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Education Policy, Organization and Leadership Faculty
James D. Anderson
Head / Gutgsell Professor
James D. Anderson (Ph.D. Illinois), is the author of The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, which received the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). His most current work is the forthcoming No Sacrifice Too Great: The History of African American Education from Slavery to the Twenty-First Century. He received the Distinguished Career Contributions Award from AERA’s Committee on Scholars of Color in Education. He served as advisor to and participant in the PBS documentaries “School” 2001), and “The Percy Julian Story” (2007). He is the Senior Editor of the History of Education Quarterly. In 2008 he was elected to the National Academy of Education.more information...
Kern Alexander
Excellence Professor
Kern Alexander’s current research interests include education finance and law. He has worked extensively as an expert in state school finance litigation. He is the Editor of the Journal of Education Finance and has recently completed a major revision of his widely-used graduate text, American Public School Law. Having served as president of two public universities, Alexander has an ongoing research interest in high education administrating, finance, and law.more information...
Lorenzo Baber
Assistant Professor
Lorenzo Baber’s primary research agenda focuses on the impact of socioeconomic background and ethnicity on identity development and academic outcomes for postsecondary students. He is particularly interested in investigating the persistent educational achievement gap between minority and majority students at Predominately White Institutions. Additional research interests include examination of university-neighborhood partnership initiatives in urban communities and international comparative education.more information...
Tina (A.C.) Besley
Adjunct Professor
My research interests include educational policy and philosophy, especially Michel Foucault's work on self/subjectivity and governmentality; the knowledge economy, creativity and academic entrepreneurship; assessing research quality in Higher Education; and youth issues, especially self and identity in a globalised world where the impact of new social media is now becoming apparent. I am interested in narrative approaches in research and counseling. I am on the editorial boards of seven journals and three book series and have published five books including Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of the Self ( Peter Lang, 2007) with Michael A. Peters.more information...
Jon Bowermaster
Clinical Assistant Professor
Professional Experience University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: 2002 to Present Department of Human Resource Education Clinical Assistant Professor Teach graduate and undergraduate courses in leadership development, management, strategic planning and project management. Physician Empowerment, Urbana, Illinois: 2002 to Present Managing Partner A national consulting firm focused on helping physicians develop their leadership and management skills.more information...
Debra Bragg
Professor
Debra Bragg’s research focuses on transition to college by youth and adults, especially student populations that have not attended college historically. She is particularly interested in how underserved youth and adult (minority, low income, first-generation, immigrant students) use the community college to transition to higher education, including how public policies position community colleges as a primary port of entry. The expanding mission of community colleges, including the increasing importance of linkages to high schools, adult education, postsecondary education and the workforce is of particular interest. Her work is affiliated with the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL)more information...
Ruth Brown
Assistant Professor
Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown is a dynamic writer, researcher, performer, mentor and instructor. She is an assistant professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies and Educational Policy Studies Departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Her research documents, analyzes, and interrogates Black girls’ lived experiences as it intersects with cultural constructions of Black girlhood. More specifically, Dr.more information...
Nicholas Burbules
Gutgsell Professor
My research focuses on philosophy of education; teaching and dialogue; critical social and political theory; and technology and education. My major current projects include work on ethical and policy issues concerning new technologies in education; virtual reality; collaboration; and dialogue and "third spaces.more information...
Timothy Reese Cain
Assistant Professor
Tim Cain’s research examines historical issues in American higher education. He has written on the development of academic freedom and tenure, the contested rise of faculty unionization, and efforts to control student expression.more information...
Jeanne Connell
Assistant Professor
My current research interests focus philosophy of education, particularly how the American pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey influences views about knowledge, learning, and teaching. In my recent articles, I analyzed the connection between pragmatic philosophy and the literary theory of Louise Rosenblatt, who was a pioneer in developing what is known in the field of reading as reader-response-theory. I explored how these diverse disciplines inform one another in order to enhance democratic education. My current projects focus on philosophy of education, transaction-based literary theory, as well as the teaching of social foundations of education to pre-service teachers.more information...
William Cope
Research Professor
My current research interests include population and community diversity, theories and practices of pedagogy and new technologies of representation and communication, including the 'semantic web'.more information...
