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Kalena Cortes, PhDVerlin and Howard Kruse ’52 Founders Associate Professor
Department of Public Service and Administration Director of the Program in Education Policy [email protected] Phone: (979) 458-8030 ALLN 2088 BIOGRAPHY
Kalena E. Cortes holds the Verlin and Howard Kruse '52 Founders Associate Professorship at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service. Kalena is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), a Mindset Scholar in the Mindset Scholars Network. Most recently, was named Texas A&M's 2020 Presidential Impact Fellow and 2021 Chancellor Enhancing Development and Generating Excellence in Scholarship (EDGES) Fellow. She is currently serving a second three-year term on the American Economic Association's Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP), serving on the editorial board of the Economics of Education Review, and is Associate Editor of AERA Open. Kalena completed her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and has also been a visiting scholar at both Stanford and Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. She served a three-year term (2014-17) on the Board of Directors of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and was a Faculty Fellow (2013-16) at the Greater Texas Foundation. Most recently, Kalena has been working on innovative parenting programs delivered by text messages to guide parents toward more purposeful parenting (NBER WP #24827, NBER WP #25964). She has also developed a new texting curriculum for parents of middle schoolers, Texts4Teens (NSF funded study, SES-1918016). Her middle school texting curriculum is a parent engagement program that focuses on the social-emotional skill development of children, child progression through school, and close parent-child relationships. Kalena's research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education - Institute of Education Sciences, the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the Greater Texas Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. |
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Lori Taylor, PhD
Professor and Head of Public Service and Administration Department
Co-Director of the Program in Education Policy [email protected] Phone: (979) 458-3015 ALLN 2102 BIOGRAPHY
Professor Lori L. Taylor is Head of the Departments of Public Service and Administration and holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Chair in Business and Government at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. She was the director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy from 2014 to 2018. Dr. Taylor serves as the Principal Investigator for the Texas Smart Schools Initiative. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Association for Education Finance and Policy, the Editorial Board for AERA Open, the Governing Board of the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest, and the Policy Board for Texas Aspires. She is a member of the Holdsworth Center Network of Scholars and the Children At Risk Institute. Dr. Taylor holds a PhD in economics from the University of Rochester. She earned both a BA in economics and a BS in business administration from the University of Kansas. Prior to joining the Bush School, Dr. Taylor spent fourteen years as an economist and policy advisor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Dr. Taylor has written extensively on variations in the cost of education and the determinants of school district efficiency and has served as a consultant on school finance issues for a variety of legislative committees and state and federal agencies. She was an expert consultant for the Texas Comptroller's Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) and developed the Comparable Wage Index for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). More recently, she also served as a member of the expert panel for the US Department of Education’s “Study on the Title I Formula.” Taylor's research on school finance issues has been published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Economic Inquiry, Education Finance and Policy, Journal of Education Finance, Economics of Education Review, and Peabody Journal of Education. Her paper with Matthew Springer, “Designing Incentives for Public Sector Teachers: Evidence from a Texas Incentive Pay Program,” received the Journal of Education Finance Outstanding Article of the Year Award for 2016. |
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Ishara Casellas Connors, PhDAssistant Professor
Department of Public Service and Administration [email protected] Phone: (979) 458-8032 ALLN 2033 Biography
Dr. Ishara Casellas Connors joined the Bush School’s Department of Public Service and Administration in 2021. Dr.Casellas Connors has an extensive background in higher education administration and in diversity and equity policy, having previously served as Associate Director for the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University and as Assistant Dean for Diversity at Texas A&M University’s College of Geosciences. Casellas Connors holds a PhD from Boston College in Higher Education, an MA from Columbia University in Higher and Postsecondary Education, and a BA from Clark University in Business Management. Dr. Casellas Connors’ research examines issues of equity higher education, focused on state and institutional policy related to minority serving institutions. This work addresses the organizational efforts to address diversity and equity within complex policy and organizational landscapes. Finally, Dr. Casellas Connors considers the experiences of displaced learners, such as refugee and asylum students, in U.S. higher education to frame how state and institutional policy create a context for student success. |
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Jeehee Han, PhDVisiting Assistant Professor
Department of Public Service and Administration [email protected] Phone: (979) 845-5573 ALLN 2049 biography
