Professor of Education, Counselor Education

Dr. Julia Green Bryan is a Professor of Counselor Education at Penn State University.  Her work focuses on the study, training, and development of counselors as leaders and drivers of educational success, access, and equity, especially for students of color and low-income students. She studies school counselors’ roles in school-family-community partnerships and partnerships’ influence on student outcomes and developed a seven-step equity-focused partnership process model for counselors, educators, and youth workers. Also, she uses large national education datasets to examine the effects of school counselors and school counseling programs on academic achievement, college access, disciplinary referrals, school bonding, discrimination, and other equity issues that affect students of color. Currently, she is testing a college access model, School Counseling College-Going Culture, and its effects on students’ college-going decisions. Further, Dr. Bryan is studying international school counseling models in small island states like the Caribbean, especially in Barbados. She has written numerous peer-reviewed publications and edited a special issue of the Professional School Counseling journal on Collaboration and Partnerships with Families and Communities. Dr. Bryan was recently awarded the American Counseling Association Extended Research Award and the Association of Counselor Education and Supervision Outstanding Mentor Award.

Associate Professor of Education (Counselor Education)

Dr. Janice A. Byrd, Ph.D. (she/her), an Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at the Pennsylvania State University, earned her Ph.D. in Counselor Education & Supervision from the University of Iowa and her M.Ed. in Counselor Education (K-12 school counseling) from South Carolina State University. Dr. Byrd has previous experience as a school counselor, career counselor, and counseling, teaching and mentoring youth in secondary, post-secondary, and community settings. These experiences include the McNair Scholars Program, Summer Research Opportunities Program, TRIO, Upward Bound, and serving as a DEI affiliate in university settings.

Dr. Byrd’s scholarship critically explores the lived experiences of Black people across all stages of the educational pipeline to interrogate influences on their development (i.e., personal, social, academic, and career). These explorations examine how policies (education and healthcare), relationships (school, familial, and community), and broader ecological circumstances (racism, sexism, and social determinants of health) affect Black people’s ability to be the best version of themselves across their lifespan.

Dr. Byrd is the Program Chair for the Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender special interest group within the American Education Research Association (AERA) and co-chair of the Advocacy Interest Network within the Association for Counselor Education & Supervision.

Assistant Professor, Counselor Education

Dr. Javier F. Casado Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Counselor Education and Supervision and Research Associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Casado Pérez received their MS in Mental Health Counseling from Monmouth University and PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from Penn State. They serve as Strategic Planning Chair for the Association of Multicultural Counseling and Development and taskforce member for the Association of Counselor Education and Supervision’s Decolonizing Research Methods Taskforce. Dr. Casado Pérez sits on the editorial boards for the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development and the Journal for Specialists in Group Work. They are inaugural Co-Editor for the ACES Teaching Practice Briefs. Their research interests include mental health justice, equity-minded instructional design, and communities of everyday resistance in higher education.

Wayne K. & Anita Woolfolk Hoy Endowed Professor of Educational Leadership

Gilberto Q. Conchas obtained a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.  He is currently the Inaugural Wayne K. and Anita Woolfolk Hoy Endowed Professor of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to Penn State, Dr. Conchas was Professor of Educational Policy and Social Context at the University of California, Irvine, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Senior Program Officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Conchas is an expert on qualitative research methods, with a particular focus on case study methodology. Conchas’ research focuses on inequality with an emphasis on urban communities and schools.  Numerous scholarly journals have published his work.  He is the author of nine books, including The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving Urban Youth, Small Schools and Urban Youth: Using the Power of School Culture to Engage Youth, StreetSmart SchoolSmart: Urban Poverty and the Education of Boys of Color, and Cracks in the Schoolyard—Confronting Latino Educational Inequality. His current coauthored book, The Chicana/o/x Dream: Hope, Resistance, and Educational Success, was conferred the 2021 Book-of-the-Year Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE).

Associate Professor of Lifelong Learning and Adult Education

Dr. José Cossa holds a Ph.D. in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies with a depth area in Comparative and International Education from Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of the book Power, Politics, and Higher Education: International Regimes, Local Governments, and Educational Autonomy, the recipient of the 2012 Joyce Cain Award for Distinguished Research on People of African Descent, and a Co-Founder of AI4Afrika. Cossa’s research focus is on power dynamics in negotiation over educational policy; unveiling issues inherent in the promise of modernity and working towards de-colonializing, de-bordering, de-peripherizing, and de-centering the world; higher education policy and administration; system transfer; international development; and, global and social justice. Currently, Cossa is engaged in a new (exterior to modernity) theorizing, i.e., Cosmo-uBuntu.

