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Faculty/Staff

Marilyn Amey
Ph.D., Penn State University
amey@msu.edu
Marilyn Amey is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education and chairperson of the Department of Educational Administration. She is interested in leadership issues, including how leaders learn, post-secondary governance and administration issues, community college contexts, and faculty concerns, including interdisciplinary academic work. Her current research involves work on community college leadership development, K-14 partnerships, and a national study of faculty teaching in college student personnel and higher education graduate programs.
Laura Apol
Ph.D., University of Iowa
apol@msu.edu
Laura Apol is an associate professor of teacher education. Her research interests include literary theory and children's and adolescent literature, issues of diversity in children's and adolescent literature, critical reading and response to literature, and historical children's literature. Recent projects include using writing to facilitate healing among high school- aged orphans in post-genocide Rwanda, and publishing stories of Rwandan Tutsi genocide for children of Rwanda and of the world. She has co-edited a collection of poetry for children and, as a published writer and poet, she conducts creative writing workshops and classes for teachers and students on all levels.
Ann Austin
Ph.D., University of Michigan
aaustin@msu.edu
Ann Austin is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education and the inaugural Dr. Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. She is interested, within U.S. and international contexts, in faculty careers, roles, and professional development in higher education, work and workplaces in academe, organizational change and transformation in universities and colleges, reform in doctoral education, and the improvement of teaching and learning processes in postsecondary education. Her interest in these areas includes both the U.S. as well as international contexts. She is currently co-P.I. of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), a National Science Foundation Center now in its sixth year. Her recent work focuses on the changes in faculty careers and academic workplaces, doctoral education, and higher education issues in developing countries, with particular focus on South Africa.
Jeff Bale
Ph.D., Arizona State University
jbale@msu.edu
Second language education is regularly surrounded by conflict and consternation. In broad terms, Jeff Bale's research and teaching attempts to understand why. Current research projects include a reading of the history of second language education in the United States in relation to the ebb and flow of U.S. imperial projects. In addition, he studies educational policy reforms in Hamburg, Germany and their impact on the educational experiences of German language learners. Both projects build on his expertise in language policy analysis, language teacher education, critical theory and humanities- oriented education research. Dr. Bale serves as subject-area leader for the secondary world languages teacher preparation program. He frequently teaches methods courses for that program, as well as an online MA course on language variation and its impact on the K-12 classroom.
Janine Certo
Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University
certo@msu.edu
Janine Certo is an associate professor of language and literacy in the Department of Teacher Education. Her interests include writing instruction, genre theory and pedagogy, poetic language theory and instruction, and arts-based literacy education. Drawing on multiple methods, including poetic inquiry, her research spans a number of areas including literacy and language, creative writing, humanities and aesthetic philosophy, and teacher education. Most recently, she is investigating teachers' knowledge, craft and dispositions with regard to reading, writing and teaching poetry and preadolescents' poetry genre knowledge and development.
Sandra Crespo
Ph.D., University of British Columbia
crespo@msu.edu
Sandra Crespo is an associate professor of teacher education interested in exploring learning environments and teaching practices that promote mathematical inquiry. Her research has focused primarily on preservice elementary teachers and their development as learners of mathematics and mathematics teaching. She also explores teacher groups as contexts for teacher learning and for improving the field experiences of teacher education students. Her work crosses multiple boundaries as she conducts research in the U.S., Canada, and the Dominican Republic. In the latter, she has been part of a curriculum reform team studying the effects of the mathematics texts the team developed for the country’s elementary and middle school grades.
Patrick Dickson
Ph.D., Stanford University
pdickson@msu.edu
W. Patrick Dickson is a professor of educational psychology with interests in human development, multimedia learning environments, and cross-cultural research. His teaching and research activities focus on applying lifespan developmental perspectives to the design of new learning environments. He is also exploring how the internet can be used to create links among students and teachers around the world, as well as links between schools and out-of- school settings, including homes and science museums.
Matthew Diemer
Ph.D., Boston College
diemerm@msu.edu
Matthew Diemer is an associate professor of educational psychology and educational technology. His teaching and scholarship emphasize the sociocultural context of human development and learning. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how marginalized youth negotiate structural constraints in school, college, and work. His program of research explores a) how marginalized youth develop a critical consciousness of social, political, and racial inequality and become motivated to produce social change and be politically active, b) career development and engagement with the opportunity structure among marginalized youth, and c) how this critical consciousness may help marginalized youth more effectively negotiate educational and vocational barriers. A new line of inquiry examines how low-income youths’ developmental context contributes to their postsecondary persistence. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in journals such as Child Development, Developmental Psychology, The Counseling Psychologist, Journal of Counseling Psychology, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology and has been funded by sources such as the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Psychological Foundation.
