Project Advisory Board
Phillip J. Bowman (Professor, Marsal Family School of Education; Faculty Associate, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan)
Phillip J. Bowman is the founding Director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) at the University of Michigan. In addition, he is a professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education; holds a faculty appointment in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; serves as faculty associate in the Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research; and serves as research affiliate with the National Poverty Center at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy.
Malik S. Henfield, (Full Professor and Founding Dean of the School of Education, Loyola University)
Dr. Malik S. Henfield is a Full Professor and Founding Dean of the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University Chicago. He received a BA in Biology from Francis Marion University, a M.Ed. and Ed.S. in School Counseling from The University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education from The Ohio State University.
Scheduled to launch Fall 2021, The Institute for Racial Justice (IRJ) at Loyola University Chicago will serve as a central hub for the university community and external partners who want to dismantle racism through education, research, and community engagement. IRJ will be a highly visible anchor in Chicago where discourse, fellowship, and reimagination converge to aid in the elimination of racism, anti-blackness, and xenophobia. The Institute will use an intersectional lens to research new and innovative ways to facilitate healing and liberation for Asian, Black, Latina/o/x, and Indigenous people who have been on the receiving end of entrenched systemic racism. IRJ will support institutional change by sharing its findings, in-person and virtually, in Chicago, across the nation, and globally.
Dr. Henfield has published multiple scholarly manuscripts and books, and delivered numerous national, regional, state, and local keynote addresses and professional presentations. His scholarship situates Black students’ lived experiences in a broader ecological milieu to critically explore how their personal, social, academic, and career success is impeded and enhanced by school, family, and community contexts. His work to date has focused heavily on the experiences of Black students formally identified as gifted/high-achieving while his latest projects focus more exclusively on developing, implementing, and evaluating in- and out-of-school interventions associated with developing Black students ready to succeed in college and careers.
Odis Johnson Jr., PhD, (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor; Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools; Director, Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies, Johns Hopkins University)
Dr. Johnson is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Social Policy and STEM Equity at Johns Hopkins University, and the Edmund W. Gordon Chair of Social Policy and Evaluation at the Educational Testing Service, Inc. (ETS). At Hopkins, Dr. Johnson has faculty appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the School of Education as Executive Director of the Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, and in the Department of Sociology. He also directs the National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM), and serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Sociology of Education, a journal of the American Sociological Association. Dr. Johnson’s work on the interrelated topics of social policy, data science, and race has been funded by the NSF, NIH, Joyce Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. His field-defining accomplishments in research have received several commendations, including a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, the 2013 AERA Outstanding Review of Research Award, the 2015 Emerald Publishing Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award, and in 2023, selection as an AIR Scholar of the American Institutes for Research. A noted voice for justice and racial reform, Dr. Johnson’s work and ideas about social change were mentioned in 881 syndicated broadcast and news media outlets in 2023.
TITLE:
President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan
Senior Research Affiliate, National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, & Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM), Johns Hopkins University
Professor of Research, Office of Educational Research, Louisiana State University
Charles Payne (Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Rutgers University-Newark; Director, Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research)
Charles M. Payne is the Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Rutgers University Newark and the Director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research. His research and teaching interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history, particularly the Black Freedom Struggle. Payne has been the recipient of a Senior Scholar grant from the Spencer Foundation and was a Resident Fellow at the foundation for 2006-7. He has won an Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, granted in recognition of work that contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. He spent the 2014-15 school year as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He holds honorary degrees from Syracuse University and Lesley University. Payne has taught at Southern University, Williams College, Haverford College, Northwestern University, Duke University, and the University of Chicago. He has won several teaching awards; at Northwestern, he held the Charles Deering McCormick Chair for Teaching Excellence and at Duke, the Sally Dalton Robinson Chair for Excellence in Teaching and Research. Payne holds a bachelor’s degree in Afro-American studies from Syracuse University and a doctorate in sociology from Northwestern.
