Meet our Researchers

Bio: Cory Forbes is Chair, Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction, and 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.

Bio: Dr. Carla Amaro-Jiménez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction 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: 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. Melissa Hulings has experience teaching science in grades 6-12. Her research interests include pre-service and in-service teacher attitudes and self-efficacy in science teaching.

Bio: Dr. Bree Jimenez is an Associate Professor of Special Education. She has worked in the field of special education for over 20 years, as a classroom teacher supporting students in both elementary and high school, grant-funded research liaison between a local school system and university, then Lead Research Associate for an U.S. federally funded grant with the department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. From 2017-2019, Dr. Jimenez served as a Research Consultant with Mater Dei School in Camden, New South Wales and an Honorary Research Associate in Special Education with the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on general curriculum access and assessment for students with intellectual disabilities and autism. Specifically, Dr. Jimenez’ research focuses on math, science, and STEM instruction for students with extensive support needs. She is the author/co-author of over 20 peer-reviewed journals articles, multiple book chapters, and several books on strategies to support academics for students with disabilities. Dr. Jimenez is an executive board member of the Division for Research (DR) and the Division for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). Dr. Jimenez is an author of the internationally implemented academic classroom curriculums: Teaching to Standards: Math; Teaching to Standards: Science; Early Numeracy; Early Science; Access Algebra and Access Geometry.

Bio: Dr. Robin Jocius is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education. A former classroom teacher and interventionist, Dr. Jocius earned her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from Vanderbilt University, where her research and teaching focused on children and adolescents’ interactions with new and digital media. Dr. Jocius’s teaching and research interests include critical literacy, digital literacies, teacher learning, and the development of instructional contexts that support culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Her current research is funded by the National Science Foundation and investigates how critical, multimodal Making can enable more equitable access to computing and computational thinking in K-12 classrooms. Her work has been published in the Journal of Literacy Research, Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, English Journal, and Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice. 

Bio: Dr. Candace Joswick is an assistant professor of mathematics education, the director and PI of the grant-funded UTA Project ECHO® for Education, and Program Coordinator of STEM Education at UTA. Joswick’s research foci are include learning trajectories and progressions, classroom interactions and language, and technology.

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. John Elwood Romig is an assistant professor of special education. He is a former high school special education teacher with experience teaching students with mild-moderate disabilities, including learning disabilities, dyslexia, intellectual disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other disabilities. His experience as a classroom teacher influences his research and preparation of future teachers. His research examines methods of writing instruction and writing assessments that can be used to guide instruction and improve outcomes for students with disabilities. He was recognized as a Lasting Legacy Honoree at the University of Virginia for his teaching, and his dissertation received the Student Research Award from the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Research. He serves on the editorial review board for several journals, including Teacher Education and Special Education, Intervention in School and Clinic, and Journal of Special Education Technology.  

Bio: Dr. Luis A. Rosado is a Professor of Bilingual Education and Founding Director of the Center for Bilingual and ESL Education in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. He holds degrees from the University of Puerto Rico, Boston State College, and Texas A&I University, now Texas A & M–Kingsville. Prior to coming to UT-Arlington, Dr. Rosado held academic appointments at Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Texas Southern University, and Texas Woman’s University. Dr. Rosado has over 36 years of teaching experience at the elementary, high school, and college levels. He has taught in Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, and in Texas. In Massachusetts, he worked as a bilingual social studies high school teacher, and in Texas he taught third grade bilingual. In Puerto Rico, he taught high school history, and served as a program coordinator and instructor in a bilingual teacher preparation program. Dr. Rosado has authored or co-authored several articles and books in the areas of pedagogy and professional responsibilities, parental involvement, cross-cultural communication, preparation for teacher certification exams, and Spanish for bilingual teachers. Among his best-known publications are a series of books to prepare pre-service teachers to take teacher certification examinations—TExES Core Subject EC-6 exam, the PRAXIS II: English to Speakers of Other Languages, the Bilingual Supplemental Exam, and a book to prepare students for the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT)—Desarrollo del Español para Maestros en Programas de Educación Bilingüe.

