Dr. Rafa Kasim
Assistant Professorrkasim@kent.edu
507 E White Hall
Area: FLA
I received my doctoral degree in statistics and research design and a master degree in evaluation, measurements and quantitative methods from the college of Education at Michigan State University. My bachelor degree was in educational statistics. I started my professional career as co-researcher and supervisor for the National and International Adult Literacy Survey Project in the center for Longitudinal and Multilevel Methods Projects at Michigan State University. Then I worked in the private sector for three years as a senior statistician for a research firm in St. Louis Missouri. I supervised several research projects involved multi-sites evaluations. Because of my passion for teaching I made a career change in 2003 and joined the faculty at KSU. My research interest is in the methodology development and the applications of multi-level analysis to hierarchically structured data often found in educational settings. Some of my work published in journals such as Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, and The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. I am currently working on research exploring efficient ways of estimating effect sizes for single subject design studies through multilevel methods.
Tricia Niesz
Assistant Professortniesz@kent.edu
405 White Hall
Area: FLA , CULT
I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where I specialized in anthropology and education, ethnography/critical ethnography, and urban schooling. I came to Kent State in 2004 as an assistant professor of qualitative research methodology. My methodological interests are in how contemporary social and cultural theory raise new questions and challenges for qualitative research, and how methodologists and researchers are responding to these challenges. Multisited ethnography, in particular, is one approach that I am exploring in my current work. I am also interested using ethnographic methods to explore the role of schooling in social stratification and social change. More specifically, I am interested in the ways in which equity-oriented educational discourses--and more broadly, social critique--inform the meanings, identities, and cultural practices that youth and educators produce in schools. My current research focuses on teacher professional networks that take up questions of diversity, equity, democracy, and social justice. In this work, I am exploring how the social processes of networks-as-inquiry communities influence educators' identities, agency, and contributions to school change.
