Educational Foundations, Leadership & Aviation

Dr. Ki (Matlock) Cole is a Professor of Research, Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics in the College of Education, Health, and Aviation at Oklahoma State University. Her major research interests is in item response theory (IRT), factor analysis, test and survey development and evaluation, and evaluating statistical software.

She has published articles in Educational and Psychological Measurement, Applied Psychological Measurement, and the International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education. She serves on the editorial board for Assessment.

Dr. Cole teaches courses in Item Response Theory, Factor Analysis, Analysis of Variance, and Statistical Methods in Education.

She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Statistics and Research Methods from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2013.

Research Interests:

Item Response Theory, Psychometrics, Factor Analysis, Scale Development, Item Wording Effects, Response Styles

Dr. Katherine Curry, Professor, serves as the Williams Chair of Higher Education in the Educational Leadership/School Administration Program, College of Education and Human Sciences, Oklahoma State University.

Research Interests:

Family engagement in education, School/community partnerships, Value creation in social learning spaces, Leadership and school reform

Dr. Ashlyn Fiegener is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Oklahoma State University in the College of Education and Human Sciences, where she teaches master’s and doctoral courses in educational leadership, preparing current and future school leaders. Her primary research interests include teacher well-being and retention, the coherence and organization of the instructional environment, social learning spaces, and how leaders use intentional conversation to transform organizations. Dr. Fiegener works closely with Project ECHO®, leading the hub team for TeleNGAGE, a professional learning platform that connects schools, families, and communities for collective problem-solving. Also through Project ECHO®, she worked to develop a school leadership program in collaboration with the Ministry of Education in India. 

Dr. Kat Gardner-Vandy (citizen of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is an Associate Professor of Aviation and Space in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Aviation. She is a Geologist (BS 2005, University of Oklahoma), Planetary Scientist (PhD 2012, University of Arizona), and private pilot (2005). Before coming to OSU in 2018 as a Teaching Assistant Professor, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in the Division of Meteorites, a STEM Lab Instructor at Tulsa Community College, and an adjunct professor at OSU. Dr. GV is the Principal Investigator of the Native Earth | Native Sky program (funded by the NASA Science Activation program and Boeing). She is the President of the OSU Native American Faculty and Staff Association and was named a Native American 40 Under 40 by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development in 2022 and a Sequoyah Fellow of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society in 2025. Asteroid 14793 Gardner-Vandy (1975 SE₂) was named by the International Astronomical Union in her honor in 2026.

Research Interests:

Dr. Gardner-Vandy's research interests include STEM curriculum development with Native American nations, student pilot training, pilot weather data collection, meteoritics, cosmochemistry, and experimental petrology.

Dr. Dion Harry is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at Oklahoma State University. Dion is originally from Lynchburg, SC, and is a two-time graduate of Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science in Health Science (Health Promotion and Education) and a Master of Education in Counselor Education (Student Affairs). He also completed his doctorate in the Higher Education Opportunity, Equity, and Justice concentration of North Carolina State University’s Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development program. Dion has past work experience in admissions, academic advising, residential learning, and research, assessment, and evaluation.

His research agenda primarily focuses on the factors that promote or inhibit the well-being and success of college students from historically excluded and/or overlooked communities, mainly sitting within the following areas: (1) Black college students, (2) queer and trans college students, (3) diversifying and broadening participation in STEM education, and (4) adult learners at community and technical colleges.

Dr. Jang is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at Oklahoma State University. His research examines both micro- and macro-level factors that influence student learning. At the micro level, he has studied individuals’ self-efficacy, self-regulation, and resilience. At the macro level, he has investigated the impacts of race, poverty, and culture. Through this diverse line of inquiry, Dr. Jang aims to build a holistic understanding of how individual and environmental factors shape student learning and achievement. In 2021, Dr. Jang directed an online community outreach program titled Students, Parents, and Teachers Walk Together, where he supervised South Korean parents and middle school students, coordinated service-learning experiences, and facilitated workshops applying educational psychology theory to real-world contexts.

Dr. Keunjae Kim is an Assistant Professor in Learning, Design, and Technology in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Aviation at Oklahoma State University. 
He studies how AI and immersive learning environments with emerging technologies impact teaching and learning experiences. Building on this foundation, his recent studies investigate how generative AI can enhance instructional design, teaching, and learning by examining educator–learner interactions with AI, focusing on educators’ and learners’ cognitive and emotional processes, including cognitive load, emotional load, and cognitive offloading. He further extends his research to AI-integrated robotics, exploring how educators and students utilize multimodal prompts to support cognitive and affective outcomes.

Furthermore, he explores tangible and immersive approaches to STEM+C education—such as Augmented Reality (AR), physical computing, and educational robotics—to design and implement innovative curricula. These approaches also advance teacher education and professional development by supporting effective teaching practices with emerging technologies. His research has been recognized with Outstanding Research Paper and Outstanding Journal Article Awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT).

