Faculty

Bio: Dr. Carla Amaro-Jiménez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). As an experienced bilingual education teacher and educator, she now works with pre- and in-service teachers as well as administrators who work with English learners and their families. Her research focuses on the intersections between teacher preparation, classroom instruction, and family involvement to identify additive practices to support English learners and Hispanic students in diverse 21st century classrooms. She also served as the Director of the Pathways to College Access and Career Readiness Program for almost a decade; Pathways included the implementation of UTA-manned GO Centers at 24 area high schools, early college experiences, and parent/community outreach.

Bio: Dr. Meredith S. Billings is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Higher Education, Adult Learning, and Organizational Studies at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her overall research agenda focuses on financial and informational barriers to college for low-income, first-generation, and racially minoritized students and inequities in higher education funding across different types of higher education institutions. She is currently conducting or has conducted research projects on free college/promise programs, guaranteed tuition/fixed tuition plans, college access programs, and financial aid advising in public high schools. Dr. Billings is also interested in state governance of public higher education. She has published her research in Research in Higher Education, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Student Financial Aid, American Behavioral Scientist, and New Directions for Community Colleges. Her work has been supported by the Spencer Foundation and the Kresge Foundation. Dr. Billings spent six years working in higher education administration in the areas of institutional research, undergraduate admissions, academic advising, and civic engagement. Prior to coming to UTA, she was an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership at Sam Houston State University and a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate at the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Dr. Billings teaches or has taught courses on K-16 education policy, K-16 education law, higher education finance, program evaluation, assessment, and statistics. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Michigan, M.A. in higher education from the University of Maryland, and B.S. in neuroscience from William and Mary.

Bio: David Deggs serves as Assistant Dean for Strategic Partnerships and Professor of Practice in Higher Education and Adult Learning in the UTA College of Education. David has 25 years of experience in higher and adult education at the campus, state, and national levels. He previously held leadership positions at Louisiana Department of Education, GED Testing Service, Southern Methodist University, and Educate Texas. David earned his Ph.D. in Adult and Human Resource Education in the School of Leadership and Human Resource Development at Louisiana State University. He earned his M.Ed. in Adult and Continuing Education and his B.G.S. in Social Sciences at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. He is a proud first-generation college graduate.

Research Interests: K-16 Earth systems education: Cory Forbes is the Associate Dean for Research and the Fenton Wayne Robnett Endowed Professor of Science Education in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. Forbes holds a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and M.S. in Science Education from the University of Kansas and M.S. in Natural Resources and Ph.D. in Science Education from the University of Michigan. His teaching and research efforts focus on STEM education in K-12 and undergraduate STEM contexts. He directs multiple externally-funded projects involving STEM curriculum development, assessment design and testing, professional development for K-12 STEM teachers, and classroom-based research on STEM teaching and learning that are based in regional, national, and international partnerships with education researchers, STEM faculty, K-12 teachers, and stakeholders. Forbes is a NARST Early Career Research Awardee and Fulbright Faculty Scholar.

Research Interests: Multi-tiered systems of support and equity, disproportionality, equity, behavioral disorders : Ambra L. Green, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Special Education within the College of Education at The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Green is a national scholar with publications and research focused on students of color with and at-risk for disabilities, issues related to inequitable school practices experienced by students of color (i.e., disproportionality in special education and discipline practices), behavior disorders, positive behavioral interventions and supports, and teacher use of evidence-based practices. She is the Primary Investigator on a $1.1 million U.S. Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP) personnel preparation grant which provides rigorous training for master’s special education and social work students to support K-12 students with disabilities and high intensity needs. Dr. Green also has experience working within the U.S. Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP) and serves on the OSEP National Technical Assistance Center on PBIS Equity workgroup  Dr. Green was a special educator at the middle school level and a PBIS Coach. She holds current teacher certifications in EC-6 Generalist, 4-8 Generalist, and EC-12 Special Education in the state of Texas. 

Bio: Dr. Hoover has a PhD in STEM Curriculum and Instruction from Texas Tech University and 17 years of classroom teaching experience in Texas science classrooms. Research interests include environmental education, STEM education, and mentoring of new teachers.

Research Interests: Teacher education, postsecondary literacies, digital literacies, and underserved student populations.

Bio: Tim Jacobbe, Ph.D. is the Dean of the College of Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is also a Professor and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Mathematics and Statistics Education are the primary foci for Dean Jacobbe’s research. He is an author of two books entitled Developing Essential Understandings for Teaching Statistics in Middle Grades and Bridging the Gap Between Common Core State Standards and Teaching Statistics. Jacobbe served as the Chair of National Council for Teachers of Mathematics and American Statistical Association Joint Committee on K-12 Statistics and Probability. He was the PI on the NSF-funded Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statistics Project that has been administered to several hundreds of thousands of students and teachers around the world. Prior to his academic career, Dean Jacobbe served as an assessment specialist for Educational Testing Service where he was a primary test developer for the SAT, GRE, and Advanced Placement exams. Jacobbe is a first-generation college graduate and a veteran of the United States Navy. This background motivated Dean Jacobbe to come to UT Arlington in hopes of serving students and the local community. He has dedicated a large portion of his career to integrating his scholarship with teaching to engage and make a difference in local communities. Giving back is what drives and inspires Dean Jacobbe and he is honored to serve as the Dean of a College that aspires to make a difference in the lives of others.

Bio: Robin Jocius is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies in the College of Education. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on teacher learning and children and adolescents’ interactions with digital media and she has collaborated on several grants to support teachers in integrating making and computational thinking into their classrooms. Her teaching and research interests include teacher professional development, computer science education, multimodal composing, and Making.

Bio: Dr. Candace Joswick is an associate professor of mathematics education and the director of Advanced EC12 masters programs in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation.

