FACULTY

Marcela Borge
Marcela Borge
Associate Professor of Education
Professor-in-Charge of Learning, Design, and Technology

 

Dr. Marcela Borge’s program of research is predicated on the idea that higher-order collaborative processes are essential for learning and development, yet largely missing from traditional learning contexts. She believes that the development of collaborative expertise (i.e., the ability to understand, manage, and improve collaborative learning processes) is essential to academic and life-long success. However, this type of development does not come easily to students. For these reasons, she has used technology to develop students’ collaborative expertise alongside Human-Centered Design knowledge and practices. Dr. Borge’s aim is also to enhance learners’ ability to see themselves as problem solvers and designers so as to become more informed producers and consumers of technology. As part of this work, she developed a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning environment, called CREATE,  designed to help students assess the quality of their collective sense-making processes and support the development of sociometacognition: the knowledge of and ability to regulate collaborative processes. More recently, she has been implementing the CREATE system activities within multicultural psychology courses in collaboration with José Soto (Penn State), Jasmine Mena (Bucknell University), and Tugce Aldemir (University of Connecticut). Together they have been developing new frameworks to define multicultural collaborative competence and examining whether and how the CREATE system can support multi-cultural collaborative competence development.

Nathanial Brown
Nathanial Brown
Professor of Mathematics

 

Dr. Nathanial Brown is Professor of Mathematics at Penn State University (PSU), after holding research positions at Institut Henri Poincaré, University of California at Berkeley, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Michigan State University, and University of Tokyo. His research has received continuous support from the National Science Foundation since 1999. An award-winning teacher, he is active in PSU’s Equity Pedagogy Network and coordinates the math component of the Millennium Scholars Program, PSU’s premier undergraduate program aiming to diversify STEM fields. His advocacy for equity and inclusion have been recognized by a Robinson Equal Opportunity Award and TEDx talk on “The Math People Myth.” He serves on the Doctoral Faculty Council of the Math Alliance, the nation’s largest network devoted to diversifying mathematics. An Affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (QSIDE), his research now focuses on social justice in the context of STEM education. He currently holds a Faculty Fellowship from PSU’s Social Science Research Institute.

Julia Green Bryan
Julia Green Bryan
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.

Janice Byrd
Janice Byrd
Assistant 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.

Javier Casado Pérez
Javier Casado Pérez
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.

 

 

 

 

Gilberto Q. Conchas
Gilberto Q. Conchas
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).

José Cossa
José Cossa
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.

Alicia C. Dowd
Alicia C. Dowd
Professor of Education and Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education

 

Dr. Alicia C. Dowd is Professor of Education and Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at the Pennsylvania State University. She studies and leads on issues of organizational learning and change towards racial equity in higher education. Dowd directs CSHE’s academic leadership academies and is co-director of Penn State’s Law and Governance Mentoring Roundtables. She is a co-lead of  Penn State’s Equity Pedagogy Network and co-chairs the professional development working group of the university’s Joint Curricular Task Force on Racial and Social Justice. From 2009-2015, she 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.

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 and critical race theory. 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 have included institutional accountability, curriculum reform, racial equity in access to STEM degrees, community college financing, and transfer pathways to bachelor’s and advanced degrees. Her published works include topics such as “Leadership for equity-minded data use towards racial equity in higher education,” “The role of institutional agents in providing institutional support to Latinx students in STEM,” “Sustaining organizational change towards racial equity through cycles of inquiry,” “Managing change towards racial equity in higher education through competing institutional logics,” “Assessing equitable access to STEM fields of study,” and “Silence is complicity: Why every college leader should know the history of lynching.” Dowd’s scholarship has been funded by the Spencer, Ford, Gates, Hewlett, Lumina, Nellie Mae, and Jack Kent Cooke Foundations as well as the National Science Foundation.

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. 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.

Marinda Kathryn Harrell-Levy
Marinda Kathryn Harrell-Levy
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.

Kevin Kinser
Kevin Kinser
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.

Roderick Lee
Roderick Lee
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.

Wilson Kwamogi Okello
Wilson Kwamogi Okello
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.

 

Leticia Oseguera
Leticia Oseguera
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.

Ashley Patterson
Ashley Patterson
Associate Professor of Education, Curriculum and Instruction

 

Dr. Ashley N. Patterson (she/hers) is an Associate Professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University where her instructional focus is on literacies, social justice and critical approaches to qualitative inquiry. Her research observes, measures and documents patterns of (in)equity in a variety of educational settings for the purpose of informing the envisioning of new, inclusive, justice-oriented learning environments where students and teachers thrive in the shared space. Patterson highly values collaborative generation of knowledges as witnessed by her many partnerships with community members, non-profit and corporate entities, school systems, and colleagues both inside and beyond the academic realm. She serves as a co-coordinator for the newly (2020) established Social Justice in Education minor available to students across the University.

Broadly, Dr. Patterson’s research interests consider intersections between identity and education, considering the dialogic relationship that exists while our educational experiences impact the ways we think about ourselves.  Employing an intersectional approach to considering identity, Dr. Patterson’s research examines race conjointly with a host of other contextually important and influential identity markers. She holds dearly as a responsibility and an honor the opportunity to infuse the ways she has come to know the world as a Black woman into all aspects of her work.

Dr. Patterson completed her PhD work at The Ohio State University in Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education where she also earned an MA in Quantitative Research, Evaluation and Measurement.

Kamaria Porter
Kamaria Porter
Assistant Professor of Education Policy Studies

 

Kamaria B. Porter, PhD. received her doctorate in Higher Education from the University of Michigan. Dr. Porter’s research examines gender and racial inequities in higher education, particularly university response to sexual assault, graduate education, and faculty experiences. Her dissertation, Speaking into Silence: Intersections of Identity, Legality, and Black Women’s Decision to Report Sexual Assault on Campus examined Black women’s perspectives of the legal system in weighing whether to report sexual violence to their university. At Michigan, Porter was the Lab Manager for the University Responses to Sexual Assault (URSA) Project. The URSA Project is based on an in-depth policy analysis of 381 university sexual misconduct policies. Before graduate school, she worked as a community organizer in Chicago, focusing on expanding health care access and affordable housing. While earning her Masters in Higher Education at Loyola University Chicago, she trained to be a rape survivor crisis counselor, assisting survivors and their families in ERs as they navigated complex medical and legal decisions.

José Soto
José Soto
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.

LaWanda W. M. Ward
LaWanda W. M. Ward
Associate Director, Center for The Study of Higher Education
Assistant 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 1st 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.