Faculty Profile 2013
Message from the Dean Greetings, When we ask alumni what made their experiences at UH most meaningful and memorable, we consistently hear one response: our faculty. The UH College of Education faculty have long been among the field’s leaders in research and practice. It’s a proud legacy -- one that we will build on in the future. In addition to the twenty accomplished faculty members we hired last year, this year we welcome ten additional faculty to our team. We look forward to recruiting eighteen more faculty in the next two years. It is truly an exciting time in the UH College of Education. The purpose of this publication is to help introduce you to our newest faculty as well to give you a few snapshots of the remarkable accomplishments of our faculty last year. I am constantly inspired by the work of my colleagues, both those who are fresh to our faculty and those who have built their careers around decades of service to the College. I hope that this Faculty Profile helps you glimpse what I see every day -- Tier One faculty and the promise of even greater things to come. Your ongoing support as we prepare 21st century educators, leaders, health professionals, and psychologists is greatly appreciated. We are grateful beyond measure for the message it sends to the students, staff, and faculty of the College of Education. Sincerely,
Robert H. McPherson Dean, Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair College of Education
Chakema Carmack Assistant Professor, Community Health
New Faculty
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Chakema Carmack’s work examines relationships between drug use, risky sexual behavior, school achievement, and self-worth in adolescence. Her research brings practical community health and risk-reduction interventions to the underserved adolescent populations that need them most. After earning her doctorate in Community Psychology from Wichita State University, Carmack completed a dual-appointment postdoctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University’s Methodology Center and Prevention Research Center. She completed a summer internship at the National Institute of Child and Human Development. Before she served as a public health research analyst at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk Assistant Professor, Mathematics Education
Before joining the Math education faculty at UH, Yasemin Copur-Gencturk served as a postdoctoral research associate for the Rice University School Mathematics Project (RUSMP), where she helped teachers and administrators better understand the nature of mathematics, the effective teaching and assessing of mathematics, and the importance of mathematics in today’s society. She has a wealth of experiences teaching students from diverse backgrounds a range of mathematics - including basic mathematical concepts to high level calculus. Copur-Gencturk earned her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Gail Gillan
Clinical Professor, Health Promotion Gail Gillan brings twenty-four years of experience teaching at the university level and a complex understanding as a practitioner into the classroom. As the Director of UH Wellness, she oversaw the implementation and assessment of wellness programs for a large and diverse community. She served as Co-Principal Investigator for two substantial federal grants awarded by the US Department of Education and received the National Exemplary Award for Innovative Substance Abuse Prevention Programs, Practices, and Policies, selected by The National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD) and the National Prevention Network (NPN).
Sarah Mire
Assistant Professor, School Psychology Sarah Mire served as a research associate and clinical phenotyper with the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC) at Baylor College of Medicine/ Texas Children’s Hospital. At the Texas Children’s Hospital Psychology Service, Disruptive Behavior Disorders program, she became the first school psychology pre-doctoral intern in the APA-accredited psychology training program of Western Youth Service’s mental health clinic. There she implemented the Incredible Years, a group treatment program. In addition, she has extensive clinical experience across school, hospital and clinic-based settings. She has also practiced as a master’s-level school psychologist in Texas public schools.
