The College of Education and Human Ecology’s three departments continue to strengthen the college’s teaching, research and service, thanks to 16 new faculty members.
“We are welcoming scholars whose extensive contributions to their disciplines have made them national and international leaders. We also are proud to introduce a cohort of emerging researchers who will bring a fresh perspective to our programming,” said Cheryl Achterberg, dean of the college.
The college’s 162 faculty members teach and conduct research with 3,500 undergraduates and 1,100 graduate students at five campuses. Its research expenditures reached $38.6 million in 2013-14. Its outreach arm of OSU Extension Family and Consumer Sciences enrolls approximately 200,000 citizens in programs across Ohio in a year.
Department of Educational Studies
Roger Goddard, Novice G. Fawcett Chair of Educational Administration
Interests: Collective efficacy; school leadership; social psychology; characteristics of successful schools; experimental design and hierarchical linear modeling
Goddard studies the impact of school leadership and how creating shared beliefs and processes enable district administrators and teachers to improve teaching and learning. Recently, he led a federally funded experiment that examined how a research-based professional development program for principals impacted school climate, principal leadership, student achievement and more. He has a particular interest in educational measurement and has developed survey-based measures of collective efficacy and social capital. He led the development of a new Staff Opinion Survey covering school leadership, climate, professional learning and more for the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Australia. He has received more than $4 million in external funding, including a U.S. Institute of Education Sciences grant and a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has written numerous articles and received the Educational Administration Quarterly’s William J. Davis Award for most outstanding article. Goddard earned a doctorate in educational policy and leadership at Ohio State, serving as a Fawcett Fellow. Most recently, he was founding director of the Education Leadership Research Center at Texas A&M University and a Senior Fellow for McREL International, a nonprofit education research and development corporation.
Yvonne Goddard, visiting associate professor of educational psychology; director, First Education Experience Program (FEEP)
Interests: Connections between leadership, collaboration, efficacy, teacher practices and student achievement; effective instruction in inclusive settings; early and adolescent literacy
As an educational psychologist, Goddard combines an interest in educating students with special needs with a desire to improve the culture within which teachers work. She has studied the outcomes of relationships between teachers and principals, especially how they impact teachers’ self-efficacy, collaboration and use of effective instructional strategies. Recently, she was co-PI for a randomized control study of a professional development program for principals. Her findings from that study indicated that principals’ instructional leadership had significant, positive effects on teachers’ reports of collaboration, use of differentiated instruction and teaching efficacy. In special education, she has researched issues related to improving students’ reading and writing skills. She has examined the role of school leaders, how teachers perceive leaders, group norms for differentiated instruction and effective literacy instruction.
Karen Stansberry Beard, assistant professor of educational administration
Interests: Educational administration, positive psychology (flow and academic optimism), organizational theory, school and community relations, and educational policy.
Beard’s research focuses on educational administration and leadership development through the intentional exploration of positive psychology and related constructs (flow and academic optimism). She is also interested in policy implementation that supports cross-cultural understanding and reduces gaps in achievement. Consistent themes in her work are preparing principal candidates to work in diverse contexts and to pursue best practices. She also prepares them to examine predictors of organizational conditions that support student engagement and well-being. She is very active in the American Educational Research Association and the University Council of Educational Administration.
Matthew Brock, assistant professor of special education
Interests: Improving practitioner implementation fidelity of evidence-based practices for students with developmental disabilities, peer-mediated intervention
Brock evaluates the most effective professional development strategies for special education teachers and paraprofessionals. His work will ensure that they are equipped to implement effective evidence-based practices, with the goal of improving outcomes for persons with developmental disabilities. He also focuses on fostering connections and learning for high school students with severe disabilities through peer-mediated interventions. He has shared his work through workshops and presentations in the United States and Saudi Arabia. He has published nine peer-reviewed articles and three book chapters and serves as a guest reviewer for seven journals. He received his Ph.D. in Special Education from Vanderbilt University.
Department of Human Sciences
Carl Maresh, professor of kinesiology and chair of the Department of Human Sciences
Interests: Injury and disease prevention; performance enhancement
Maresh is newly arrived from the University of Connecticut, where he served as a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Kinesiology. Maresh is credited with reviving the U Conn program by bringing together an internationally renowned group of faculty members. Under his leadership, the doctoral program was honored with the National Academy of Kinesiology’s top ranking for ten years. One reason is the collegial culture he created, enabling faculty to fully participate in teaching, research and service. In fact, Maresh served as a role model, compiling an impressive record as he led the interdisciplinary Human Performance Laboratory for almost 30 years. He has received more than $12 million in extramural funding for his studies in hormonal and metabolic responses to exercise and his collaborative research on hydration. He is credited with more than 270 publications, such as in the highly ranked American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, American Journal of Physiology, and Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. The importance of his findings is demonstrated by their impact on investigations in health and performance. He has advised more than 70 thesis track master’s degree students and 25 doctoral students. Maresh earned his PhD in zoology and physiology from the University of Wyoming. He received both a MS in exercise physiology and a BS in health and physical education from California State University – Fullerton.