John Dirkx
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
dirkx@msu.edu
John Dirkx is a professor of higher, adult and lifelong education. His primary research interests focus on teaching and learning in higher and adult education, including education for the professions, education for work, continuing professional development for teachers in higher and adult education, and education for academically under-prepared adults. Within these contexts, his research has addressed the psychosocial, transformative, and spiritual dimensions of adult learning, and the role of imagination, feelings, and emotion in these aspects of adult learning. In addition, recent research has focused on teaching and learning in online environments and students’ experiences of online collaborative group work.
Christopher Dunbar
Ph.D. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
dunbarc@msu.edu
Christopher Dunbar is a professor of K-12 educational administration. His research has focused on alternative education for students who have been unable to successfully matriculate through traditional public school. His current research examines the intersection between school choice and disruptive students. His areas of expertise include school administration, educational leadership and school violence.
Martha Ewing
Ph.D., University of Illinois
mewing@msu.edu
Martha Ewing is an associate professor of kinesiology. She has written in the area of achievement motivation with a focus on youth in sport. She is involved in research aimed at assessing why youth drop out of sports, why coaches (particularly women) drop out, and how to alter sport programs to retain both coaches and youth. In the applied arena, she has worked on developing a way to assess the effectiveness of the delivery of sport psychology services as well as the effectiveness of psychological skills training with athletes.
Amelia Gotwals
Ph.D., University of Michigan
gotwals@msu.edu
Amelia Gotwals is an assistant professor of teacher education. Her research centers on the teaching and learning of science and the role of assessment in this process. She specifically focuses on inquiry-based constructivist learning environments and on methods and frameworks for translating inquiry-based practices in science classrooms into authentic and meaningful assessment tasks.
Dan Gould
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
drgould@msu.edu
Dan Gould is director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and a professor of kinesiology. His area of expertise is mental training for athletic competition and sport psychology. His research interests include the stress-athletic performance relationship, psychological foundations of coaching, athlete motivation, youth leadership and positive youth development through sport. He has been a consultant for the U.S. Olympic Committee, the United States Tennis Association and numerous athletes of all ages and skill levels.
Elizabeth Heilman
Ph.D., Indiana University
eheilman@msu.edu
Elizabeth Heilman is an associate professor of teacher education. Her theoretical work examines the epistemological and ethical claims and boundaries of fields of research and research traditions. This includes disciplinary fields as well as qualitative, critical, pragmatist, and poststructural theories. Her empirical research explores the shaping of the civic and the social imagination. This includes democracy and policy, national and global citizenship, and identity and diversity, as well as how people develop a sense of power, political efficacy, human connection and responsibility to others. She is especially interested in how education can move people's spirits such that we have the collective human will, compassion, and commitment to address injustice, poverty, and violence.
Larry Lauer
Ph.D., University of North Carolina Greensboro
lauerl@msu.edu
Larry Lauer, PhD, is the Director of Coaching Education and Development at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports, Michigan State University. Lauer is a researcher, consultant, writer, and speaker on performance enhancement, coaching, parenting, talent development, aggression in sport, and positive youth development. Named one of the 100 Most Influential Sport Educators in America by the Institute for International Sport, Lauer is listed in the United States Olympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry, 2008-2012, is a volunteer assistant coach for MSU Men’s Tennis, and serves as the sport psychology consultant to USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. Recently, Lauer spent three years evaluating the youth development effectiveness of Think Detroit Police Athletic League (TDP), an organization providing sports to youth in Detroit with a mission of building character. He also trains coaches to develop leadership and life skills in their athletes, and developed an intervention to prevent hockey players from playing dirty and aggressive (The Playing Tough and Clean Hockey Program) which landed him the 2006 Sport and Exercise Psychology Dissertation Award from Sport and Exercise Psychology Academy of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. He recently finished a series of research studies on the role of parents in junior tennis funded by the United States Tennis Association.
Reitumetse Mabokela
Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
mabokela@msu.edu
Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education. Her research examines experiences of marginalized populations and aims to inform and influence institutional policies that affect these groups within institutions of higher education. Her scholarship centers on the examination of four interrelated themes, including organizational change and organizational culture in higher education; gender in higher education; higher education in transitional societies; and the K-16 connection.
