Faculty diversity rising

Assistant Professor, Multicultural And Equity Studies In Education, Department Of Teaching And Learning

Research Interests: Student identity, immigrant and refugee education, urban education

Prior to joining Ohio State, Abdi was an assistant professor of culture and teaching at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. In that role, she advised and mentored more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students. She served as a postdoctoral associate there for two years before joining the faculty.

With a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Ohio State in 2004, Abdi first worked as a research associate in Ohio State’s Department of Microbiology. Later, she served as an elementary math teacher in Atlanta and a graduate research assistant and teaching assistant in Michigan State University’s College of Education, where she earned her PhD in 2015.

Abdi studies education as a cultural phenomenon and seeks to understand how factors such as race, religion, gender and class affect immigrant and refugee education. She has contributed to five books and has published six refereed journal articles, with more underway. Her current project focuses on Somali immigrant communities in Columbus and how local schools negotiate race and religion.

Associate Dean For Academic Affairs And Professor Of Human Development And Family Science, Department Of Human Sciences

Interests: South Asian diasporic identity; multicultural and social justice issues in mentoring, training and supervision; international issues in psychology; and women of color in leadership

Inman is a highly respected and accomplished professor who brings to the college years of academic leadership experience and vision. She joins us from Lehigh University, where she was associate dean for graduate studies. During her distinguished career, she has served in multiple administrative roles, including program chair, department chair, chair of a department chairs committee and provost faculty fellow. She is a licensed psychologist and a nationally certified counselor.

Her scholarship has earned Inman numerous accolades, including the Janet E. Helms Award for Mentorship and Scholarship from Teachers College of Columbia University, the Distinguished Contributions Award from the Asian American Psychological Association. While at Lehigh, she was the Iacocca Endowed Chair.

Inman recently served as president of the Society of Counseling Psychology with the American Psychological Association and is a fellow of the society and four other divisions in the association.

Inman has produced 107 publications and training videos, which include serving as series co-editor of the American Psychological Association's Clinical Supervision Essentials Series and co-host of the video series by the same name. She has delivered over 160 presentation at international, national and regional conferences.

Inman earned a doctorate from Temple University in counseling psychology and two master's degrees, one in guidance and counseling, the other in psychology.

Assistant Professor, Stem Education, Department Of Teaching And Learning

Research Interests: Issues of equity in K-16 science education, rhizomatic analysis of science classrooms

Sophia Jeong joins the college from the University of Georgia where she was a discipline-based biology education researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Jeong draws on theories of new materialisms to explore ontological complexities of subjectivities in K-16 science classrooms. She has shared her research through national and international conference presentations, including annual meetings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching and the Association for Science Teacher Education, two of the foremost professional organizations in the field of science education.

She has an international presence through conferences and collaborations. For instance, Jeong organized a workshop at the 2016 International Forum on Elementary Science Reform in the New Media Era in Nanjing, China. Since then, leveraging her international professional network, she has recently been invited as a keynote speaker at the 2020 Creativity in Science Education Conference in Korea.

She is currently the co-editor of a Springer book series that will feature dilemmas related to elementary science teaching and learning. She serves on national and international editorial review boards of three refereed journals focused on teacher education. She earned her PhD in science education from the University of Georgia.

Professor, Educational Administration, Department of Educational Studies

Research Interests: Culturally responsive school leadership and promoting equity in schools

Muhammad Khalifa is an accomplished professor who joins the Educational Administration faculty from the University of Minnesota. He has trained and presented to more than 4,000 school leaders in 11 states and created an equity audit tool that has helped more than 500 school leaders pinpoint sources of school inequities and make sustainable equity reforms in schools.

His 2018 book Culturally Responsive School Leadership is a top 20 bestselling educational administration book in the United States. Khalifa is currently writing a book on culturally responsive instructional leadership.

Khalifa's research examines how school and district leaders provide culturally responsive leadership and promote equity in schools. This year, he was named a scholar-in-residence by the Spencer Foundation and is a co-principal investigator on a Wallace Foundation grant examining principalship pipeline research and equity in schools.

In addition to his research, Khalifa has taught courses, led international delegations and served in other development projects in more than a dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Khalifa earned his PhD from Michigan State University in 2008.

Charlotte S. Huck Professor Of Children’s Literature, Department Of Teaching And Learning

Research Interests: Children's literature with an emphasis on books written by and about African Americans

Jonda McNair, ’03 PhD, returns to Ohio State after establishing her reputation as a leading scholar in the field of children’s literature. Before joining the college, McNair was a professor of literacy education at Clemson University. She has presented and published widely, including her article “Transitional Chapter Books: Representations of African American Girlhood” in The Reading Teacher that received a 2013 Virginia Hamilton Essay Award Honor Citation.

McNair’s stature in the field has led to her election or appointment to numerous prestigious children’s book award selection committees. She currently chairs the 2021 John Newbery Medal Award Selection Committee, and most recently, she completed a term on the 2019 Randolph Caldecott Award Selection Committee. McNair is also a past chair of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Jury.