William Kraemer, professor of kinesiology
Interests: Resistance training; women’s health; sports medicine, nutritional supplementation, tissue repair and recovery for improved performance; apparel ergonomics, aging, muscle physiology, endocrine biology
Kraemer’s status in his field is made obvious by his 2013 Expertscape Award, which names him the nation’s top expert in resistance training research. He is one of only a handful of researchers investigating resistance training for the entire body, including the cellular, biochemical and endocrinological levels. With a total of 38,916 citations on Harzing’s Publish or Perish lists, his scholarly impact is impressive. He is a strength-testing consultant for both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). As a full professor at UConn, Ball State and Penn State, his research has garnered millions of dollars of external funding from federal, corporate and institute funding sources. He has examined many different physiological contexts including aging, nutritional supplementation and disease pathologies (e.g., breast cancer). He also had a unique interest in human ergonomics and compressive garment interfaces for performance and recovery. His research into pituitary function demonstrated that aggregate clusters of growth hormone (GH) may be more important than the individual GH monomer with aging. Together with a recent work in neuroscience, the integration of systems physiology and effects of various interventions has been the focus of his research teams and collaborations.
Jeff Volek, professor of human nutrition
Interests: Ketogenic diets; health and disease; sport performance
A world-renowned expert in low-carbohydrate research, Volek is the New York Times bestselling author of The New Atkins for a New You. That book, along with The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, summarizes his body of work on low-carbohydrate nutrition including the effects on a broad spectrum of health parameters (e.g., fatty acid composition, lipoprotein metabolism, gut microbiome, gene expression, adaptations to training, metabolic health). The books explain how well-formulated very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets substantially reduce the risk of, and in fact reverse, metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes, as well as improve endurance performance and recovery. Volek has acquired over 7 million dollars in research funding, much of that focused on how to personalize low-carbohydrate diets and make them effective and sustainable. His seminal work also encompasses dietary supplements including creatine, carnitine and whey protein. He has been invited to lecture more than 150 times in nine countries and he has written 280 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and five books, collectively selling over 700,000 copies. Volek is chief scientist of KetoThrive Corp., a wellness technology company.
Milos Bujisic, assistant professor of hospitality management
Interests: Customer behavior and customer experience in the hospitality industry; restaurant and foodservice management; revenue management; research methodology and experimental designs
During his PhD studies at the University of Central Florida, Bujisic worked on several collaborative projects with the University of South Carolina and the University of South Florida. While serving as a research project advisor at USF, he helped graduate students improve Blake Medical Center’s service quality by using his years of mid- to upper-level industry management experience. In 2013, he conducted a longitudinal study on tipping practices in food and beverage operations. He found that an employee’s gender plays a significant role in how they are tipped. He has published 18 peer-reviewed studies in several major hospitality journals, including the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management and Journal of Foodservice Business Research.
Drew Hanks, assistant professor of consumer and family financial services
Interests: Behavioral economics; health economics; behavioral nutrition; field research; empirical methods
Hanks research focuses on identifying ways to encourage healthy food choices through principles of behavioral economics. As a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, he served as the research manager for the Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs (BEN). He was also lead analyst for the Cornell Food and Brand lab. In both capacities, he conducted field and lab studies to show how changes in a surrounding environment influence food choices. His work for the B.E.N. Center led to more than $4 million in funding to support the center's expansion. Hanks has also done work with McDonald’s Corporation and other food retailers. He received his PhD in economics from Washington State University in 2011.
Irene Hatsu, assistant professor of human nutrition
Interests: Food security issues among low-income HIV patients
While pursuing a PhD in dietetics and nutrition at Florida International University, Hatsu studied the nutritional needs of individuals infected with HIV. Ongoing frustration that participants didn’t have access to certain foods raised her awareness of food insecurity. Hatsu now explores the relationship between food insecurity, chronic diseases and other health-related issues. She also focuses on the nutritional and health benefits of food assistance programs. Hatsu aims to develop innovative and effective interventions targeted at minimizing food insecurity among individuals and in the community, while also improving nutrition and health. As an OSU Extension Family and Consumer Sciences state specialist, Hatsu answers questions from Ohio residents about how to make smart food choices.