Troy Mariage
Ph.D., Michigan State University
mariaget@msu.edu
Troy Mariage is an associate professor of special education. His research interests are in the areas of literacy instruction for students with mild disabilities in elementary classrooms. He has conducted work in early reading instruction, writing instruction, and cognitive strategy instruction that leads to self-regulated learning. More recently, he has extended his work by seeking to understand how to create schools as learning organizations that create the capacity for continuous learning and improvement. Currently, he is conducting a study to explore how teachers can provide concurrent academic and social support for students with significant learning and behavioral difficulties.
Punya Mishra
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
punya@msu.edu
Punya Mishra is a professor of educational technology and director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the theoretical, cognitive and social aspects related to the design and use of computer-based learning environments. He has worked extensively in the area of technology integration in teacher education which led to the development (in collaboration with M. J. Koehler) of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, which has been described as “the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years.” He has received over $4 million in grants, published over 45 articles and book chapters and edited two books. Dr. Mishra is an award-winning instructor who teaches courses at both the masters and doctoral levels in the areas of educational technology, design and creativity. He is a gifted, creative and engaging public speaker, having made multiple keynote and invited presentations for associations and conferences nationally and internationally. He is also an accomplished visual artist and poet.
Evelyn Oka
Ph.D., University of Michigan
evoka@msu.edu
Evelyn Oka is an associate professor of school psychology, educational psychology and a Nationally certified School Psychologist. A developmental and school psychologist, she is interested in the development of self-regulation, social competence and motivation in school and home contexts, particularly among students with learning problems. Her research examines the use of a universal social-emotional intervention to enhance preschool children's self-regulation and social skills in an inclusion classroom. She is also interested in the cultural validity and transportability of evidence-based interventions with diverse populations.
Cynthia Okolo
Ph.D. Indiana University
okolo@msu.edu
Cynthia Okolo is a professor of special education. Her research focuses on improving content-area literacy for students with learning problems and disabilities. She is especially interested in ways in which instructional and communication technologies can facilitate these goals. Her current projects include a collaboration with Freedom Scientific to develop an instructional program that integrates strategies for learning from text with a set of literacy software tools. Another project is examining the integration of literacy strategies and technology in history classrooms. Most of her work has been conducted in middle and high schools and in diverse classrooms that include students with and without disabilities.
Susan Printy
Ph.D., Ohio State University
sprinty@msu.edu
Susan Printy is an associate professor of K-12 educational administration. Her research interests center on schools as learning organizations, with particular focus on the leadership relations between principals and teachers and the use of data in promoting school improvement. Her current work examines the professional impact of social learning that occurs within high school teachers’ departmental communities.
Cary Roseth
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
croseth@msu.edu
Cary Roseth is an assistant professor of educational psychology. He is interested in social development, peer relations, and social contextual influences on classroom achievement. His research focuses on the development of conflict resolution in early childhood and on the effects of cooperation, competition, and individualistic goal structures on children’s academic achievement and peer relations.
BetsAnn Smith
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
bas@msu.edu
BetsAnn Smith is an associate professor of K-12 educational administration. Her research focuses on theories of school reform and development, and on relationships between policy, school organizational development and students' opportunities.
Rand Spiro
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
rspiro@msu.edu
Rand Spiro is a professor of educational psychology. His research areas are knowledge acquisition in complex domains, hypermedia learning environments, multimedia case-based methods in professional education, biomedical cognition, and constructive processes in text comprehension and recall. Much of his research is concerned with the question, “How should learning proceed so that tendencies toward conceptual oversimplification are counteracted and a wide range of future applications of knowledge are supported?” The objective is the validation of basic theoretical principles and related instructional practices that will allow students to master the complex concepts they encounter and to transfer that knowledge from formal schooling to real-world cases - learning for flexibly adaptive use, rather than for imitative reproduction. A central part of the research program involves the development and testing of theory-based hypermedia learning environments designed to promote cognitive flexibility.
Steven Weiland
Ph.D., University of Chicago
weiland@msu.edu
Steven Weiland is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education. His primary research interests are in the fields of academic careers and disciplinary cultures, adult development and aging, and life history methods in the behavioral and social sciences and the humanities. He addresses the nature of disciplinary specializations and their place in intellectual history and the history of higher education, aging in academic life, the rhetoric of scholarly inquiry, and the development of new forms of study and writing in adult development and learning, including educational biography.
E. David Wong
Ph.D., Stanford University
dwong@msu.edu
David Wong is an associate professor of educational psychology. He is interested in how learning can be made into a powerful and compelling experience for learners. With a background in both science and music, his work spans a number of areas, including educational psychology and philosophy, educational technology, and the design of online learning environments. He is also exploring how artistically crafted digital multimedia can be a powerful medium for expressing the nuance and complexity of important ideas.