McNair presently serves as co-editor of Language Arts, the prominent journal of the Elementary Section of the National Council of Teachers of English. While earning her doctorate at Ohio State, her advisor was Professor Emerita Rudine Sims Bishop. McNair also trained in Reading Recovery. She is a former primary teacher of students in grades K-2.

Clinical Assistant Professor, Counselor Education, Department of Educational Studies

Research Interests: Racial microaggressions, addictions and social justice

Tanya Middleton, ’03 BA, joins the College of Education and Human Ecology’s nationally ranked Counselor Education program as clinical assistant professor. She has more than 15 years of professional experience in the counseling and social services fields and is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor with Supervisory credentials, as well as being a Licensed Independent Chemical Dependency Counselor and a substance abuse professional.

As a doctoral candidate, Middleton published book chapters and refereed journal articles on racial battle fatigue and mental health of Black men. She also wrote a book chapter on the underrepresentation of Black children in gifted education programs. She has been a member of the Ohio Counseling Association since 2017 holding various roles, including serving as president of the Ohio Counselors for Social Justice division and as current treasurer of the Ohio Substance Use Disorder Professionals division.

Middleton was awarded her doctorate from the University of Akron in counselor education and supervision in 2020.

Assistant Professor, Stem Education, Department Of Teaching And Learning

Research interest: Designing studies in STEM education to highlight students’ diverse ideas and practices to use as resources in scientific activities such as modeling, which is creating conceptual or material representations of phenomena to build more complex and nuanced understandings

Pierson, who earned a PhD from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, is quickly earning a reputation in STEM education. Based on her numerous publications and peer-reviewed conference proceedings and presentations, she was invited to be lead editor of a 2019 special issue of the journal Science and Education.

Pierson received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship to fund her dissertation research. Her preliminary analysis of these data won the Best Student Paper Award from the Advanced Technologies for Learning/Learning Sciences Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. She has chaired and organized symposia and poster sessions for four years in a row at this conference.

Prior to Vanderbilt, Ashlyn worked as a lead public school science teacher, math teacher and curriculum developer in Nashville. Her undergraduate degree is from Duke University in environmental science and public policy; her MEd is from Lipscomb University in Tennessee.

Professor, Language, Education And Society, Department Of Teaching And Learning

Research Interests: Language and literacy, critical discourse analysis, Black education and whiteness studies, diversity leadership in education

Power-Carter is a distinguished educator and community leader with more than 20 years of experience in education. In addition to her scholarship, she has served in various roles at local, national and international levels to facilitate inclusive education.

Power-Carter began her career as a high school English teacher before joining academia. She was most recently an associate professor and chair of the English Education program at Indiana University. There, she also promoted diversity, equity and inclusion for four years as the director of the university’s Marcellus Neal and Frances Marshall Black Culture Center. She amassed more than $100,000 in funding to organize campus and community programs for African American youth, including “Read-In,” a popular university-wide program that honors Black authors. These initiatives translated her research into practice and meaningful community engagement.

Power-Carter’s research examines issues facing marginalized groups, particularly Black youth. She has co-authored two books on discourse analysis in classrooms and has published numerous refereed journal articles about the experience of Black students in higher education. During the course of her career, she has received more than 15 teaching and community engagement awards. Her influence in higher education touches many fields, including literacy, political action and race studies.

Power-Carter earned her EdD from Vanderbilt University.

Director Of The Data Access And Analysis Core, Office Of Research, Innovation And Collaboration
Professor, Human Development And Family Science
Interim Executive Director, Kirwan Institute For The Study Of Race And Ethnicity

Research Interests: Culturally appropriate measurement, scale development and validation;race and gender identity development and multicultural theory, most notably on Black racial identity

As one of the most prominent scholars in her field, Vandiver arrived in Julyfrom the Department of Counselor Psychology and Counselor Education at Western Michigan University. Prior to that, she was an associate professor of educationspecializing in counseling and school psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. While there, she also directedthe Africana Research Center.

She is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Black Psychology and holds fellow status in three divisions of the American Psychological Association: the Society for Counseling Psychology;Quantitative and Qualitative Methods;and the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race. The latter gaveher its2017 Distinguished Career-Contributionsto ResearchAward.

Vandiver also has chaired the association’s Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment and served as itsliaison to theofficial U.S. source for evaluation standards, the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation.

Vandiverhas published and presented widely. She is the lead author and developer of the Cross RacialIdentity Scale, identified as a best practice in scale development. Recently, as a Buros-Spencer Scholarwith the Buros Center for Testing, she consulted in creatingits online Socio-Emotional Learning Assessment Technical Guidebook for selecting assessments for K-12 students.

She has served on editorial boards for numerous journals, most recently the Journal of Counseling and Development. Her PhD is from Ball State University.