Kelly Purtell, assistant professor of human development and family science
Interests: Factors shaping development of low-income children and adolescents; public policies enhancing the developmental trajectories of vulnerable, low-income youth
Purtell investigates the factors that shape how low-income children and adolescents develop. Funded by a two-year National Institutes of Health grant, she examined how families’ use of food stamps influences the development of impoverished children. Purtell also served three years as an evaluation consultant for the United Way of Greater Austin’s Play to Learn Project, an early-intervention program that bridged critical gaps among young, vulnerable, low-income children. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Purtell received her PhD in Developmental Psychology, with a concentration in quantitative methods, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010.
Department of Teaching and Learning
Ruth Lowery, professor of children’s literature and literacy, Ohio State Mansfield
Interests: Students’ responses to literature, the incorporation of multicultural literature in schools’ curricula, West Indian immigrant populations and their adjustment in American, Canadian and British schools, and preparing preservice teachers to teach diverse student populations.
Lowery teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on children's literature and literacy education and is the education program coordinator for Ohio State Mansfield. Among her recent publications is “Caribbean Folk Tales and African Oral Tradition” in Fairy Tales with A Black Consciousness, which she co-edited. In addition, she co-authored “’Gotta Love Technology’: Preservice Teachers’ Transformation Into a Blended Online Multicultural Literature Course.” Lowery is an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the International Reading Association (IRA) and the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY). She is a member of the Orbis Pictus Nonfiction Book Award selection committee and co-editor of the Dragon Lode journal. Before joining the EHE faculty, she was associate professor of language arts, reading and children’s literature at the University of Florida for 16 years. She received her doctorate at Pennsylvania State University and her MEd and BA degrees from Florida Atlantic University.
Theodore “Teddy” Chao, assistant professor of math education
Interests: Image-based technology for teacher education; critical pedagogy and equity-based mathematics education; mathematics teacher identity
As a middle school teacher in Brooklyn, New York, Chao wondered why he had such a hard time being himself in the classroom, feeling obliged to play the character of a “math teacher.” This led to his doctoral research, using photovoice to open spaces for math teachers to reflect on their struggles with their personal and professional identities. As a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University, he continued exploring image-based methods, creating a mobile app for children to create videos of how they solve math problems and then share this thinking with a math teacher, creating an anytime, anywhere one-on-one discussion. Chao’s work revolves around equity. He has helped organize and has presented at national social justice education conferences.
Kathy Malone, assistant professor of science education
Interests: Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary curricula
Malone is a teacher-scholar with multiple perspectives on reforming science curriculum. She received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics, the highest honor for K-12 classroom teachers, and was twice named a National Science Foundation Albert Einstein Fellow. Her research in physics instruction applies cognitive science techniques to identify specific differences contributing to the greater problem solving skill of students. She collaborated on an innovative model-based curriculum biology unit on natural selection involving engineering practice and mathematical reasoning, and led extended professional development for teachers. She also focuses on the use of digital and technological tools.
Arnulfo Pérez, assistant professor of mathematics education
Interests: analysis of large-scale assessment data; conceptual challenges of functional representation; equity and agency in mathematics teaching and learning; development of technology to capture real-time data on student reasoning
Pérez earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and taught high school mathematics for three years prior to completing an M.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University. He has contributed to multiple projects focused on the teaching and learning of mathematics and the use of reform-based practices in urban settings. His research focuses on algebraic reasoning and the learning of mathematical functions in high school. He uses data from large-scale assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress to explore the relationship between students’ performance on function concepts and factors such as access to technology, attendance, and school course pathways. He is also working with national assessment data to explore the college preparedness of 12th-grade students, particularly those students who are from historically underperforming backgrounds.
Tami Augustine, clinical assistant professor of middle childhood education and social studies
Interests: Middle childhood education and secondary social studies
Augustine believes the science and art of teaching shape and change the world. She prepares teacher candidates to be open-minded and to share a sense of purpose with an interconnected global society. Grounding social studies teacher education in the theoretical framework of spirituality deepens interconnectedness, she has found. It enables creation of a student-centered classroom to effectively teach about the complexities of living in global communities. By using online discussions, she provides students a chance to critically reflect on class materials and discussion. The online technology also builds classroom community, making learning a collaborative experience that she can also share.