Rose Mary Cordova-Wentling
Professor
Dr. Cordova-Wentling’s major program of research has to do with improving human resource work performance. It focuses on expanding our knowledge base related to how organizations in the future will effectively utilize information technology and human resources to maximize work performance. Within her major program of research there are four areas. These four areas include: the career development of women in engineering and computational science, the effective management of diversity in education and the workplace, the use of information technology to enhance human performance in the workplace, and human behavior skills in engineering. Dr.more information...
Denise Crews
Clinical Assistant Professor
Dr. Crews’ current research interests surround higher education access and community college student patterns of success. Included under this research umbrella are community college transitional programs which promote college readiness for academic core courses, and the interventions and curriculum alignment models utilized to facilitate college success.more information...
Pradeep Dhillon
Associate Professor
My research straddles philosophy of language (both Analytic and Continental) and mind, aesthetics, and international education. I have a strong interest in Kantian value theory as it relates to aesthetics,cognition,and human rights education. Currently, I am working in the areas of Kant's theory of judgement and Neuro-aesthetics, Neurophilosophy,and Education, and Environmental Aesthetics.I am the Editor for the Journal of Aesthetic Education, and serve as the Chair of Education for the American Society for Aesthetics.more information...
Adrienne Dixson
Associate Professor
My primary research interest focuses on how issues of race, class and gender intersect and impact educational equity in urban schooling contexts. I locate my research within two theoretical frameworks: Critical Race Theory and Black feminist theories. My colleague, Celia K. Rousseau-Anderson, and I edited CRT in Education: All God's Children Got a Song (2006, Routledge) one of the first book-length texts on CRT in education. Most recently, I am interested in how educational equity is mediated by school reform policies in the urban south. Specifically, I am interested in school reform in post-Katrina New Orleans, how local actors make sense of and experience those reform policies and how those policies become or are "racialized.more information...
Anne Haas Dyson
Professor
My major research interests are related to the social and cultural processes of schooling and literacy, including: +ethnographies of childhood and, more broadly, of the experiential qualities of contemporary schooling for all participants +the development of childhood cultures, especially the role of popular culture in that development, with a particular interest in city kids +the development and use of written language in contemporary childhoods and cross-culturally +the politics of identity and language in school, including the role of English variants, like African American Language My current research centers on the intersection of literacy and childhoods.more information...
Walter Feinberg
Professor Emeritus
My research centers on the issue of education for democratic citizenship. I believe that democracy is not an automatically self-renewing process but it that is requires conscious collective attention and deliberate educational and cultural work. Hence all of my research projects, from my studies of multiculturalism, to my examination of the justification for affirmative action, to my exploration of religious education, to my evaluation of the idea of school choice, are intended to understand the relationship between education and democracy and to find ways to enhance what I believe to be our most valuable inheritance.more information...
Priscilla Fortier
Adjunct Professor
My primary research interest is in higher education history, particularly issues of access within the traditional, as well as the evolving, mission of land grant institutions. The opportunity to compete for viable access to selective public institutions such as land grant universities is an aspect of the "public good" that is embedded within the mission of such institutions. In a related area, I believe that large public research institutions provide an ideal venue for facilitating undergraduate research. ;Every fall since 2004 have taught an undergraduate Ethnography of the University course in which students increased their engagement with, and knowledge of, this institution by conducting research on the university.more information...
James Frasier
Clinical Assistant Professor
Jim Frasier’s ongoing program of research focuses on US government and private sector HRD policies and programs that specifically address the transition of individuals to knowledge-intensive employment, education, and training environments. An underlining theme of Jim’s investigations has been to inform US public and private sector policy formation with data relevant to investing in the retraining of individuals with disabilities for employment within Information Age work environments. Most recently, Jim's investigations have focused on cultural factors that influence the formation of multinational corporations’ HR practices as they expand manufacturing operations into Southeast Asian countries and China.more information...
Donald G. Hackmann
Associate Professor
Don Hackmann’s primary research agenda focuses on leadership preparation programming, including program quality, standards-based curricula, and characteristics of tenure-line and clinical educational leadership faculty members. An additional research interest addresses the principalship, focusing on effective leadership behaviors and strategies at the middle and high school levels that facilitate improved student learning, including effective supervisory approaches and the development of effective scheduling models.more information...
Linda Herrera
Associate Professor
Linda Herrera is a social anthropologist with regional specialization in the Middle East and North Africa. She works in the fields of comparative/international education, international development studies, and youth studies. She received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in Middle East Studies, MA from the American University in Cairo in Anthropology and Sociology, and PhD from Teachers College, Columbia University in Comparative and International Education.more information...
