The UW–Madison School of Education is welcoming 16 new faculty members to campus during the upcoming 2020-21 academic year, which is one of the largest cohorts to sign on with the School since its founding in 1930.
“What makes our School so unique and outstanding is the depth and breadth of outstanding faculty members across our 10 departments,” says Dean Diana Hess, who holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. “And once again, we’re excited to welcome another group of exceptional scholars who will be working in fields as varied as the arts, health, and education. They will bring a diverse set of viewpoints and experiences to our School as we build upon our excellence.”
Following are the incoming faculty members, grouped by department:
Katie Hudnall, assistant professor, Art Department
Hudnall joins the Art Department after serving as a faculty member teaching furniture design at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana, since 2013. She received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in furniture design/woodworking. She was a fellow at the Windgate ITE Residency through the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia in the summer of 2016. Her work has been included in many publications and exhibitions.
Priyanka Agarwal, assistant professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Agarwal comes to the School of Education after conducting post-doctoral work in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she led a research study of an online college-level remedial mathematics program. Her research focuses on designing and examining inclusive learning environments in the context of K-12 mathematics education. She is the first author of an article published in 2019 in the journal Cognition and Instruction titled, “Integrating Power to Advance the Study of Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement in Mathematics and Science.”
Yoon Jeon Kim, assistant professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Kim will join the Design, Informal, and Creative Education (DICE) program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the spring of 2021 after serving as the executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Playful Journey Lab. Kim earned her PhD in instructional systems from Florida State University. Her work has centered on the topic of playful and creative assessment in student-led learning environments, from video games to makerspaces, for the goal of reimagining what and how we are measuring in the education system. The core of her work is close collaboration with practitioners — co-creating assessment and data tools that empower them to innovate their own practices, so they can better support equal learning opportunities for all learners.
Emily Machado, assistant professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Machado has spent the last two years as an assistant professor of language, literacy, and culture at the University of Washington in Seattle. Machado is an alumna of the University of Illinois at Chicago and studies the teaching and learning of writing in multilingual early childhood classroom contexts. Her current research examines how young children draw on their communicative resources (including languages, dialects, literacies, cultural practices, etc.) in and through composition. A former first grade teacher, Machado is deeply interested in the ways that early literacy teachers can make their classrooms more equitable, humane, and inclusive for all young children.
Peter McDonald, assistant professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
McDonald previously served as an assistant professor of game design at DePaul University’s School of Design, where he taught game studies, media theory, and semiotics. His research focuses on the ways that players make sense of and interpret games. His work has appeared in Games & Culture, The American Journal of Play, and Analog Game Studies, among other publications. While earning his degree at the University of Chicago, McDonald worked on several large-scale games with funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation, including “The Project,” “The Source,” “SEED,” and “The Parasite.” These games involved hundreds of players exploring elaborately staged worlds across the south side of Chicago and online.
Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., assistant professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
Henry, who earned a PhD in 2016 from UW–Madison, returns to campus after spending the last four years as an assistant professor of educational policy studies and practice, and a founding member of and policy fellow in the Education Policy Center, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His interdisciplinary research and teaching primarily focus on racial capitalism and neoliberal restructuring, charter schools and school choice policy, urban education reform, leadership for equity and educational justice, and the politics of education. Henry’s work is grounded in and shaped by culturally relevant and restorative justice approaches to education, critical race theory, and Black studies.
Anjalé Welton, professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis
A faculty member since 2011 in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Welton’s scholarship examines how educational leaders both dialogue about and address race and racism in their school communities. Other research areas related to racial equity include college and workforce readiness and access, especially for students of color, and the role of student and community voice and activism in education reform. Her professional experiences include coordinator of a leadership and empowerment program for urban youth, a facilitator of an urban education teacher preparation program, and a teacher in large urban districts. She is also committed to providing professional development for educational leaders on issues of race and equity.
David Klingbeil, assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Klingbeil returns to Wisconsin after having served as an assistant professor in the School Psychology program of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and prior to that in a similar program at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His research identifies evidence-based practices for schools and studies ways to increase their usefulness and feasibility for educators, particularly those working in high-poverty schools. Klingbeil is a 2020 recipient of the Lightner Witmer Award for early career scholarship from Division 16 of the American Psychological Association.
