Northeastern Illinois University has awarded tenure and promotions to associate professor for 17 members of the faculty, who were introduced during the June 13 Board of Trustees meeting.
Here is the list of awards of tenure and promotion:
Rachel Adler, Computer Science
Adler earned a Ph.D. from City University of New York Graduate Center. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Her research interests are in computer science education and human-computer interaction. Adler has published 16 articles and presented at 20 local, national and international conferences. She is principal investigator on a $700,608 National Science Foundation STEM + C grant and was co-investigator on a pilot project for a National Institutes of Health U54 grant. She has been awarded several other grants during her time at Northeastern.
William Adler, Political Science
Adler earned a Ph.D. from City University of New York Graduate Center. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. He has published seven peer-reviewed articles or chapters on subjects including American presidency, social media and politics, American political development, Jewish political thought, and scholarship on teaching and learning. His most recent article, “History Has Its Eyes on You: Hamilton and the Introductory American Government Course,” was published in the January 2019 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics. He is currently working on his book “Building the New American Nation: The U.S. Military and Economic Development, 1787-1860.” Adler was received two grants for his work with Julia Azari, Marquette University, on their project “Party Asymmetry and Vice Presidential Selection.”
Sunni Ali, Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies
Ali earned an Ed.D. from Roosevelt University. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies. Ali’s primary research intent is to continue to highlight best practices in the classroom that effectively engage minority learners in public schools. He has published seven articles that focus on critical cultural strategies and practices that need to emerge in urban public schools teaching children of color. In addition, he wrote two books, “My Schoolhouse is a Ghost Town: A Teacher’s Story Through Reform” (2016) and “Here’s to This Flag of Mine” (2018). He plans on writing a third book that takes both an educational and historical journey of the importance of people in their profession and social spaces engaging in conscientious, reflective and honest dialogues.
James Ball, Health Sciences and Physical Education
Ball earned a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences and Physical Education. His research and publications are based on Self-Determination Theory in adults’ barriers to exercise, physical activity motivation and technology, and physical education teachers’ motivation. Other areas of research include health care brokering, and aquaponics and community gardens. Currently, Ball is working with faculty from the University of Nebraska at Kearney on implementing an aquaponics curriculum into K-12 schools.
Kimya Barden, Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies
Barden earned a Ph.D. from Loyola University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies. Her creative research and activities are specifically focused on identity, experiences in education, parenting, mental health and conceptualizations of community-based trauma in the African American community. In 2016, she participated in the United Negro College Fund and Andrew Mellon Ph.D. Program. Most recently, Barden published the article “A Black Academic’s Maternal Story Told in Five Parts” in the Journal of Mother Studies.
Katherine Bird, Mathematics
Bird earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Bird’s research interests fall into two general categories: pure mathematics and math education. In pure mathematics, her paper “Dade’s Ordinary Conjecture for the Finite Special Unitary Groups,” based off of her doctoral thesis work, will be submitted for publication. Her interest in issues of equity in mathematics education led her to become a founding member of the NEIU Summer Bridge/EMERGE research team. She has also worked with colleagues on the project “Underrepresented STEM Majors’ Perspectives of Experiences Supporting Their Mathematical Success,” which explores themes of race in mathematical identity. She continues to collaborate with colleagues in areas of developmental mathematics and math education.
Rachel Birmingham-Hoel, Justice Studies
Birmingham-Hoel earned a Ph.D. from Auburn University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies. Birmingham-Hoel has published articles on child health and well-being, family dynamics and intimate partner violence, and has presented at local, national and international conferences. In spring 2018, she received a community research grant for her work with Adam Messinger titled “The Family Conflict and Health Project.” The study is designed to examine perceptions of sibling abuse and adult outcomes. The project produced a paper, “Gender, Violence and Aggression,” which was presented at the Southwestern Social Science Association in fall 2018. A long-term goal for Birmingham-Hoel is to use her current research to write a book that will call into question the continuous neglect of attention to sibling abuse by both scholars and practitioners.
Emily Booms, Biology
Booms earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Medicine. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology. Her research lab centers around currently circulating pathogens—namely viruses, bacteria and fungi—how they mediate infection and how that infection can be prevented. She engages and incorporates students in her biomedical research, including them in the scientific writing process as she prepares manuscripts for publication, grants for funding opportunities and abstracts for conference presentations. Booms has published six scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles. In addition, she continues to evaluate manuscripts for publication and has critically reviewed three microbiology textbooks.