Christopher Higgins
Assistant Professor
My scholarly interests fall into two main areas: philosophy of teaching and the aims of education. My work in the first area concerns teacher motivation and identity, transformative dialogue and the teacher-student relationship, teacher education and professional development. My book, The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), offers a eudaimonistic conception of professional ethics, examining how work contributes to the practitioner's own quest to lead a rich, meaningful, or excellent life.more information...
Denice Hood
Assistant Professor
My current research interests include issues of teaching and learning in online postsecondary learning environments. Specifically, I am interested in the intersection between adult learning, cognitive and social factors that contribute to academic success, cultural aspects of pedagogy and the policy implications. more information...
Wen-Hao Huang
Assistant Professor
W. David Huang’s academic background, consisting of material science & engineering, educational technology, and executive business administration, has enabled him to conduct interdisciplinary projects for instructional and research purposes for years. Dr. Huang currently teaches Learning Technologies and Instructional Design for HRE with an interactive approach. His research interests include (1) design of serious games and workforce development, (2) cognitive load manipulations in E-Learning settings, and (3) development of entrepreneurship education. David is also co-coordinating and co-developing HRE’s MSEd program in E-Learning (delivered by University of Illinois Global Campus) with Dr. Scott Johnson since June 2007.more information...
Richard Hunter
Professor
Richard Hunter is known for his extensive public school administrative experience in public education and for his academic research on topics in urban education, while teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.more information...
Stanley Ikenberry
Regent Professor and President Emeritus
Stan Ikenberry, the former president of the University of Illinois and of the American Council of Education, teaches courses on higher education policy and leadership and serves as advisor to doctoral students. In addition, he holds an appointment as Senior Fellow in the University’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs and is Co-director of the Forum for the Future of Public Education. His current areas of interest include higher education assessment, public attitudes about higher education, and privatization of public universities.more information...
Ronald Jacobs
Professor
Ronald L. Jacobs is professor of human resource development and director of international programs in the College of Education. Ron’s current research topics of interest include formal learning in the work setting, employee competence, and adapting HRD practices to the societal level. Ron has written over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and has authored or edited six books that address a broad range of topics in the human resource development field.more information...
Scott Johnson
Professor Emeritus
Scott Johnson’s current program of research explores ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of instruction. His primary research has examined the cognitive process differences that enable experts to solve technical problems more efficiently than novices. Recent studies have explored various aspects of online learning and factors that support the development of effective virtual teams. He has also been involved in studies to identify strategies that enhance technology transfer. The ultimate goal of his research is to develop new understanding of learning processes so that more effective instructional designs and strategies can be developed to improve technical instruction.more information...
Russell Korte
Assistant Professor
My interests include investigating and understanding the social dynamics of learning and working in organizations. Recently, I have been studying the socialization and on-boarding experiences of newly hired professionals, engineering and medical students; specifically how they learn the cultural, social, and political norms (i.e., the unwritten rules) of the organizations in which they learn and work. Related to this I have conducted research with the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education and the Collaborative Research Lab at Stanford University. This work entailed studying the experiences of engineering students as they learned their profession in school.more information...
K. Peter Kuchinke
Professor
Professor Kuchinke's current research focuses on two areas: The education and training of educators working in human resource development settings in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations around the world as these professional lead learning initiatives to foster organizational and individual growth and development. Professor Kuchinke further explores the changing meaning of working as technological, economic, political, and social forces bring unprecedented rates of change to individuals, families, organizations, and countries. In both research areas, Professor Kuchinke is published widely and is a sought-after lecturer and presenter at national and international conferences and universities and organizations around the world.more information...
Nicole Lamers
Visiting Assistant Professor
Nicole Lamers' research and experience are in the fields of internationalization – both at the secondary and post-secondary level – as well as in the emerging field of global studies – and more specifically Global Studies in Education. As a graduate student, she was involved in the initial development and implementation of the Global Studies in Education Online Masters Program, which eventually became a part of her dissertation research. She has also been involved in the revision of curriculum for the on-campus undergraduate major of Global Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Science. Her current research revolves around both the theoretical and practical aspects of a pedagogy for global studies.more information...
J. Jessica Li
Assistant Professor
My primary of research focus can be summarized to two lines of research. One of the lines is to examine corporate learning strategies and practices in relationship to employee learning (formal or informal) and performance improvement in the workplace. The other line of research is to investigate the impact of recent economic reform on Chinese workforce and the implications for human resource development in the Chinese context. Recently, I have developed an interest in virtual worlds and their impact on learning in virtual worlds and learning transfer to real life settings.more information...