Terri Pigott (Professor, College of Education and Human Development and School of Public Health, Georgia State University)
Dr. Terri Pigott is a Professor at Georgia State University in the College of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on methods for meta-analysis, including statistical power, methods for missing data in meta-analysis, and guidance for high-quality meta-analyses. She has collaborated on several systematic reviews and meta-analyses with researchers in public health, social welfare and education. She is past- President of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, and a co-editor of the journal Research Synthesis Methods. She is also the founding chair of the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. She serves as the PI for two federally-funded training grants for meta-analysis from the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences. She was named an American Educational Research Association Fellow in 2023 and was the 2016 recipient of the Frederick Mosteller Award from the Campbell Collaboration.
William R. Penuel is a Distinguished Professor in the Institute of Cognitive Science and School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. He designs and studies curriculum materials, assessments, and professional learning experiences for teachers in STEM education. He also studies how contemplative practices can support educators in cultivating more compassionate schools. A third line of his research focuses on how long-term research-practice partnerships can be organized to address systemic differences in opportunities to learn.
Michael Rodriguez (Professor, Dean of the College of Education and Human Development, Campbell Leadership Chair; Founding Co-Director of the Educational Equity Resource Center, University of Minnesota)
Dr. Michael Rodriguez focuses much of his research on understanding the psychometric properties of tests. This work has included research on the effects of item formats and the use of constructed-response versus multiple-choice items. He has a strong interest in applied measurement, spending a good deal of time working with schools and school districts to develop methods for improving their use of large-scale test information for planning and evaluation. He also continues to work on issues related to improving accessibility of assessment of students with disabilities and English language learners. He also leads a Youth Development Research Group, examining multiple aspects of youth development, social-emotional skills, and important educational outcomes. He currently provides advisory support to the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (ETS), and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Awards include: 2019 C. Eugene Allen Award for Innovative International Initiatives, University of Minnesota; 2009 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Post baccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education, University of Minnesota; 2008 Robert H. Beck Faculty Teaching Award, College of Education and Human Development Alumni Society; 2005 Albert J. Harris Research Award of the International Reading Association.
Ivory A. Toldson (Professor, Howard University; National Director, Education Innovation and Research, QEM Network)
Ivory A. Toldson is the president and CEO of the QEM Network, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education and executive editor of the Journal for Policy Analysis and Research, published by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. Previously, Dr. Toldson was appointed by President Barack Obama to devise national strategies to sustain and expand federal support to HBCUs, as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Since 2016, as QEM principal investigator, Dr. Toldson has been awarded more than $4.5 million from federal agencies including NSF and NASA, to support capacity building efforts for STEM programs at Minority Serving Institutions.
With more than 80 publications, Dr. Toldson was dubbed a leader “who could conceivably navigate the path to the White House” by the Washington Post; one of “30 leaders in the fight for Black men;” by Newsweek Magazine; and the “Problem Solver” by Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. A sought-after speaker, Dr. Toldson has been featured on MSNBC TV, C-SPAN2 TV, NPR News, and numerous national and local radio stations. In print, his research has been featured in The Washington Post, CNN.com, The New York Times, The National Journal, Essence Magazine, BET.com, The Grio, and Ebony Magazine. Dr. Toldson was named in The Root 100, an annual ranking of the most influential African-American leaders. He also served as contributing education editor for The Root, where he debunked some of the most pervasive myths about African-Americans and gained a national reputation for challenging “BS,” or Bad Stats.
Dr. Toldson, according to former U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan, is “a prolific young scholar and myth buster.” According to NPR, “Toldson says the refusal to look at the data closely — to prefer a story over the facts — creates more problems than it solves.” According to the Washington Post, Dr. Toldson help others to “Look deeper into the dispiriting statistics” to “Find a rarely acknowledged beauty: an indomitable spirit and irrepressible desire to beat the odds.” He is married to Marshella Toldson, and together, they are raising their daughter, Makena and their son, Ivory Kaleb.