Personnel
Founding Director Emeritus
Stafford Hood
Sheila M. Miller Professor Emeritus of Education, Curriculum & Instruction
Founding Director, Sheila M. Miller Professor of Education Emeritus, and Professor Emeritus, Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education. He is a Fellow and Council Member of the International Evaluation Academy, Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, recipient of the American Evaluation Association’s 2015 Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award, and in 2014 was conferred an honorary appointment as Adjunct Professor in the School of Education Studies at Dublin City University (Dublin Ireland).
College of Education Affiliates
Cherie Avent
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
(Interim Assistant Director, March-August 2023)
Cherie M. Avent is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology. Her research focuses on issues related to social justice, communication, and STEM education evaluation. Cherie received her PhD in Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she taught at the Guilford Technical Community College in North Carolina. She has evaluated multiple education projects/programs funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and the College Foundation of North Carolina.
Melissa Goodnight
Assistant Professor & Queries Division Co-Chair, Educational Psychology
Melissa Rae Goodnight is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology as well as Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership (0% Appointment) and LAS Global Studies (0% appointment) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA). Prior to joining the College of Education, she was a lecturer in Global Studies, teaching courses in interdisciplinary research and human rights. She received a PhD in education from the University of California Los Angeles with emphases in comparative education and evaluation. Dr. Goodnight began doing health and educational work abroad as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Kingston, Jamaica. She has also taught and done extensive fieldwork in India. Her transnational scholarship and teaching focus on research design, monitoring and evaluation, social justice theories, and education for underserved and historically marginalized communities. Currently, she is engaged in several local and national evaluation and research projects related to diversity and equity in the areas of higher education, K-12 schooling, and public health.
Rebecca Hinze-Pifer
Assistant Professor, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
Rebecca Hinze-Pifer is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership. She holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago, a Master's of Public Policy from George Washington University, and a B.S. in astrophysics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Denice Hood
Teaching Professor, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
Interim Director
Denice Ward Hood is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership. She has over 25 years of experience conducting evaluations of educational programs. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois, Dr. Hood was a Sr. Management Research Analyst in the Office of University Evaluation at Arizona State University. She was Associate Professor in the Educational Psychology Department and Director of Research & Evaluation in the College of Education at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Hood teaches courses program evaluation, including the evaluation of higher education programs.
Samantha Lindgren
Assistant Professor, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
Dr. Lindgren’s work focuses on youth-oriented Sustainability Education, including Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development, and its impact on decision-making in the home, both in the United States and abroad. Her work is situated in topics of household energy and sustainable agriculture. She examines youth and their ability to affect change in their homes and communities through purposeful sustainability education programming in formal and informal settings. Internationally, her work is focused on the introduction of efficient cookstoves and sustainable agriculture practices in resource-limited settings and the role that education and youth play in strengthening community resilience. Domestically, she examines environmental education programming that addresses access and equity, as a way to connect youth and their households to their local environments. Dr. Lindgren is affiliated faculty in the department of Agriculture and Biological Engineering and the Technology Entrepreneurship Center in the Grainger College of Engineering, as well as the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives program.
Aixa Marchand
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
(Interim Assistant Director, Community/Public Engagement, May 2023-August 2023)
Aixa D. Marchand is an assistant professor in the Developmental Sciences Division of the Department of Educational Psychology. She obtained her PhD in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology with a certificate in African American and Diasporic Studies from the University of Michigan in 2019. Her main line of research applies an interdisciplinary lens to the societal, contextual, and cultural factors that shape the academic experiences of students of color, with a focus on Black parents' critical consciousness. More specifically, her research uses a multi-method approach to focus on the attributions that Black parents make about educational inequities and how these attributions may relate to how they engage with their children’s schools. Related work uses a strengths-based approach to investigate the way that Black immigrant parents perceive the expected relationship between home and school in relation to expectations in their home country. Dr. Marchand’s other research inquiries include a) illuminating how students and parents of color critically analyze school structures; b) elucidating how familial processes, such as familism and parent racial socialization, impact adolescents’ academic experiences and socio-emotional wellbeing; and c) the use and development of rigorous methodological tools to address societal inequities.
Asif Wilson
Assistant Professor, Curriculum & Instruction
Asif Wilson's, Ph.D., research broadly focuses on justice-centered pedagogies in P-20 educational contexts and has been featured in peer-reviewed publications like the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, the Journal of Educational Foundations, and Rethinking Schools.
More specifically, Asif’s scholarship studies the historical and contemporary forces that shape justice-centered pedagogies, how teachers engage in, and conceptualize, justice-centered pedagogies, and how students experience justice-centered educational spaces. Wilson is a three-time alumnus from the University of Illinois Chicago, completing his bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, master’s degree in Educational Studies, and doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction. He is actively involved in education organizing in Chicago and nationally with several groups.
Retired Affiliates
James Anderson
Professor Emeritus, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
James D. Anderson is Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
In 2021, Anderson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest honor societies in the nation. He was sworn into the Board of Trustees at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and inducted into the Stillman College Educator Hall of Fame—both in 2020.
Additionally, the AERA awarded him a Presidential Citation in 2020, its highest award. In 2012, Anderson was selected as a Fellow for Outstanding Research by the AERA and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Anderson was also elected to the National Academy of Education in 2008.
His scholarship focuses broadly on the history of U.S. education, with a subfield on the history of African American education. Anderson’s seminal book, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, won the American Educational Research Association outstanding book award in 1990.
From 2006 to 2016, Anderson served as senior editor of the History of Education Quarterly. In 2016, he was awarded AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Award for best article. He served as an adviser for and participant in the PBS documentaries School: The Story of American Public Education (2001), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002), Forgotten Genius: The Percy Julian Story (2007) and Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (2018).
Among numerous honors from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Anderson was awarded the IMPACT award from the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois in 2019. In 2013, he was selected a Center for Advanced Study Professor of Education for the campus.
Jennifer Greene
Professor Emerita, Educational Psychology
Jennifer C. Greene is a professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BA in psychology from Wellesley College and her PhD in educational psychology from Stanford University. Prior to Illinois, Greene held faculty positions at the University of Rhode Island and Cornell University. Greene’s work focuses on the intersection of social science methodology and social policy and aspires to be both methodologically innovative and socially responsible. Greene’s methodological research has concentrated on advancing qualitative and mixed methods approaches to social inquiry. In the field of evaluation, she has contributed both theoretical and practical scholarship in democratic and values-engaged approaches to evaluation. Greene has held leadership positions in the American Evaluation Association and the American Educational Research Association. She has also provided editorial service to both communities, including a six-year position as co-editor-in-chief of New Directions for Evaluation, and current positions as an associate editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and series co-editor for the series Evaluation and Society. Her own publication record includes a co-editorship of the Sage Handbook of Program Evaluation and authorship of Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry. Greene is the past president of the American Evaluation Association.
Katherine Ryan
Professor Emerita, Educational Psychology
My research interests focus on educational evaluation and the intersection of educational accountability issues and high stakes assessment. As educational accountability has become increasingly more important nationally and globally, my work has examined both evaluative capacity building and monitoring issues involved in test-based educational accountability. My current research includes an investigation of the intended and unintended consequences of a state-wide assessment and accountability system in relationship to students, instruction, and educational outcomes.
William Trent
Professor Emeritus, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
My professional career has included administration in higher education as an Associate Chancellor, Director of an Educational Opportunity Program and a TRIO project Director. I currently enjoy a professorship in Education and Sociology that has afforded me the opportunity to contribute to the diversification of scholars in both Education research and research in the Sociology of Education.