Sara R. Helfrich, Ph.D.
Dean
Candace Schlein, Ph.D.
Professor and chair; Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
Loyce Caruthers, Ph.D.
Professor, Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations
S. Marie McCarther, Ed.D.
Associate professor
Donna M. Davis, Ph.D.
Professor, Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations
Omiunota N. Ukpokodu, Ph.D.
Professor, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
Michael Wei, Ph.D.
Professor, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
| Faculty Member | Department | Research Interests | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carolyn Barber | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | School support for positive development in adolescents and young adults with variance across social and cultural contexts; development of civic attitudes and behaviors | |
| Kym Bennett | Psychology and Counseling | Impact of social cognition on health; the affect of causal attributions on recovery following chronic disease diagnosis | |
| LaVerne Berkel | Psychology and Counseling | Integrated health; role of counseling psychologists in integrated healthcare; effects of the built environment on health outcomes; diversity issues with a particular interest in religion and spirituality; counseling and health | |
| Rosalyn Bertram | Social Work | Implementation science and applications; systems of care; school-based mental health; transformation of curriculum | |
| Eric Camburn | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | School improvement; school leadership; professional learning; survey measurement of education practice | |
| Loyce Caruthers | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | Neoliberlaism and schooling; student belonging and engagement | |
| Donna Davis | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | History and philosophy of education; urban education; social justice and arts education; gender and education; race and schooling in the United States | |
| Hyeyoung Ghim | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Early childhood teacher education; multilingual and multicultural education; teacher identity; diversity and equity | |
| Oh-Ryeong Ha | Psychology and Counseling | Infant and child development focused on eating decisions and self-control in children with and without obesity; interventions for reducing advertising effects in unhealthy eating; identifying risk factors for the development of obesity in infants and young children; prosocial decision-making in parent-child dyads; language acquisition in children with and without Williams Syndrome; stress and rejection impacts on prosocial and eating decisions in adults | |
| Sara Helfrich | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Pre-service and in-service teacher self-efficacy related to teaching literacy; teacher preparation programming; the role of partnerships in teacher education | |
| Jenee Johnson | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Autism spectrum disorders; applied behavior analysis; single case design; early intervention | |
| Cassandra Kinder | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Social foundations of mathematics education; foregrounding race; class; and context to understand how school mathematics contributes to the creating and reinscribing of social inequity; exploration of the mechanisms through which school mathematics creates; reinforces; and adopts social inequalities in a rural context; ethnography | |
| Jeoung Min Lee | Social Work | Bullying and cyberbullying victimization; mental and behavior health; minorities | |
| Michelle Maher | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | Graduate student research; teaching; and disciplinary writing skill development; higher education access and equity issues | |
| Daniel Maitland | Psychology and Counseling | The bi-directional relationship between lonliness and mental or physical health; psychotherapy process and outcomes in contemporary behavior therapies; especially functional analytic psychotherapy | |
| Jacon Marszalek | Psychology and Counseling | Translational methodology; motivational theories in psychology and education like flow; anxiety; reactance; educational and psychological measurement; social justice advocacy; evaluation of institutional/educational programs for minority outreach and support | |
| S. Marie McCarther | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | Narrative studies; ethnography; documentary; and historiography; giving a voice to those silenced across race; class; and gender boundaries; social justice and leadership; arts; and urban education | |
| Elizabeth Neilson | Psychology and Counseling | The causes of substance-involved gender-based violence; focused on sexual assualt and intimate partner violence; development and evaluation of interventions to prevent and intervene in the perptration of gender-based violence; downstream effects of gender-based violence on substance use and reproductive health | |
| Johanna Nilsson | Psychology and Counseling | International issues and populations like international students; refugees; and immigrants; supervision; social justice advocacy | |
| Louis Odom | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | ||
| Steven Onken | Social Work | Recovery regarding severe and persistent mental illness; marginalization; identity formation; violence; navigation into adulthood and across minority into majority cultures for the young hearing adults of Deaf parents and young heterosexual adults of Gay/Lesbian parents; LGBTQ plus mental health experiences including points of resilience and behavioral health care needs; supported employment; and concept mapping exploring recovery supporting community and supporting gay male resilience | |
| Nora Peterman | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Children and young adult literature; digital literacies; cultural; political; and intergenerational dimensions of youth literacy and language learning | |
| Tiffani Riggers-Piehl | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | College student development; campus climate; spirituality and religion in college; student-faculty interaction; pedagogy; and student success; interfaith experiences in college; gendered aspects of spiritual development in college; conditional effects of gender | |
| Candace Schlein | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Experiential curriculum; diversity; narrative inquiry | |
| Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Intersections of family storytelling; literature for children; legal and policy texts; dominant discourses that influence well-being of children and families who experience displacement | |
| Michael Ternes | Psychology and Counseling | A decision of an individual to pursue the goals they have defined for themselves; as well as characteristics that might help to facilitate the pursuit of those goals and well-being; across the domains of education; career; and health behaviors; positive psychological constructs; such as hope and the utility it could offer in supporting their commitment to their goals and the navigation of challenges encountered in the process | |
| Omiunota Ukpokodu | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Quality teacher education; critical multicultural education; transformative learning and pedagogy; culturally responsive pedagogy; urban education; Ubuntu pedagogy; equity and social justice education; social studies and citizenship education; global education; African immigrant education | |
| Jennifer Waddell | Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies | Urban teacher preparation; social justice education; diversity and educational equity | |
| Laurel Watson | Psychology and Counseling | Intersection of gender; race; and sexuality; experiences of discrimination and how these experiences affect mental health and well-being among individuals with marginalized identities; factors that protect against adverse outcomes in the face of adversity; including collective action; identity salience; and resilience | |
| Michael Wei | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | Second language acquisition; phonetics; reading and writing English as a second language; learning environments | |
| Huang Wu | Educational Leadership; Policy and Foundations | Application of data science methods; from traditional quantitative approaches to machine learning; to address critical educational issues; particularly those related to school leadership; educational equity; and program evaluation; how effective school leadership practices can enhance student learning outcomes and foster social justice within educational systems | |
| Westley Youngren | Psychology and Counseling | Intersection of sleep and trauma; with an emphasis on trauma-related nightmares; integrating sleep and dreaming science within trauma informed care; examining the relationship between nightmares and suicide; longitudinal research methods; ecological momentary assessment; polysomnography; treatment outcome studies |
Erin Hambrick is changing the way we understand childhood trauma
UMKC students who presented are from the Conservatory, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and School of Science and Engineering
STEM curriculum offered in 163 Missouri school districts