Lorraine R. Reitzel Associate Professor, Community Health
Lorraine R. Reitzel’s research focuses on how neighborhood context, socioeconomic status impact the health of at-risk and underserved populations. Some of her recent work explored how tobacco retail outlets affect smoking urges of quitting smokers, and how homeless smokers’ daily travels in relation to their shelter impacts their ability to quit smoking. Before joining UH, Reitzel, a licensed psychologist, served as a postdoctoral fellow and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Disparities Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Stressing Research PROFESSOR Wins $2.5 million From NIH to Study Stress, Ethnicity and Addiction Your body’s ability to respond well to stress may impact your vulnerability to drugs abuse. Ezemenari M. Obasi, associate professor in counseling psychology and director of the Hwemudua Addictions and Health Disparities Lab (HAHDL), is working to understand that connection and its unique impact on the African American community A five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH)/ National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) will support research to investigate mechanisms that influence drug-related health disparities in the African-American community. Obasi will lead the longitudinal study, which will cross nine Texas counties and include 350 participants between the ages of 18 and 25. “We’ll be partnering with the community to learn how a person’s social environment and related stressors can ‘get-under-the-skin’ and have a harmful impact on the body’s regulatory system or its capacity to effectively cope with day-to-day stressors across time.” Those stressors, he says, could include exposure to violent crimes, experiences of discrimination, lack of green space, unemployment, substandard housing, substandard educational systems, pollution, high density of drug-retail outlets, and ability to pay bills and/or put food on the table. A focal point of the research is measuring how the body reacts to environmental stressors. The body has a complex network between organs that control how we deal with stress, among other things, by regulating the production and elimination of stress-related hormones. However, chronic exposure to stressors may lead to “wear-and-tear” on this system and compromise the body’s ability to effectively cope with stress. Those who have fallen into substance abuse may produce too little – or too much – of these stress-related hormones, what Obasi calls a “dysregulated human stress response.” “We are hypothesizing that people are finding ways of coping with stressors through other means as their natural human stress response begins to break down,” he said. “While seemingly effective in the short-term, substance use may accelerate the breakdown and increase one’s susceptibility to drug-related health disparities.”
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He is working with a diverse, national research team that includes investigators from UH, University of Georgia, Emory University, University of New Orleans and M.D.
Bradley H. Smith
Anderson Cancer Center. The team also includes a post-doctoral fellow, graduate students and undergraduate students. He is hopeful that data from this research will generate support to follow this cohort through the age of 35, when their health outcomes become more pronounced. His long-term goal is to expand this line of research to include other underserved communities so that culturally informed prevention and treatment programs can be designed to reduce drug-related health disparities. Houston’s diversity makes this research particularly impactful. “[Houston] consists of a significant number of white, black, Latino/a and Asian populations. That places investigators at UH in a unique environmental context to disentangle biological, social and cultural determinants of health. It opens up a floodgate of questions that we will be well positioned to investigate long-term,” Obasi said.
Professor & Co-Training Director, School Psychology Bradley Smith served as Program Director for the Clinical Community Doctoral Training Program at the University of South Carolina (USC), one of the top ranked School Psychology Doctoral Programs. He led the program to win an award for “Innovative Program of the Year” while at USC. Smith has been awarded numerous grants, most notably for his ongoing work with Challenging Horizons After-School Program for children with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD).
Nathan Grant Smith Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology
Nathan Grant Smith’s research focuses on stress and coping, with emphasis on persons from underserved or marginalized groups, like lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and persons living with HIV. Smith served as Principal Investigator on two grants funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) that focus on HIV risk behaviors among gay and bisexual men. Dr. Nathan Grant Smith has served as an Assistant Professor at both McGill University and Texas Woman’s University before joining the UH faculty.
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Dawn Westfall
Tammy D. Tolar
Laura B. Turchi Assistant Professor, Teaching Program
Clinical Assistant Professor, Language Arts/Literacy
Tammy D. Tolar brings expertise both in assessment and STEM education, two critical areas in which she excels. She has served as Research Associate at the Texas Institute of Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics (TIMES) and as the Principal Investigator for the NICHD K99/R00 Career Development Grant titled “Predictors of Growth in Algebra Achievement in Adolescents.” She remains Co-Primary Investigator on an IES grant titled “Arithmetical and Cognitive Antecedents and Concomitants of Algebraic Skill,” a four-year grant to study algebra achievement among middle and high school students.
Laura B. Turchi brings impressive international experience to UH. She served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Norway and has twice been a fellow at the Schloss Leopoldskron in Austria. By leading funded trips overseas, she brought the experience to her undergraduates.