Christopher Lubienski
Associate Professor
Chris Lubienski's research centers on public and private interests in education, including the use of market mechanisms such as choice and competition to improve schooling, especially for disadvantaged children. His work examines reforms and movements such as vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and home schooling that seek to decentralize and deregulate educational governance. He focuses on outcomes anticipated by reformers in areas such as increased innovation and higher levels of achievement, exploring the frequent disconnect between research findings and policy advocacy. He is currently investigating the organizational behavior of schools and districts in local education markets in metropolitan areas.more information...
Cris Mayo
Associate Professor
Cris Mayo's research interests include philosophy of education, gender and sexuality studies, and multicultural theory. Her book, Disputing the Subject of Sex (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, reprinted in paperback, 2007) details clashes over AIDS education and gay inclusive multicultural education in New York State in the 1980's and 1990's. She is currently researching gay/straight alliances in public schools and their work in the formation of associational identities, examining how such groups organize around and address differences of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, and sexuality.more information...
John Ory
Professor
John Ory is the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at UIUC. His work at the Center involves conducting research on teaching, improving campus instruction, measuring student achievement, and evaluating programs. He is currently coordinating campus efforts to assess student outcomes and helping the campus prepare for its re-accreditation in 2009. In addition to his work on campus, John has developed testing programs and conducted program evaluations for profit and non-profit organizations, including Motorola, U.S. Army, Arthur Anderson, and Boeing Airplane.more information...
Yoon Pak
Associate Professor
My research focuses on the following topics: - Democratic Citizenship, Americanization, and acculturation of ethnic minorities and immigrant groups in the U.S. - Comparative approaches to democratic and tolerance education during the Progressive Era. - History of U.S. education in the early twentieth century. - Higher Education and experiences of Asian and Asian American students.more information...
Fazal Rizvi
Professor Emeritus
My research interests focus on the following areas: - Global Studies in Education - Comparative and international education; - Internationalization of Higher education; - Cultural globalization and education policy; - Postcolonial theories of identity, representation and education; - Global inequalities and educational policy; and - International student mobility. More recently, I have begun working on Indian higher education and the ways in which it is engaging with the challenges of globalization and the knowledge economy.more information...
Linda Sloat
Clinical Assistant Professor
Linda Sloat’s primary research interests focus on issues surrounding school improvement in K-12 education, including the administrator’s roles and responsibilities in the change process and leadership for learning at both the building and district level. During her extensive public school administrative career, she also focused on education for the gifted and literacy acquisition.more information...
Christopher Span
Associate Professor
I am an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am an historian of education in the department of Educational Policy Studies. My research interests pertain to the educational history of African Americans in the 19th and 20th century.more information...
William Trent
Professor
My past research has focused on: 1) Educational Inequality: school desegregation effects (K-12, postsecondary), benefits and consequences, social organziation of school, status attainment research, co- and extracurricular activities, comparative education; 2) Race and Ethnicity: social stratification and mobility, equality of opportunity; and 3) Complex Organization/Social Change/Policy. I am principal investigator for an Educational Reform Project focused on understanding the role of race, ethnicity, class and gender in school reform. I have also recently served as an expert witness on a court appointed panel in Vaughns, et. al. v. Bd. of Educ. of P.G. Co., MD.more information...
Anjale Welton
Assistant Professor
Anjalé D. Welton's scholarship primarily examines the educational opportunity structures of students of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Welton examines how institutional and social structures—such as race, social class, tracking, school administration and teacher leadership, etc.—shape the connections students of color make to educational resources, navigate school and ultimately matriculate to postsecondary education. Other research interests include student voice, mentoring, social justice leadership, and employing critical policy analysis (CPA) as a methodological tool for uncovering issues of inequity as well as promoting agency and transformation in P-20 educational settings.more information...
Sandra Williams
Clinical Assistant Professor
Dr. Sandra L. Williams, Clinical Assistant Professor, is engaged within HRE as a teaching professional. She brings a combination of practical applications from her commercial experiences, and current research findings in the areas of Trust, Values and Ethics at Work. Her corporate consulting work consists of designing and facilitating customized ethics training programs for private businesses, conferences, and professional seminars throughout the country. She has served on the boards of both non-profit and commercial enterprises.more information...