on college students with ADHD and the support necessary to facilitate a positive educational environment for this population of students.
Jamie Schissel is a doctoral student in the Educational Linguistics program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include language policy and language education policies with a focus on media representations of policy and test accommodation policies for English language learners. Before joining the GSE, she earned an MAT ESL from Georgetown University and worked at the Center for Applied Linguistics in the Language Testing Division. Jamie has taught German and English as a second language to ages 4 to adult and spent 2003-4 in Germany as a Fulbright foreign language teaching assistant at the Limesschule Gesamtschule. Jamie holds a B.A. in German with teacher certification in German and TESOL from the University of Northern Iowa.
Kristin Searle is a doctoral student in the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Formerly a research assistant at the University of Utah’s American Indian Teacher Training Program and the Center for the Study of Empowered Students of Color in Higher Education, Kristin’s master’s thesis research focused on the ontological and epistemological tensions in American Indian graduate students’ constructions of self within the context of a school counseling program. Her current interests continue to include American Indian education and Indigenous epistemologies, but while at Penn GSE she has been introduced to film as a medium of teaching and learning. She is especially interested in film as a tool of educational research and the ways in which film provides individuals and communities with the ability to self-author.
Joel R. Seligman is an Ed.D. student in Higher Education in Penn GSE's Executive Doctorate Program. His research centers on the intersection of strategic planning, branding, and fundraising in American research universities. In particular, Joel is exploring the value of strategic plans in advancing enterprise-wide reputation building and fundraising. Joel is currently Senior Director for Strategic Communications at the University of Chicago. His 17 year career in higher education communications has included work in public information, government affairs, student recruitment, creative services, branding, and fundraising at Cornell University (1991-99) and Boston University (1999-2007). Joel holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Communication from Cornell, where he specialized in communication planning and strategy. Beyond his studies, Joel is a competitive rower and choral singer. He lives in Chicago and Ogunquit, Maine, with his Labrador retriever, Ivy.
Adam Sherr has been at Penn since before his Freshman year in 1986.
Adam grew up in University City, so he has been in University City since
his birth! While working, for ten years, in the Campus Dining Services,
Adam completed his M.S.Ed. in Higher Education in 2000. He is now pursuing his Ed.D. in Higher Ed and is on Dissertation Status. He serves as the
Director of Student Registration and Information in the Office of
Academic Affairs at the Penn School of Nursing. Adam is also Assistant
Director of the Penn Marching Band. Adam is married to Sarah Sherr (NU '98, MSN '01) and they have two children, Alexa (Penn 2024) and Anna
(Penn 2026).
David Soo is a Ph.D. student in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation focuses on college and university mission and its intersection with leadership. While at Penn, David has done research about civic engagement in higher education and has studied education from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, philosophy, and organizational theory. David has interned at the US Department of Education in the Under Secretary's office and for the US Public Service Academy. Prior to Penn, David studied at Boston College, earning a bachelor's in Communication and a master's in Higher Education Administration. He then worked in the Office of Student Life at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, a new college that awards full-tuition scholarships to all 300 students and is seeking to encourage innovation in undergraduate engineering education.
Chris Soto is an Ed.D. student in the Foundations and Practices program at GSE. He counseled troubled teenagers for seven years prior to following his passion for adolescent well-being to Harvard University, where he received his Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology. Chris is generally interested in the role of emotion in middle school and high school systems. This interest subsumes specific areas like social-emotional learning programs for adolescents, student-teacher relationship training for school faculty, the relationship between emotions and classroom learning, and the use of the leadership role to create emotionally safe schools. He currently works as a school counselor at The Charter High School for Architecture and Design and as a research assistant at The Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives. He is also an instructor of Child and Adolescent Development for the Teach for America program and an editorial board member on the Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education Journal. Furthermore, he happens to think that his dog, Claire, is the coolest single thing on the planet.
Andrew Sparks is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy. Prior to entering
GSE, he worked for a number of non-profit organizations including the
Committee for Boston Public Housing, New Visions for Public Schools in New
York City, and the Philadelphia Education Fund where he directed a small
grants program for teachers, coordinated trainings for Philadelphia
principals, and helped manage an emergency training program for new
teachers. Andrew’s main areas of research interest include urban public
policy and politics, teacher training and recruitment, education
entrepreneurship, and school choice. His current research is focused on the
roles and activities of board members in urban charter schools. Andrew holds
a B.A. in Child Development from Tufts University and an M.Ed. in
Administration and Policy Studies from Boston University.
Kailey Spencer is a graduate student in the Policy, Measurement, and Evaluation division pursuing her PhD in Education Policy. Her primary interests are in exploring the ways in which public school environments may impact students' interactions within other public and private institutions, with a particular interest in how such settings may effect their sense of agency. Kailey received her B.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Chris is a doctoral student in Educational Leadership. He grew up in central Pennsylvania but lived and taught in North Carolina and Florida for 5 years after receiving his BA in English from Penn State. Chris is interested in studying alternatives to mainstream education, with a focus on the modern homeschooling movement and online learning communities. His ultimate career goals are to find ways to provide homeschooling networks access to funding and resources, especially in lower SES areas. He has taught students from 18 months to 18 years old, in private, public, and alternative schools. Chris loves music and art, and works to incorporate those into his pedagogy often.