James Pustejovsky, associate professor, Department of Educational Psychology
After earning his PhD in 2013 from Northwestern University, Pustejovsky has been a statistician and assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught in the Educational Psychology Department and the graduate program in quantitative methods. His research involves developing statistical methods for problems in education, psychology, and other areas of social science research, with a focus on methods related to research synthesis and meta-analysis.
Jina Chun, assistant professor, Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education
Chun was most recently a post-doctoral research associate with the Lifting Individuals and Families through Empowerment (LIFE) research lab at Michigan State University. She also was an adjunct faculty member at both Utah State University and Western Washington University. Chun completed her PhD (2017) in rehabilitation counselor education at Michigan State University and her master’s (2012) in rehabilitation psychology here at UW–Madison. Her research focuses on: psychoeducation programs for caregivers/families of transition-age youth and young adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities; career decision-making and its impact on quality of life of transition youth and young adults with disabilities; the interplay of vocational and psychological well-being and career success; multicultural education and training; and evidence-based practice in counseling education.
Hailey Love, assistant professor, Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education
Love joins the School of Education after serving as an assistant professor in the Department of Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas since 2018. Love’s scholarship employs mixed methods research to advance equitable, high-quality inclusive education across early childhood settings and help build positive family-professional partnerships, particularly between educators and families of color. Her goal is to help early educators better serve children and families with various abilities, resources, and support needs within high-quality inclusive classrooms. She earned her PhD in 2018 in special education from the University of Kansas, with an emphasis on early childhood.
Carlyn Mueller, assistant professor, Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education
Mueller, a recent Academic Pathways Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University, earned her PhD in special education from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2019. She was awarded an outstanding dissertation award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Special and Inclusive Education Research special interest group and is a fierce advocate for disability rights. Her research agenda focuses on disability identity in school contexts, including development of disability community in special education, disability representation in curriculum, and special education equity issues.
Ashley White, assistant professor, Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education
White recently graduated from the University of South Florida and is the 2019-20 Joseph P. Kennedy Public Policy Fellow with the House Committee on Education and Labor under Chairman Bobby Scott (VA-3). White has merged her extensive P-12 teaching experience with her scholarship and policy advocacy towards the goal of ensuring equitable educational outcomes for students, individuals, and communities with disabilities, particularly those who are multiply marginalized by ethno-racial identities. White’s research also includes the pursuit of antiracist and anti-ableist educational policies and practices. Her most current research examines identities of race and disability related to African American student-athletes in NCAA Division I programs at predominantly white institutions of higher education.
Baron Kelly, professor, Department of Theatre and Drama
Kelly joins the Department of Theatre and Drama with a concurrent role in the Division of Continuing Studies’ Odyssey Project. He earned his PhD in theatre research from UW–Madison, a diploma from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and a master of fine arts in acting from California State University, Long Beach. His teaching of acting has led him to teaching and lecturing residencies in more than a dozen countries on five continents and in 20 American states. He was previously head of acting and director of graduate studies at the University of Louisville. Kelly’s performance resumé includes work on Broadway, film, television, and myriad regional and international theatres. His work has been published in several theatre-related scholarly journals.
Neil Mills, assistant professor, Department of Theatre and Drama
Mills, who earned a master of fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University, is an art director and scenic designer. They have most recently been working as an experience designer on a variety of different themed entertainment attractions for Themespace in Pasadena, California. Mills was an adjunct professor in 2017-18 at Kean University. Prior to that appointment, Mills spent five years in New York City as a theatrical designer and as an art director for television — including with “The Today Show” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
Megan Reilly, assistant professor, Department of Theatre and Drama
A scholar-artist who researches through her theatrical design, Reilly creates original lighting, media, and scenic designs for performance. She investigates creating entire worlds and realities that call for the active engagement of audience/participants in performances involving mixed reality, immersive theatre, and alternate reality games. Her professional work includes designs in Minneapolis, New England, Arkansas, and Texas, as well as internationally as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and with Collaborative Artists Company in Dublin, Ireland. She is currently serving as the co-vice commissioner of programming for the Digital Media Commission. She earned a master of fine arts at the University of Texas at Austin.