Professor of Education, Department of Education Policy Studies

Faculty Research Associate, Center for the Study of Higher Education

The Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Alicia C. Dowd is a Professor of Education and Faculty Research Associate of the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at The Pennsylvania State University. Dowd studies and leads on issues of organizational learning and change towards racial equity in higher education. She served as CSHE director for six years (2018-2024) and led a major restructuring of the 50-year-old center to conduct mission-focused, interdisciplinary research dedicated to advancing anti-oppressive educational policy, practice, and partnerships.

An action researcher who has engaged in collaborative, mixed-methods research throughout her career, Dowd conceptualizes and designs for change utilizing cultural-historical activity theory, developmental evaluation, and critical race theory. From 2009-2015, Dowd co-directed the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, where she was instrumental in designing and researching outcomes of CUE’s ‘Equity Scorecard’ action research process. She is the author (with Estela Mara Bensimon) of Engaging the “Race Question”: Accountability and Equity in U.S. Higher Education (Teachers College Press, 2015), which teases out the conflicting ideologies and theories of justice that underlie practitioners’ sense of right and wrong concerning matters of access, equity, and quality in college access and student outcomes.

Through numerous published case studies of ‘equity- by-design’ strategies, Dowd has advanced understanding of the leadership, policy, and learning structures needed to support the development of racial equity change agents at historically and predominantly white colleges and universities. Areas of focus include institutional accountability, curriculum reform, racial equity in access to STEM degrees.

Through service to federal agencies, including the Congressional House subcommittee on Research and Science Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academies of Sciences, Dowd has been a policy advocate for greater diversity and equity in STEM fields. She is currently the program director of the Inclusive Excellence (IE3) Learning Community initiative at Penn State, which is funded as part of a national science education reform effort involving over 100 colleges and universities by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Previously she has served as PI or co-PI for research funded by the Spencer, Ford, Gates, Hewlett, Lumina, Nellie Mae, and Jack Kent Cooke Foundations as well as by the National Science Foundation.

From 2016-2022, Dowd served as associate editor of the Review of Educational Research (RER), which was the #1 education/education research journal in global rankings during that period.

Dowd holds the Ph.D., M.Ed. and B.A. degrees, all awarded by Cornell University, where she studied the social foundations of education, labor economics, and curriculum and instruction.

Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies

Penn State Brandywine

Dr. Harrell-Levy’s research has focused on identity development and socio-emotional functioning among adolescents within varied contexts. Currently, she is using quasi-experimental research to examine the hypothesized benefits of trauma-informed and antiracist professional development programs for K-12 teachers and the youth they teach. At Brandywine, she is the chair for the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Justice, a member of the Commission for Student Success, a member of the Student Research Committee, the key strategist in the Mock Convention planning subgroup, a member of the Strategic Plan team, the administrator of the Black and Latino/a/x success group CLAASS (the Council for Latino/a/x and Black/African-American Student Success),  and the administrator for the Youth Development and Social Justice Certificate. For the University, she is co-chair of the search committee for the director of the Center for Racial Justice and co-chair of the Joint Curricular Task Force on Racial and Social Justice co-charged by President Barron and the University Faculty Senate.

Dr. Marinda Harrell-Levy is Associate Professor of HDFS at the Brandywine campus. During her time at Penn State Brandywine, she has taught several different courses in both traditional and online learning formats (examples include HDFS 239 Adolescent Development; HDFS 345: Social Justice and Urban Issues; Soc 103: Racism and Sexism; HDFS 254N: Diversity and Human Development; HDFS 432: Problems in Adolescence; and HDFS 440: Family Policy.

Department Head, Education Policy Studies

Professor of Education

Dr. Kevin Kinser is Professor and Head of the Department of Education Policy Studies, and Senior Scientist in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the Pennsylvania State University. A graduate of Columbia University’s Teachers College (New York), Kinser studies non-traditional and alternative higher education, particularly the public policies and organizational structures related to private for-profit institutions and international cross-border higher education. Kinser is co-founder of the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT) which investigates the scope and impact of international branch campuses worldwide. Kinser is the author or editor of five books and more than 70 articles, chapters, and scholarly reports, and he is regularly invited to present his research at conferences in the United States and abroad. Because of his research, Kinser is regularly sought out by national and international media outlets for commentary on for-profit and international higher education. His latest book is Accreditation on the edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education, published by Johns Hopkins Press. Prior to joining Penn State, he was associate professor and chair of the department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY.  He has also taught in the higher education programs of Louisiana State University and Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Dr. Kinser holds his Ed.D. in Higher Education, M.Ed. in Student Personnel Administration, and M.A. in Student Personnel Administration from Columbia University and his a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Dayton.