I am an Assistant Professor of Research, Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics at Oklahoma State University. My research develops and applies advanced statistical methods, including generalizability theory, structural equation modeling, item response theory, and machine-learning approaches, to improve the accuracy and fairness of educational measurement.

Dr. Kayla Loper is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Educational Psychology - Research, Evaluation, Measurement, & Statistics program for the College of Education & Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Her major research interest is in higher education data analysis, construct measurement (ex: Sense of Belonging), equity in assessment practices, and program evaluation.

Dr. Amber Manning-Ouellette is an Associate Professor in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Oklahoma State University (OSU). She also holds the endowed Anderson, Farris, and Halligan Professorship for College Student Development, and served as the Interim Vice President for Student Affairs from 2024-2025 at OSU. Her scholarly work and research foci include socially just leadership education, college student learning and identity development, and postsecondary sexual health education in student affairs. Dr. Manning-Ouellette examines these research areas through various contexts including international education, historical methods, STEM education, and gender perspectives. She teaches a variety of courses such as student development theory, assessment in higher education and student affairs, college student sexuality, and introduction to student affairs.

Dr. Manning-Ouellette is a scholar practitioner and has authored several articles and book chapters on a number of topics across higher education and student affairs. Selected juried articles include college-level sex education courses: a systematic literature review in the Journal of American Sexuality Education, how service-learning influences the persistence of women in STEM fields published in the Journal of the First Year Experience and Students in Transition, and exploring intellectual disability as diversity in higher education in the Journal of College and Character. Selected juried book chapters include the role of liberatory pedagogy in socially just leadership education in Changing the Narrative: Socially Just Leadership Education and College Student Intercultural Development: Examining the Nexus of Student Cognition, Intellectual Development, and Perspectives in Emerging International Issues in Student Affairs Research and Practice. Dr. Manning-Ouellette is the co-editor of Emerging International Issues in Student Affairs Research and Practice as part of the books series International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research and Practice. Her recent co-edited text is titled, Moving Towards Action: Centering Anti-Racism in Leadership Learning.

Previously, Dr. Manning-Ouellette worked in student affairs administration for over 10 years in various roles while completing her Doctorate of Philosophy in Educational Administration and Higher Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). During that time, she served as the director of enrollment management for the College of Business, focusing on the recruitment and retention strategies of undergraduate students. In addition, she served as a student success coordinator for the first-year experience office where she oversaw 90 sections of first-year seminar courses, developed co-curricular programs, and managed faculty development. Finally, she served as a lecturer of leadership studies at Iowa State University and coordinated a global leadership study abroad trip to Stockholm, Sweden for several years.

Research Interests:

College student civic engagement, service-learning, social justice education and curriculum, postsecondary sexual health education, student leadership development, international student affairs, women in STEM education, diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education

Tami L. Moore is associate professor and program coordinator for the Higher Education and Student Affairs program in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Aviation. Her scholarly work examines various roles that universities – faculty, students, and universities as institutional actors – play in the communities they serve. Her dissertation won the American Educational Research Association Dissertation of the Year Award in Division J/Postsecondary Education; articles based on this work appear in the Journal of Community Engaged Scholarship and as part of the Association for the Study of Higher Education's monograph series published by John Wiley and Sons. From 2006 to 2010, she was the founding co-director of the Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium. Over the last decade, more than 200 advanced graduate students, early career faculty and university extension professionals working across the United States and Canada have participated in this unique professional development opportunity. Her work on how faculty build scholarly agendas grounded in a commitment to community engagement is published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, and the top-tier Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. She currently serves on the editorial board of the International Research Journal for Service Learning and Community Engagement. 

She has been a regular participant in research exchanges with the Kettering Foundation, convening with community members and policy makers to explore questions about what it takes to make democracy work as it should and how universities contribute to this work. In this same vein, she led the research team working through the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg University to document 25 years of working across difference to solve public problems through Public Achievement, a youth empowerment philosophy implemented in 34 countries around the world. As a founding co-director of the OSU-Tulsa Center for Public Life, Moore was part of the core organizing team for Dialogues4Change, a structured dialogue program on the OSU-Stillwater campus created through a Fund for Positive Engagement grant from Campus Compact. D4C uses Everyday Democracy's Dialogue to Change model to engage students, administrative staff, and faculty in creating positive change in the university community.

Research Interests:

Collaborations among community institutions, universities, and health care systems in improving health equity
Teaching and Learning in Popular Education Movements
Community-university engagement
Urban-serving universities
Supporting community-driven decision making
Democratic/Deliberative dialogues

Dr. Tyler Spence is an Assistant Professor of Aviation and Space in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Aviation. He holds M.S. & Ph.D degrees in Aviation Technology from Purdue University. He also holds undergraduate degrees from the University of South Carolina in Political Science and Music (clarinet). Dr. Spence obtained an A.A.S. degree at Calwell Community College and Technical Institute where he earned his commercial pilot and flight instructor certificates. Combining both passions in political sicence and aviation, Dr. Spence's research interests lie at the intersection between government policy and aviation practice. He has a specialized interest in sustainable transportaiton policy issues that combine political science, policy studies, and aviation.