Lewis Gebhardt, Linguistics
Gebhardt earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics. Gebhardt has written two chapters in the book “Trends in Iranian and Persian Linguistics” in the series “Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs.” (de Gruyter Mouton, 2018). He has also presented the co-authored work “Crow Has No Incorporation” at the annual Linguistics Society of America conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition, he is working on a book proposal on words: what they are, what they mean, how they’re stored in the brain, their multiplicity of meaning, how they’re used in sentences, and how their meaning and pronunciations change over time.
Matthew Graham, Mathematics
Graham earned a Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. In February 2018, Graham published “Movie Moves for Knotted Surfaces with Markings” in the Journal of Knot Theory and Its Ramifications. He is currently co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Noyce grant. In November 2018, along with co-principal investigator Brittany Pines, Graham presented “Impacts of Sustained Community College Partnerships on a STEM Teacher Preparation Program” at the Transforming STEM Higher Education: Confirming the Authority of Evidence in Atlanta, Ga.
Elisabet Head, Earth Science
Head earned a Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Science. Head’s research revolves around melt inclusion, and around the geochemistry of magmas and how degassing and elemental speciation are connected, as well as remote sensing of both volcanic gas and surface features. She is co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education grant titled “Peer Enhanced Experiential Research in STEM (PEERS).” She has published articles and presented her research at conferences, and has presented her work on PEERS at local and national conferences. She has always included undergraduates in her research and will continue to do so with future research endeavors.
Joseph Hibdon, Mathematics
Hibdon earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Hibdon’s research focuses on mathematical modeling. With his involvement in grant supported initiatives, his current research also focuses on student development and success inside and outside the classroom. He is co-principal investigator on federal grants awarded to Northeastern, including the National Institutes of Health MARC-NU STARS and several National Science Foundation grants. Recently, he co-authored the chapter “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Incorporating Computational Thinking in STEM Courses for Preservice Teachers” in the book “Integrating Digital Technology in Education” set to print in spring 2019.
Aimee Hilado Villalpando, Social Work
Hilado Villalpando earned a Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work. Hilado Villalpando’s interests are in the area of early childhood and adult mental health with a specific focus on the impact of trauma among immigrant and refugee populations. She is co-author/editor of the book “Models for Practice with Immigrants and Refugees: Collaboration, Cultural Awareness and Integrative Theory” (Sage Publications, 2017). She has co-authored several peer-reviewed articles and presented at local and national conferences. She is currently in the ZERO TO THREE 2018-2010 Fellowship Class, a national competitive fellowship for mid-career professionals specializing in infant-early childhood mental health.
Nabil Kahouadji, Mathematics
Kahouadji earned a Ph.D. from Universite Paris Diderot-Paris VII. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. In 2018, his collaborative paper “Local Isometric Immersion of Pseudo-spherical Surafaces and K-th Order Evolution Equations” was published in the journal Communications in Contemporary Mathematics. He has presented in a dozen local, national and international conferences, and has received several local and international research and travel grants. Since 2016, Kahouadji has been the organizer of the NEIU Applied Mathematics Seminar, coordinating talks from local and international mathematicians.
Hardik Marfatia, Economics
Marfatia earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. Marfatia’s research explores the connections between financial markets, monetary policy and macroeconomy of emerging market economies. One of his current research papers is titled “Modeling House Price Synchronization Across the U.S. States and Their Time-Varying Macro Economic Linkages.” His work has been published in over a dozen peer-reviewed publications, and he has reviewed more than 20 journal articles in the field of macroeconomics. He has also participated in several local, state and regional conferences.
Laura Tejada, Counselor Education
Tejada earned a Ph.D. from the University of Akron. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counselor Education. As a contact person for trainings offered by the Illinois chapter of the Association of Play Therapy, she is passionate about training clinicians and has presented topics of interests to family therapists and play therapists. She was awarded a New Writers Fellowship from Family Process Magazine.
Dilek Yunlu, Marketing and Management
Yunlu earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing. Her research focuses on two main areas: creativity and cross-cultural management. During her time at Northeastern, she has published five academic papers and presented 11 papers at high-ranking conferences. Yunlu’s future research will continue to combine cross-cultural domain with creativity, working with multiple diverse groups of researchers across the globe.