Dr. Jeehee Han joined the Bush School of Government and Public Service as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2021. She teaches in the Department of Public Service and Administration. Named by Texas A&M University to participate in the first cohort of Accountability, Climate, Equity and Sustainability (ACES) Fellows, Dr. Han brings to the Bush School a fresh appreciation for the value of diversity and inclusion and the power that it holds for students, faculty, and staff to enrich their lives. Dr. Han’s research interests concentrate on housing, education, urban policy, socioeconomic inequality, and public and financial management, and her work has appeared in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. She was selected to receive a dissertation grant from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and was funded by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to participate in the 2021 Lincoln Institute Scholars Program. Dr. Han obtained her doctorate in public administration, focusing on the fields of social policy and public finance, from Syracuse University in July 2021. She holds an MA in quantitative methods in the social sciences from Columbia University and a BA in economics and sociology from Northwestern University. |
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Daniel Bowen, PhDAssociate Professor
Department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development [email protected] Phone: (979) 845-2716 EDCT 532 biography
Daniel H. Bowen is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University’s College of Education and Human Development. He is also an Affiliate of Rice University’s Houston Education Research Consortium and Co-Director of the Arts, Humanities, and Civic Engagement Lab, which is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. Dr. Bowen’s research is primarily focused on examining educational benefits tied to arts and cultural learning experiences. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator of the Houston Ballet’s X3: Explore, Extend, Excel! program, and has led and collaborated on RCT and quasi-experimental investigations in partnership with arts and cultural organizations, institutions, and initiatives, such as the Arts Access Initiative, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, EdVestors, Holocaust Museum Houston, and the Walton Arts Center. His research has been published in academic journals, such as Educational Researcher, Sociology of Education, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness; featured in popular press outlets, such as the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Brookings, and Education Week; and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Spencer Foundation, and Houston Endowment. Dr. Bowen earned his doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas in 2013. He also holds an MEd and BA in political science from the University of Notre Dame. |
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Brian Holzman, PhDAssistant Professor
Department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development [email protected] Phone: (979) 845-3533 EDCT 517 BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Brian Holzman is a Research Scientist at the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University. In fall 2022, he will join the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University as a tenure-track assistant professor. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology of education and higher education administration in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He was affiliated with the Center for Education Policy Analysis and the Center on Poverty and Inequality. During his graduate studies, he received an Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Training Fellowship and an American Educational Research Association Dissertation Grant. His primary research interests include understanding racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in college access and success and evaluating policies and interventions that can reduce gaps between groups. In his work, he employs rigorous quantitative research methods like experimental and quasi-experimental techniques and district, state, and national data. Theoretically, his research is informed by insights from sociology and higher education. He has a strong interest in the postsecondary pathway, social and cultural capital, immigrant integration and policy, English learner students, and treatment effect heterogeneity. Currently, he serves as the principal investigator for projects on 1) STEM pathways in high school, 2) the impact of information and personal assistance interventions on selective college outcomes, and 3) the role of newcomer schools in the educational achievement and attainment of recent immigrant students (funded by the Brady Education Foundation). He is also co-principal investigator of a middle school text messaging field experiment funded by the National Science Foundation. |
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Andrew Kwok, PhDAssistant Professor
Department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development [email protected] BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Andrew Kwok is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M. Dr. Kwok received a B.S. in Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a focus on Teaching and Teacher Education from the School of Education at his alma mater. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, he was faculty at California State University, San Bernardino and was a high school science teacher in Oakland, CA. He currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of Teacher Education and research chair of the Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education. Dr. Kwok's primary research focuses on teacher preparation policy, particularly in supporting preservice and beginning in-service teachers towards success, especially for underserved contexts. He examines issues related to the teacher pipeline and seeks to excavate teacher beliefs in relationship to instructional quality, entry, and attrition. He also has corresponding research lines in the preparation, training, and implementation of classroom management as well as induction coaching and support. His work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Texas Education Agency, and various counties of education. His research has been published in the American Education Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Journal of Teacher Education, Urban Education, and Teacher and Teacher Education. |