Karl Swinehart is a joint doctoral student in Educational Linguistics and Anthropology. He received his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of California Los Angeles in 2006, writing a master’s thesis titled: “A Romance (with) Language: African-Americans learning Spanish in a Bilingual Community." Karl has taught in diverse instructional settings. He worked for six years in south central Los Angeles as a bilingual elementary teacher and then as a high school Spanish instructor. At UCLA he taught E.S.L. to both undergraduate and graduate students and, most recently, he has taught discourse analysis and other topics in applied linguistics to bilingual educators and social science researchers at both the Program for the Formation of Intercultural Bilingual Education for Andean Countries (PROEIB-Andes) and the Universidad de la Cordillera in Bolivia. His research interests include bilingualism and language contact, indigenous language maintenance and revitalization, language structure and function, discourse analysis, language and social relations, register formation, communicative practices of institutions and mass media, and Nordic, Romance and Andean linguistics.
Christopher is pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics. Before coming to Penn, he taught English in Los Angeles to Japanese expatriate managers and their families while obtaining his M.A. in TESOL. His undergraduate university was Berkeley, where he majored in linguistics. He is the current co-editor of the Working Papers in Educational Linguistics journal. Christopher is also a graduate student mentor and teacher’s assistant in the Work-Based Learning Leadership program. His research interests are in cognitive learning, intercultural pragmatics, and especially, work-based language training and organizational language policy.
Rachel Throop is a joint Ph.D. student in GSE and the department of
Anthropology.
Her research interests focus on the relationship between educative institutions
(broadly defined) and social organization under late capitalism. She is also
interested in the theory/practice relationship in teacher education and language
planning and policy, and in the use of ethnography as a tool for studying global
processes. Before coming to Penn, Rachel taught middle and high school science and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses, and earned an M.Ed. from Arizona State University.
Brian is a doctoral student in the Applied Psychology and Human Development division. Prior to entering Penn, he received his Bachelors of Science in the field of psychology from Howard University. In addition to his doctoral studies, Brian serves on the Student Affairs and Students of Color Orientation committees. He has also served as a reviewer for the Journal of Urban Ed. and the Ethnography Forum, and as 2006-2007 Chair of the Association of African American Graduate Students in Education (AAAGSE). In addition, Brian tutors in West Philadelphia public schools and mentors minority undergrads who are considering applying to graduate programs (sponsored by the Graduate Student Center). Brian’s research interests include: phenotypic (e.g., skin tone) biases, expressions of aggression, academic aspirations, as well as perceptions of social class and vocational opportunities.
Matt is a member of the Fall 2007 Educational Leadership Ed.D. cohort whose research interests include moral education and the implementation of character education and service-learning in public high schools. He hopes to take his studies and the expertise of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs to utilize social entrepreneurship as a vehicle for students to achieve a more just, loving and advanced society.
Anu Vedantham is a doctoral student in Higher Education. Her current research interests focus on individual responses to multimedia technologies with respect to gender, ethnicity and race. She is the
Director of the Weigle Information Commons in the Penn Libraries. She completed her Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and her Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before joining Penn in 2007, she held several positions at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She directed the Southern Regional Educational Technology Training Center (ETTC) for six years, and also served as Interim Associate Provost and Director of Instructional Technology. She holds her New Jersey Principal Certificate and has significant K-12 work experience.
Erin Walsh is a Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education. Her dissertation is a case study examining the role of information provided by Graduate! Philadelphia, an adult degree completion program, in adults' decision to return to college to earn a degree. In addition to adult students, Erin's research interests include postsecondary persistence and higher education policy. Erin currently works as the Director of Student Retention at Neumann University.
Clare Waterman is a doctoral student in the Policy Research, Evaluation, and Measurement program in the Graduate School of Education. Since 2004, Clare has worked with the Research and Evaluation Team on the Evidence-Based Program for the Integration of Curricula. Specifically, she has been involved with the development of a criterion referenced test for use with pre-school children, as well as the implementation of the assessment as part of a randomized field trial. Her main interests include test development and applied research in the areas of early childhood and special education.
Michael Werner is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. He received his Masters in Educational Leadership from Penn in 1999, after student teaching at the Northeast High School in Philadelphia. Prior to matriculation at Penn, Michael studied Pre-Medical Sciences at the Philadelphia University and worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Biology Department. To date, he has been employed by the Upper Merion Area School District for eleven years where he teaches Introductory Biology and Advanced Placement (AP) Biology. Michael’s research interests include the public school referendum process, the financing of school construction, and the integration of modern school design plans. Outside of teaching science and writing his dissertation, Michael enjoys playing on an infallible defense in a men’s roller hockey league, watching the Philadelphia teams bring home Championship Titles, and of course, Michael cherishes sharing life’s highlight reel with his two biggest fans; his supportive wife, Lori and his beautiful daughter, Julia.
Ming-Hsuan Wu is a doctoral student in the Educational Linguistics program at the Graduate School of Education. Before coming to Penn, she spent several years teaching English in Taiwan where she grew up and one year in Panama, teaching Chinese and computer in Panama as a volunteer. She is currently exploring mixed research methods in education, language testing and assessment. Her current research interests are governmental approaches to children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in the United States and in Taiwan (e.g., Head Start) with a focus on language acquisition among these children. She is also interested in cross-linguistic transfers among Chinese-English bilinguals. She holds a M.S. Ed in Educational Policy from University of Illinois and a B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literature from the Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan.
Rui Yang is a doctoral student in Policy Research, Evaluation and Measurement. He did his undergraduate study in Mathematics in Peking University in China. Before coming to GSE, he got a master’s degree in statistics at the University of Delaware. His research interests include teachers’ characteristics on student achievement; policy issues related to education reform and international comparison in education.