Associate Professor of Information Systems, School of

Business Administration Director of Information Technology Degree Programs

Penn State Harrisburg

Dr. Roderick Lee is as an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Director of Information Technology Degree Programs at Penn State Harrisburg, and a Research Associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State University. Additionally, Roderick serves on the American Talent Initiative (ATI) Summer Institute Leadership Advisory Board.

His research includes strategic use of information resources, systemic innovation and change in higher education, and equity in computing and information science education access and success. His research has appeared in several journals including Computers in Human Behavior, Government Information Quarterly, New Media & Society, Journal of Computer Information Systems, and the Journal of Information Systems Education.

Roderick received his Ph.D. in Information Sciences and Technology with a concentration in Management and Organization from Penn State University.  In addition, he holds an MBA, MSIS, BS in Information Systems, and a BS in Marketing from Penn State Harrisburg.

Assistant Professor of Higher Education

Dr. Wilson Kwamogi Okello (he/him), assistant professor at the Pennsylvania State University, is an artist and interdisciplinary scholar who draws on Black critical theories to advance research on student/early adult development theory. He is also concerned with how Black critical theories might reconfigure understandings of racialized stress and trauma, qualitative inquiry, critical masculinities, and curriculum and pedagogy. He has published over 40 scholarly publications in venues such as the Journal of College Student Development, Race, Ethnicity and Education, and the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Dr. Okello is co-editor of “Trauma-informed practice in student affairs: Multidimensional considerations for care, healing, and wellbeing,” a New Directions for Student Services volume (Wiley Press), and author of a forthcoming text with SUNY Press that explores the potential of centering Blackness in student development theory. Among other early career awards, he received the 2022 Council on Ethnic Participation (CEP) Mildred Garcia Award for Exemplary Scholarship by the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and he was named a 2022 Emerging Scholar by the American College Personnel Association.

Professor of Education

Professor in Charge, Higher Education Program

Leticia Oseguera is a Professor of Education and Senior Scientist at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State University. Having trained at UCLA’s Center for Institutional Research and Practice (CIRP), the home of the annual College Student Survey, Dr. Oseguera is an expert on survey design, program evaluation, and the assessment of campus climate. Dr. Oseguera’s co-edited book, Educational Policy Goes to School: Case Studies on the Limitations and Possibilities of Educational Innovation (Routledge Press, 2017) highlights the policies and programs that are the most effective and essential to provide educational opportunities for historically underserved student populations. Her scholarly accomplishments position Dr. Oseguera as a national resource for college practitioners who are designing a wide range of interventions, including pre-college preparation and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enrichment programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. By drawing on her scholarship, college practitioners gain concrete strategies to reduce stratification and improve credential attainment among underrepresented student groups.

Dr. Oseguera holds her Ph.D. and M.A. in Higher Education and Organizational Change Program at UCLA.

Professor of Psychology

Associate Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Dr. José Soto is a clinical psychologist interested in the intersections of culture, health and emotion and how these three forces interact with and shape each other.  He has examined the manner in which culture influences various aspects of the human emotion system (e.g., experience, expression, recognition) and the psychological health costs or benefits associated with these cultural variations in emotional processes.  He has approached the study of culture and emotion from a multi-method perspective, using psychophysiological measures to supplement behavioral and self-report emotion data and going beyond self-identification to measure culture. An emerging component of his work is exploring the mental health consequences of experiencing discrimination, racism or oppression. He has done this by studying the relationship between these factors and mental health directly or by examining how emotional processes mediate/moderate this relationship.

Director, Center for The Study of Higher Education

Associate Professor of Education

Program Coordinator, Residential M.Ed. in Higher Education

LaWanda W. Ward’s commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion in higher education is shaped by the influence of her family of educators including her mother who marched during the Civil Rights Movement and was a 1^st grade teacher for almost 30 years. Dr. Ward’s research agenda centers on critically analyzing legal issues in higher education including race-conscious admissions, free speech, and academic freedom. Before joining the Higher Education faculty team at Penn State in Fall of 2018, she was an Assistant Professor at Ohio University.  For over 20 years prior to joining the professoriate, Dr. Ward served as a student affairs educator in various roles. She was introduced to higher education administration as a residence life graduate assistant and later as a residence hall director at Illinois State University and Old Dominion University, respectively. As Director of Pro Bono & Public Interest at her alma mater, Indiana University McKinney School of Law, Dr. Ward coached law students and alumni seeking traditional and non-traditional legal careers. Additionally, she established and maintained productive working relationships with community agencies to ensure law students received rewarding and challenging opportunities to gain pro bono experience.

Dr. Ward holds her Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs with an Interdisciplinary Minor in Socio-Legal Perspectives on Race & Gender in Higher Education from Indiana University, J.D. from Indiana University McKinney School of Law, M.S. in Educational Administration from Old Dominion University, MA in Political Science from Illinois State University, and a B.A. in Political Science from Murray State University.