Bio: Amanda Olsen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Measurement and Statistics in the department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at UTA. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics, Measurement, and Evaluation in Education from the University of Missouri at Columbia and was also a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an applied quantitative methodologist, she engages in a variety of areas including multilevel modeling, multivariate statistics, program evaluation, research design, and complex survey design and analysis, in addition to substantive topics including equity, student-teacher relationships, and policy. She has received over 10 million dollars as the PI or Co-PI from grant funders such as the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Meadows Foundation, among others.

Bio: Dr. Catherine Robert is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department and Co-Director of the Center for Educational Research, Policy, and Practice. She received her B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Houston, her M.Ed. from Schreiner University, and her Ed.D. from The University of Texas at San Antonio. She specializes in human resource topics including employee misconduct, employee turnover, and policy implementation. Prior to completing doctoral work, Dr. Robert served as a teacher, analyst, and administrator at campus, district, and regional levels, most recently as executive director of human resources in a school district. 

Bio: Dr. Ericka Roland is an assistant professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her research examines the process of social justice/criticality development in postsecondary education institutions. Dr. Roland has three interconnected lines of inquiry: (1) Program development and practices, (2) Leadership development, and (3) Personal and collective development around equity and social justice. 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 critical & Black feminist theoretical and qualitative methodologies approaches in her research inquiries. Prior to entering academia, she worked as a student affairs professional in residential life and Greek life.

Bio: Dr. Barbara Tobolowsky  is an associate professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department and the ELPS PhD program director. After earning her PhD in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA in 2001, she served as the associate director of the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. Since joining the UT Arlington faculty in 2009, her research has focused on students’ college transitions (e.g., transfer, dual credit, and first-year college students) and popular media representations of higher education. Most recently, she co-wrote articles about the college experiences of foster alumni, “Former foster youth experiences with higher education: Opportunities and Challenges” (2019) and the college choice process for transfer students, “Stops, starts, and detours: Transfer students’ college choice process,” and co-edited a book, Anti-Intellectual Representations of American Colleges and Universities: Fictional Higher Education (Palgrave MacMillan) (2017)  as well as On the Fast Track: Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of Dual Credit (2016).  In addition, she has been published in The Journal of Higher Education and College Student Affairs Journal among others. 

Bio: Dr. Maria Trache is a professor in the College of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies since August 2011, following 14 years as Statistical Consultant and Research Manager at the University of British Columbia and over 15 years as a faculty at the University of Bucharest. She brings over 30 years of combined teaching and research experience from both science and social sciences to UTA. As an educational researcher, Dr. Trache focuses on equity issues in higher education and the labor market by examining the effects of structural differences at the intersection of gender, race, social class, immigrant status, disability. Her research is informed by theoretical frameworks from sociology, economics of education, and life course research. She has expertise in advanced quantitative methods, survey methods and analysis of large-scale survey data. Dr. Trache is author/co-author of about 45 publications in peer-reviewed journals, edited books, working paper series. She currently serves as a member on the Sociology/Demography Insight Grants Selection Committee for the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Bio: Dr. Yi Leaf Zhang is an Associate 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).

Bio: Amanda Olsen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Measurement and Statistics in the department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at UTA. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics, Measurement, and Evaluation in Education from the University of Missouri at Columbia and was also a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an applied quantitative methodologist, she engages in a variety of areas including multilevel modeling, multivariate statistics, program evaluation, research design, and complex survey design and analysis, in addition to substantive topics including equity, student-teacher relationships, and policy. She has received over 10 million dollars as the PI or Co-PI from grant funders such as the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Meadows Foundation, among others.

Bio: Dr. Daniel Robinson is Associate Dean of Research and the K-16 Mind, Brain, and Education Endowed Chair in the College of Education. He previously served as Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UTA from 2017-2020 and 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: 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.