Kathleen Lynch is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences.

Academic Degrees: 
Ed.D., Education, Harvard University
Ed.M., Education Policy and Management, Harvard University
Ed.M., Specialized Studies, Harvard University
A.B., History and Literature, Harvard College

Areas of Expertise:

Education policy and inequality

Current Research Interests:

Strengthening the research base on innovations in STEM education
Examining the role of out-of-school time in educational opportunities and outcomes

Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead is a Professor and Director of Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation programs

Academic Degrees:

Ph.D., Psychology, Claremont Graduate University
M.A., Psychology,Claremont Graduate University
B.A., Psychology, University of South Carolina at Columbia

Areas of Expertise:

Evaluation design
Improving evaluation quality
Strengthening evaluator design
Applied studies of educational policies and interventions designed to promote student learning and equity

Current Research Projects:

Community needs assessment for the UConn Office of Outreach and Engagement.
Research and evaluation of a 4-year National Science Foundation Grant on computational thinking for neural engineering (Award # 2101615).
External evaluation of the Early Childhood Intervention Personnel Center for Equity (Cooperative Agreement # H325C22003).
Scoping review of youth-participatory evaluation practices.

H. Kenny Nienhusser is an Associate Professor in and Program Coordinator of the Higher Education & Student Affairs Program and Faculty Director of La Comunidad Intelectual, a learning community that nurtures students who identify as Latinx and/or Caribbean or are interested in issues that affect those communities. He is also Affiliate Faculty in El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. Previously, Professor Nienhusser was an Associate Professor in the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in the College of Education, Nursing, and Health Professions at the University of Hartford. As a first-generation Latino college student who grew up in a working-class household of immigrant parents, diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of his work as a researcher, teacher, advisor, and scholar-citizen.

His research examines the postsecondary education access of minoritized youth in the United States. More specifically, he addresses two lines of inquiry that shape higher education opportunities for minoritized youth. The first line of scholarship includes a further understanding of the origins of public policies and their implementation environments that affect the postsecondary education access of minoritized youth. The second explores the experiences of minoritized youth (and more recently their families) as they navigate higher education access barriers (largely the consequences of discriminatory public policies and practices). Most of his scholarship has investigated the public policy landscape and experiences of undocumented immigrant youth including those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in relation to their postsecondary education access.

Grace Player is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction.

Academic Degrees:
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
MA, Teachers College, Columbia University
BA, Psychology, Vassar College

Areas of Expertise:
Girls of Color Literacies
Women of Color Feminisms and Education
Critical Writing Pedagogy
Social Justice-Oriented Education
Community Literacies
Literacy Pedagogy

Megan Staples is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education

Academic Degrees:
Ph.D, Mathematics Education, Stanford University
MA, Mathematics Education, Stanford University
BA, Mathematics, Brown University

Areas of Expertise:
Mathematics Education (Secondary)
Classroom Discourse
Mathematical Argumentation and Justification
Collaborative Groupwork

Current Research Projects:

Dr. Staples is the PI for the CT Noyce Math Teacher Leaders Project, a 5-year grant funded by the national science foundation. This professional learning and service program engages inservice veteran secondary math teachers in Connecticut’s Alliance Districts to expand their leadership capacity and advocacy for equity in mathematics education. The project also aims to expand infrastructure for supporting the development of math teacher leaders.
Dr. Staples is PI on a collaborative, National Science Foundation Grant, Justification as an Equity Practice. This exploratory study examines how teachers take up justification as a central practice in their secondary math classrooms, as well as the potential affordances of justification is advance equity goals in mathematics classrooms.

Jennie M. Weiner is a Professor of Educational Leadership.

Academic Degrees:
Ed.D., Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice, Harvard University
Ed.M., Education Management and Policy, Harvard University
B.A., American Studies, Amherst College

Areas of Expertise:
Gender, race, and leadership
Organizational learning and change
Educator professionalism

Current Research Projects:

Evaluation of the impact of professional development on reading instruction on teacher practice.
Critically examining education leaders' reasoning regarding racially diversifying the teaching force and the impacts of that reasoning.
Engaging in comprehensive literature review of research on women in education administration.