Faculty and Staff

Dr. Lake received her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from The University of Texas. Her primary areas of research interest are service-learning, moral and character education, and issues related to teacher education. Her teaching interests includes teaching and learning, early childhood mathematics methods, qualitative research methods, and critical pedagogy. She has authored more than 30 research articles, eight books chapters, and two books. Additionally, Dr. Lake is the early childhood education doctoral coordinator and program coordinator for the ILAC AP Master’s Degree offered in Ramstein and Stuttgart Germany. 

vlake@ou.edu
(918) 660-3984
View CV (PDF)

Dr. Adams is co-founder and co-director of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy where he conducts research on social-psychological conditions in school systems, accountability policy, improvement science, and performance measurement. In 2014, he was awarded the Linda Clarke Anderson Presidential Professorship for outstanding contribution to the University, field, and community through research, teaching, and service. He conducts research on the social-psychology of school systems, performance measurement, accountability, and improvement science. He is past founder and director of the San Miguel School of Tulsa, a nonprofit, gratuitous school based on the Lasallian charism of serving socially deprived students and families. Recent publications include: Self-regulatory Climate: A Positive Attribute of Schools (Journal of Educational Research); Self-regulatory Climate: A Social Resource for Student Regulation and Achievement (Teachers College Record); Revisiting the Collective Trust Effect in Urban Elementary Schools (Educational Administration Quarterly); Collective Trust: A Social Indicator of Instructional Capacity (Journal of Educational Administration); Parent Social Networks and Parent Responsibility: Implications for School Leadership (Journal of School Leadership); and Collective Trust: Why Schools Can’t Improve Without It (Teachers College Press).

curt.adams-1@ou.edu
View CV (PDF)

Amber graduated with her Ph.D. in 2020 and spent two years as an assistant professor at Texas A & M-Corpus Christi. Before that, she spent over thirteen years in Tulsa as an early childhood classroom teacher, developing an interest in inquiry-based instruction. As an early childhood teacher educator, Amber is passionate about ensuring that her students are confident and capable teachers of math and science. Her research examines the role of Approaches to Learning, an umbrella term describing the various ways in which children go about learning, in supporting children’s adjustment to a new school environment.  Her research interests also include the role of technology in teacher education, particularly to improve communication with multilingual learners, preservice teacher identities as they influence their math/science teaching, and the development of children’s informal science theories. She is also a diehard Sooners fan and particularly enjoys rooting on the football team.  

ahbeisly@ou.edu
View CV (pdf)

Dr. Edwards received her doctorate in educational administration and research from The University of Tulsa. Her teaching interests include urban school reform, working with students and families affected by poverty, social and emotional learning, brain research, instructional leadership actions that can build systems and cultures that transform academic learning, and resiliency theory and applications to creating inclusive teaching and learning communities. Additionally, Dr. Edwards is a director in the OU-Tulsa Professional Development and Leadership Academy.

bedwards@ou.edu
View CV (PDF)

Dr. Elizabeth Ethridge received her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Oklahoma State University. Her research agenda focuses on teacher autonomy, service learning, and advocacy.   Dr. Ethridge has published in several peer-reviewed journals, presented at national/international conferences, secured grants, and worked closely with local communities to address needs in the field of early childhood education. She served as the president of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators from 2013-2015 and was the recipient of the Outstanding Early Childhood Teacher Educator Award in 2013 from the Oklahoma Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.

ethridge@ou.edu
View CF (PDF)

Dr. Ford received his Ph.D. in curriculum, teaching, and educational policy from Michigan State University. He is also Senior Research Scientist with the Oklahoma Center for Educational Policy. Broadly speaking, his research interests center on the relationship between policy, the social organization of schooling and leadership for school improvement. More specifically, Dr. Ford examines the role of school leadership in facilitating more collaborative work environments among teachers and in supporting teacher’s psychological needs as learners. His work has appeared in such journals as: Educational Policy, Leadership and Policy in Schools, and Educational Management, Administration and Leadership.

tgford@ou.edu
View CV (PDF)

Dr. Horm received her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in Family & Child Development, with an emphasis in Early Childhood Education.  At OU-Tulsa, she teaches courses related to assessment and research in early childhood education.  Through the ECEI, Horm is currently leading several applied research initiatives including program evaluation research in collaboration with Tulsa’s Educare programs. She is also leading the development of the IT3 (Infants, Toddlers, Twos, and Threes) Research Center, a designated University Strategic Organization at the University of Oklahoma, in which she is building the research capacity of her group and mentoring a diverse group of young researchers to partner with community agencies with the shared goal to improve services for young children and their families in Tulsa and the nation.

dhorm@ou.edu
View CV (PDF) 

Daniel Hamlin is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma. His research examines the effects of school governance on non-tested measures of school performance with an emphasis on school climate, parental involvement, and student safety.

Dr. Hamlin’s work appears in a number of scholarly journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Policy, and Urban Education. He has written research reports for organizations, such as People for Education and Education Next, that have received extensive coverage in the media. Dr. Hamlin has also received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ontario Ministry of Education, and the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems research organization.

Dr. Hamlin earned his PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto where he received the Ken Leithwood: Outstanding Thesis of the Year award for his dissertation examining charter schools on non-tested outcomes in Detroit, Michigan. In the classroom, Dr. Hamlin has been recognized for instructional excellence, receiving the Derek Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching from Harvard University as well as six teaching awards from Sejong University.

daniel_hamlin@ou.edu
View CV (PDF)

Wonkyung "Won" Jang is an assistant professor in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum at The University of Oklahoma, specializing in language and literacy development and learning during early childhood. He is interested in uncovering how variations in children's physical, social, and linguistic environments contribute to language development and in applying this knowledge to the development of interventions that target increasing teacher and parent speech. His research also examines how innovative statistical and computational techniques can better capture individual differences in language development among children with diverse developmental, cultural, linguistic, and educational needs.

Jang received his doctoral degree in Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 2022. He earned a Master of Science degree in Statistics and a Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics en route to his Ph.D. For the past decade, Jang worked as a teacher and a university-based researcher focused on Early Care and Education (ECE) and explored how ECE stakeholders can embrace the power of “Big Data” to help children overcome developmental challenges, provide the simple joy of play, and tackle pressing social justice challenges. He was honored by the UNC's Office of the Provost with its Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the highest campus-wide recognition for teaching excellence. He was also honored by the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators with its NAECTE Foundation Doctoral Scholarship. 

wkjang@ou.edu
View CV (pdf)

918-660-3987    psalon@ou.edu