Keynote Speaker: Dr. Corrie Fountain 

Interim Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs in the Office of Faculty Affairs at Georgia State University

Dr. Corrie Fountain is the Interim Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs in the Office of Faculty Affairs at Georgia State University. Her responsibilities include faculty recruitment, retention, and support. She creates and facilitates faculty development workshops, seminars, and other trainings for faculty, manages faculty awards, and assists with the promotion and tenure process. Dr. Fountain also co-leads the mentoring initiatives for the university and consults with colleges and departments on matters of DEI and faculty belonging. She has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Delaware State University, a master’s degree in special education/behavior disorders from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. in educational policy studies with a concentration in research, measurement, and statistics from Georgia State University.

alphabetically by first name

Dr. Anete Vásquez

Professor - Kennesaw State University

Anete Vásquez is a professor of curriculum and instruction in the Department of Secondary and Middle Grades Education at Kennesaw State University. She serves as the coordinator of their 120-student Ed.D. program and as assistant department chair. She has co-edited a Teachers College Press book on preparing teachers to work with diverse learners and co-authored two books for Routledge about working with multilingual students in non-sheltered, high school English classrooms. She has published articles in The ALAN Review, English Journal, Voices from the Middle, Action in Teacher Education, EDUTEC, and Teaching and Learning Inquiry. One of her favorite parts about her job is working with students and colleagues in the Interactive Research Methods Lab in her college at KSU.

Dr. April Munson

Professon - Kennesaw State University

Dr. April Munson is an Artist, Researcher with the Interactive Research Methods Lab and Professor of Art Education at Kennesaw State University. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, as well as an MA and BA from the University of Kentucky. Her areas of research include: the connection of multi-cultural healing practices and soma-aesthetic experience; evaluation; and qualitative research methodology. Her art focuses on intentional mark making as act of healing agency.

Her work has been published in journals such as Qualitative Research in Education, Comunicar, International Journal of Information and Education Technology and the International Journal for Education in the Arts. Her research has been part of conference proceedings for the National Art Education Association, International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, the American Evaluation Association, and the International Conference on Distance Learning and Education.

Dr. Iván Jorrín Abellán

Professor of Educational Research Strategy and Development- Kennesaw State University

I am a passionate learner who loves teaching, research and innovation. I have expertise in qualitative research methods with extensive experience teaching and researching innovative uses of technology in Education. I´ve worked for twelve years (2001-2014) at the Intelligent & Cooperative Systems Research Group at the University of Valladolid (Spain), where I got my Ph.D in Educational Technology. Within this transdisciplinary team formed by engineers, computer scientist and educators, we developed a number of innovative technologies to support teachers in the complete lifecycle of collaborative learning environments. In 2009 after a two-year Fulbright scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I founded the Center for Transdisciplinary Research in Education (CETIE) at the University of Valladolid. In 2014 I was hired by Kennesaw State University (Ga) where I have developed the Hopscotch Model; a theoretical model and a webtool based on Google technologies, to help novice researchers generate qualitative research designs. I am the director of the Interactive Research Methods Lab (IRML).

Jay Forrest

Assistant Dean for Content Strategy and Development- Georgia Institute of Technology

Jay Forrest is the Assistant Dean for Content Strategy & Development and the Content Management Group Chair. While maintaining effective stewardship of the collection’s budgets, Jay leads efforts to ensure that Library Collections align with Georgia Tech's research, teaching, and learning priorities and meet an evolving and growing university's needs, with diverse viewpoints, interests, abilities, and perspectives.

His service and scholarship focus on collaborative preservation of the print scholarly record and on analytical techniques to evaluate and improve library effectiveness.

Jay earned his A.B. from Duke University (Women's Studies|Comparative Area Studies), and holds master's degrees from Georgia State (Geography), Georgia Tech (City and Regional Planning; History and Sociology of Technology and Science), Florida State (Information Studies), and Kennesaw State (Software Engineering). His recent presentations include "Services for Shared Print Collections" (2018) and " Preserving Assets, Maximizing Investments: A Collaborative Model in Process-Focused Facility Design" (2016).

Dr. Lisa Sperling

Director of Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives - University of Georgia Graduate School

Lisa Sperling, PhD, serves as the Director of Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives for the University of Georgia Graduate School. With over 15+ years of professional experience in higher education, Dr. Sperling has worked on both the graduate program and graduate school levels. In her current capacity, she coordinates recruitment, retention, and outreach efforts, including the creation of programs targeting historically under-represented populations and veterans. An advocate for cross-campus collaborations, she and her team actively partner on programming with the Division of Student Affairs, Office of Institutional Diversity, International Student Life, and the Student Veterans Resource Center to name a few. Prior to joining the Graduate School, Dr. Sperling served for over 10 years as the MPA Recruitment and Career Services Coordinator in UGA’s Department of Public Administration and Policy. She holds degrees from Emory University (BA, English) and the University of Georgia (MPA, Public Administration; PhD, Student Affairs).

Dr. Nadine Kabengi

Associate Dean, The Graduate School & Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences - Georgia State University

Nadine Kabengi is Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Georgia State and Associate Professor with a joint appointment with the Department of Geosciences and the Department of Chemistry. Her scholarly work investigates the fate and transport of contaminants in soils and water systems across multiple scales and applications. Her expertise lies in the application and construction of flow microcalorimeters techniques and instrumentations for measuring the energetics and thermodynamic properties of various chemical surface reactions. She is a trained facilitator of the Inclusive Graduate Education Network (NSF-IGEN) workshops on equity minded holistic application reviews and has delivered these workshops at institutions across the nation, and various colleges and departments at Georgia State. She is the faculty advisor of STEMulate, an all-inclusive STEM campus organization that serves to increase diversity and inclusivity in all STEM fields. Dr. Kabengi teaches an honors seminar class that examines the lack of representation in the sciences and empowers students through guided readings and class discussions to seek and persist in their disciplines. She is the 2022 recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award for her commitment to diversity throughout her research, teaching and service activities.

Dr. Olga Koz

Senior Research Librarian- Kennesaw State University

Dr. Olga Koz is an experienced Research Librarian at Kennesaw State University. She provides instruction and research support for faculty and graduate students on evidence synthesis, systematic and traditional literature reviews, research impact, data, and digital research tools. She is also a member of the Interactive Research Methods Lab team, where she consults, instructs, and manages the virtual library. Her areas of expertise include educational psychology, knowledge and media management, and computer science, including information retrieval.

Ximin Mi

Data Visualization Librarian - Georgia Institute of Technology

Librarian / Service Manager of Data & Visualization, AR/VR Services at GT Library