The College of Education & Human Development added several faculty this year – faculty whose research, teaching and service make significant contributions to the college and its students.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Akilah Lee, who earned her Ph.D. from Georgia State University, focuses her research on disparities in health outcomes that exist within maternal and child health populations, especially as it relates to individuals from culturally- and linguistically-diverse backgrounds.
Department of Counseling and Psychological Services
Kan Guvensel, who earned his Ph.D. from Georgia State University, studies psychological well-being, masculinity and multicultural issues in counseling, such as minority stress, racial mislabeling, international counseling, refugee adjustment and LGBT issues in counseling.
Han Na Suh earned her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, focuses on culturally crucial constructs and how they impact academic, career and life satisfaction, as well as mental health issues. She also researches culturally-appropriate interventions.
Leslie Wofford, who earned her Ph.D. from Auburn University, is a certified rehabilitation counselor and an associate licensed mental health counselor. Her research interests include disability education and advocacy, multicultural counseling and corrections counseling.
Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Renata Love Jones earned her Ph.D. from Boston College and her research explores literacy education and development for racialized and multilingual children. Her recent scholarly endeavors include projects on language-based reading and writing curriculum approaches with multilingual children.
Cori Salmeron earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and her research focuses on multilingual students’ language and literacy practices, how teachers enact culturally sustaining pedagogy and preparing teachers to work with students from a wide range of cultural and linguistic communities.
Department of Learning Sciences
Jason Braasch earned his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Chicago and examines cognitive processes that underlie the evaluation of content and source information when reading texts found on the Internet, and the ways individual differences like reading skill promote (or undermine) successful learning.
Jennifer Darling-Aduana, who earned her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, studies the equity implications of K-12 digital learning as well as the student-teacher and student-curriculum interactions in these settings that inadvertently contribute to (or can be used to mitigate) social reproduction in the classroom.
Justin Malone earned his M.A. from Gallaudet University and is a clinical instructor in American Sign Language (ASL). From 2018-2020, he taught ASL and deaf culture at Towson University.
Ben Shapiro, who earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, studies how people engage and learn in relation to the physical environment and how to develop new types of learning environments and experiences that support computer and data science education.
Department of Middle and Secondary Education
Garrett Delavan earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utah and focuses his research on equitable access in language education. He specializes in teacher preparation in world languages and ESOL education, and U.S. language education policy.