Bio: Dr. Taylor Kessner is a social studies teacher educator, learning scientist, and games scholar. His research focuses on the design of social studies-themed simulations and (video)games as participatory practice spaces in which learners develop fluency with the disciplinary knowledge, skills, and concepts of the social studies as tools for taking informed civic action.

Bio: Dr. Christopher Kribs is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Distinguished Research Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he has held a joint appointment in Mathematics and Curriculum & Instruction since 1997. He developed and has directed UTA's graduate program in K-8 mathematics education since 2000, which has offered professional development to over 200 local K-8 teachers. His research interests in mathematical biology include modeling vector-borne diseases and zoonoses. His research interests in mathematics education include classroom discourse analysis and the learning and teaching of operations on rational numbers.

Bio: Dr. Luis E. Pérez Cortés is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Higher Education, Adult Learning, and Organizational Studies. His research focuses on the role of technologies, particularly in how the playing, making, and modding of games impact the literacy practices and perspectives of under-represented and under-served populations. He explores how these practices enable individuals to see the world, society, and themselves as malleable and open to redesign. With over twelve years of teaching experiences across Puerto Rico and four U.S. states, he emphasizes student-centered learning environments that promote creativity, critical thinking, and real-world application. At UTA, he teaches in the Instructional and Learning Design Technology (ILDT) masters program.

Research Interests: Learning and technology: Dr. Daniel Robinson is the K-16 Mind, Brain, and Education Endowed Chair in the College of Education. He previously served as the Associate Dean of Research from 2020-2024 and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UTA from 2017-2020. He was also Director of the School of Education at Colorado State University from 2012-2013. As a faculty member, he has taught at Mississippi State University (1993-1997), the University of South Dakota (1997-1998), the University of Louisville (1998-1999), the University of Texas at Austin (1999-2012), and Colorado State University (2012-2015). Dan served as Editor of Educational Psychology Review from 2006-2015 and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology from 2014-2020. He has also served as an editorial board member of nine refereed international journals. Dan has published over 100 articles, books, and book chapters, presented over 100 papers at research conferences, and taught over 100 college courses. His research interests include educational technology innovations that may facilitate learning and team-based approaches to learning. He was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand and was named as one of the most published authors in educational psychology journals from 1991-2002, 2003-2008, and 2009-2014, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2004, 2010, 2015.

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation for the Accelerated Online Principal Certification and M. Ed. programs. As an educator of 33 years, I served as a teacher for 10 years and a school principal for 16 years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, with the most recent assignment as principal at a high school in Dallas ISD. I also served as a district level administrator for 2 years in an east Texas school district. Prior to the principalship, I served as a project manager for Site-Based Decision Making at the Region 19 Educational Service Center in El Paso.

Bio: Dr. Ericka Roland is an assistant professor of Higher Education in the Department of Higher Education, Adult Learning & Organizational Studies. Her research examines research issues of diversity, equity, and justice (DEJ) in U.S. postsecondary education in three areas: (1) how DEJ has shaped teaching and learning approaches, (2) how higher education hinders or facilitates leadership development, (3) how people (dis)engage with higher education institutions around issues of DEJ in organizations, practice, policies, and processes. She centers the pursuit of equity in all of her projects with a commitment to research and practice that cultivates transformative possibilities. Dr. Roland uses qualitative methodologies and critical and Black feminist theoretical approaches in her inquiries. Before entering academia, she worked as a student affairs professional in residential life and Greek life.

Bio: Dr. John Romig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation in the College of Education. A former classroom teacher, Dr. Romig earned his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia with a concentration in special education where his research and teaching focused on writing assessment and writing instruction. Dr. Romig is especially interested in using assessment data to make instructional decisions and teaching struggling students to read and write.

Bio: Wideline Seraphin, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies within the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation in the College of Education. Her work explores the intersections of race, gender, immigrant status, and language diversity in the literate lives of Black transnational girls. As a teacher educator, Dr. Seraphin examines socially justice teaching pedagogies. She is the co-founder of Community Narratives in Focus, a narrative inquiry and digital archive centering historically excluded families in K-12 and higher education. Dr. Seraphin has been named an Emerging Scholar by the Haitian Studies Association, earned a 2020 Curriculum Inquiry Writing Fellowship, and is a proud member of the BeyHive.

Teaching Interests: Through this service-learning experience, prospective teachers read aloud to English language learners from working poor families, and the children received a tote bag of the books read aloud at the family literacy event each semester.

Bio: Dr. Jodi Tommerdahl is an Associate Professor in the department of Curriculum & Instruction. She received her undergraduate degree in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Minnesota, followed by a Masters Degree in European Languages at the University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College. She carried out her doctoral studies in Linguistics and Neuroscience in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales under the direction of Professor Oswald Ducrot and at the Sorbonne (Paris IV) supervised by the Sorbonne’s President, Professor Georges Molinié. She spent three years working at the University Hospital in Poitiers, France in the Department of Neurology, directed by Dr. Roger Gil where she worked with patients with aphasia. She has been on faculty at the University of Central England (now known as Birmingham City University) and the University of Birmingham, both times in departments of Speech and Language Pathology. She currently directs UTA’s Master’s program in Mind, Brain and Education and is a productive researcher with publications in linguistics, speech and language pathology and the neuroscience of reasoning and emotion.

Bio: Dr. Yi Leaf Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Zhang has developed a strong interest in studying college access and success, especially in the community college context. Her research focuses on community colleges as a gateway to STEM education, transfer students’ educational pathways, and international education in four-year and two-year institutions. Zhang is currently an editorial board member of the Community College Journal of Research and Practice (CCJRP) and an associate editor of the Journal of International Students (JIS).