Dawn Westfall brings twenty-four years of clinical experience in Texas public schools - as a teacher, curriculum specialist, and assistant principal. Her diverse roles have included: district curriculum writer, data team certified trainer, district and campus staff developer, literacy team leader, campus 504 and special education administrator, differentiated instruction coach, and mentor. Most recently, she served as a Assistant Principal at Lexington Creek Elementary.
Assistant Professor, Learning Sciences
Her research only adds to her passion for teaching. As a former high school teacher, she maintains a rapport with school districts and future teachers.
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Her record in research and student success is also strong. While faculty at Arizona State University, she served as director of the Teaching Foundations Project, an effort to enhance the content-area preparation of future elementary teachers. She helped write the $33.8 million proposal for the federally funded project and served as co-Principal Investigator. In addition, she directed the teacher certification program at Warren Wilson College.
She has prepared and presented campus and district professional development on a variety of literacy topics and has worked extensively with pre-service teachers.
Stem The Tide New Center Battles National Crisis in Math and Science Education American students have long lagged behind their international counterparts in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and shortages in qualified workers are particularly pressing in Houston, the energy capital of the world. At UH, faculty like UH Center for STEM Teacher Professional Learning director and professor, Wallace Dominey, are working to ensure that teachers have the tools to train the STEM professionals the nation it will so desperately need in the future. Starting Summer of 2013, 20 high school physics teachers from Houston area schools start two years of professional development and training at the UH Center for STEM Teacher Professional Learning. “Most high school physics teachers did not major or minor in physics,” Dominey said. “Center training is an opportunity for teachers to improve their physics content knowledge while also improving their instructional strategies.” The center will provide 120 hours of teacher professional development each year beginning with a two-week summer institute and will include opportunities for participants to explore UH research labs.
to STEM educator preparation programs.
UH was one of three universities selected by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to establish state-wide centers to deliver faculty-led professional development to K12 STEM teachers, to coordinate and conduct research in best practices in STEM education and to provide tools and support
The center will also assist in making UH STEM undergraduate courses more discovery-based with particular emphasis on diverse learners, such as students with limited English proficiency. “The key to our nation’s response to the crisis in STEM education is to meet the needs of diverse students. As the most ethnically diverse research university in the U.S., UH is ideally suited to take up this challenge,” Dominey said. The interdisciplinary effort leverages the expertise of UH faculty in the College of Education, the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the Cullen College of Engineering. Dominey along with Dr. Rebecca Forrest, (physics) and Dr. Fritz Claydon (engineering) serve as Principal Investigators on the two year grant.
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Giving Starts at Home Professor Lee Mountain Takes the College’s Future Personally After over 40 years of service, teaching, research and football games with the UH College of Education, Professor Lee Mountain still has more to give. With her family, she established the Drs. Joe and Lee Mountain Endowed Scholarship Fund, a source of support for aspiring educators that now exceeds $120,000. About 50% of incoming freshman students at UH are the first generation in their families to attend college. Many students maintain jobs and support families. As Mountain observes, even small scholarships make a difference and send an encouraging message to students. “So many students come to me and say ‘I grew up in an inner city neighborhood and made it. I want to go back to my neighborhood and teach to make sure the next generation makes it too.’” Since UH is one of the most ethnically diverse universities in the nation, our faculty have a special opportunity not only to help underserved communities but also to prepare the leaders of a new, more diverse generation. Mountain calls faculty development efforts like hers “team spirit”, a way for faculty and staff to demonstrate how deeply they care about UH, its students and its future. Mountain’s career includes a lifetime of prolific publishing , textbook development, contributions to literacy education and passionate mentoring. Like many other faculty members, Mountain regards giving as a natural extension of her career, another way to impact students.
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To learn more about how you can make a difference, please visit our website: coe.uh.edu/giving
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