UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — There are several new members of the Penn State College of Education faculty as 13 new hires have been brought aboard for the fall semester.
"This latest cohort of 13 tenure-line faculty adds to our existing complement of outstanding faculty as we strive to achieve our strategic mission to change education by educating for change,” said Kim Lawless, dean of the College of Education.
Lawless cited the varying perspectives and experiences that shape each educator as huge assets for the college as it strives toward that goal. The dean also said the potential for what this new group of faculty can do provides a level of excitement about the upcoming academic year.
“What is unique about this group of hires is that they each bring a criticality to their work that challenges the assumptions of our past and creates new possibilities for our future,” Lawless said. “I cannot wait to see what we will accomplish together in the year to come."
The new College of Education faculty:
- Angelique Aitken, assistant professor of education, comes to the college from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she was an assistant research professor. Prior to that, she was an IES research fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. During her professional career, Aitken has served as associate general counsel for Washington, D.C., Public Schools, a behavior interventionist and a special education teacher. Aitken’s research surrounds literacy interventions for developing readers and writers with high-incidence disabilities and the teachers who support them. To date, her research has centered on literacy instruction, literacy motivation and special education.
- Sophia Ángeles, assistant professor of education (bilingual), earned a doctorate in education with a concentration in urban schooling at the University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Education and Information Studies. Ángeles’ research examines how immigration and language policies and practices shape the educational trajectories of high school-age immigrants. In addition to her research experience, she has engaged in advocacy and lobbying efforts to protect the rights of English learners and their families while accessing an equitable education through her work with the Californians Together English Learner Leadership & Legacy Initiative.
- Brittany Aronson joins the college as associate professor of education (teacher education) from Miami University in Ohio, where she served as an assistant professor in educational leadership. Her research work has been rooted in discovering where inequality exists within the education system and how to best create lasting and meaningful change. Her research agenda has two related strands: preparing educators and community members to actively work against oppressive school structures, and the role educational policy plays in teaching and teacher education.
- Javier Casado Pérez returns to Penn State five years after earning a doctorate from the College of Education and later taking a job as program coordinator of Marriage, Couples and Family Counseling at Portland State University. They have been hired as assistant professor of counselor education. Casado Pérez received their master’s degree in mental health counseling from Monmouth University, with a specialty in relationship and family counseling. They focus their scholarship on mental health justice, equity-minded instructional design, critically conscious trauma-informed care and the institutional experience of racially minoritized educators.
- Jimena Cosso joins the college as assistant professor of education (critical quantitative) after having completed her doctorate in educational psychology and research methodology at Purdue University. Cosso’s research focuses on exploring the home environment of Latine (a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American origin) families and its association with dual language learners’ (DLL) early skills, with a focused look at early mathematics skills. Her work addresses Latine families’ funds of knowledge to support the development of school readiness skills and contextual factors that affect DLL children’s skills readiness.
- Mariah Harmon joins the college as assistant professor of education (teacher education) after completing her doctorate in education with a specialization in teacher learning, justice and diversity in education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Her research interests are teacher learning and understanding how teachers build inclusive and equitable classrooms. She is a qualitative researcher focusing on the developmental needs of Black women pre-service teachers with a specific focus on strategies to create more inclusive learning environments in teacher education programs.
- Rishi Krishnamoorthy, assistant professor of education (science education), comes to Penn State from Rutgers University where they served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Krishnamoorthy completed their doctorate in science education from New York University and holds a master of science in medical biophysics with a certificate in molecular imaging from Western University. Based in North America and India, their research takes a sociocultural and material approach to investigate meaning-making and learning, both in and out of school settings. They are interested in being part of building a future where precolonial and Indigenous ways of knowing are valued in science education research, teaching and learning.
- Aiesha Lee joins Penn State’s College of Education as assistant professor of education (counselor education) in the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education. Lee, who just completed her third year in the counselor education and supervision doctoral program at the College of William & Mary, has research interests in Black families, intergenerational trauma, spirituality and trauma-informed care. Lee is a licensed professional counselor in New Jersey and a nationally-certified counselor. She earned her bachelor's in psychology from Montclair State University and completed her master’s in counseling, with a concentration in marriage and family therapy, at The College of New Jersey. Her clinical experiences include working with children, families and adults in a community clinic.
- Ricardo Martinez has joined the Penn State College of Education as assistant professor of education (mathematics education) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was an assistant professor of teaching, learning and teacher education. His longtime work with youth participatory action research — or YPAR — seeks to create mathematical learning experiences that returns the legitimacy of mathematical knowledge creation back to the people. Martinez’s research seeks to discover and dismantle root causes that lead people to believe that they are not “math people” by investigating how mathematics can be used to empower students and teachers. Martinez runs summer mathematics and YPAR programs for youth that allow for the exploration of the relationships formed with mathematics.
- Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg is assistant professor of education (special education with a focus on early intervention) in the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education. She comes to Penn State from the University of Miami. Her research has a specific focus on intellectual and developmental disability (IDD), transition supports and early intervention/early childhood. Cultivating co-advocates among caregivers and practitioners has been a core initiative for her, engaging others in collective action to dismantle the deficit-framed policies, practices and systems that constrain equity across generations and communities. With more than 13 years of teaching experience in higher education, she has taught and supervised undergraduate and graduate students across a range of disciplines, including special education, community psychology and music therapy.
- Wilson Okello joins the Penn State College of Education as assistant professor of education (higher education) in the Department of Education Policy Studies. He draws on Black critical theories to advance research on student development theory, critical qualitative inquiry and anti-racist curriculum and pedagogies, among others. Okello joins Penn State from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was assistant professor of higher education in the Watson College of Education; he also was a faculty affiliate in Africana Studies. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Youngstown State University, his master’s from the University of Rhode Island and his doctorate from Miami University in Ohio.
- Kamaria Porter joins Penn State’s College of Education as assistant professor of education (higher education) in the Department of Education Policy Studies with a wide array of experience in the field of racial and gender equities in higher education, particularly in graduate education and campus sexual assault. During her doctoral program at the University of Michigan, Porter was a researcher on the University Responses to Sexual Assault Research project through the Department of Sociology. A recent article from the project, "Gender Equity and Due Process in Campus Sexual Assault Adjudication Procedures” was published in the Journal of Higher Education. Authored by Porter and her collaborators Sandra Levitsky and Elizabeth Armstrong, their analysis of 381 adjudication procedures has major implications for the Department of Education's proposed changes to Title IX regulations, announced in June.
- Wenting (Ellen) Zou joins the College of Education faculty as assistant professor of education (educational psychology) in the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education. She is co-hired by Penn State’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS). Her research lies at the intersection of learning sciences, learning analytics and instructional design with artificial intelligence (AI). She specializes in using advanced computational methods to understand the cognitive, social and affective processes in different online learning contexts by analyzing large-scale education data. She also designs AI-supported personalized learning environments to address diverse learning needs. Prior to joining Penn State, Zou also worked as an e-learning specialist for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, providing consultancy services on technology integration in learning and teaching for the enhancement of education equity, quality and efficiency in the Global South.