Meet the Team | QualLab

Dr. Penny A. Pasque (she/her) is a professor in Educational Studies, Director of Qualitative Methods, & Founding Director of QualLab in the Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration (ORIC), College of Education and Human Ecology. Her research focuses on congruency throughout a research design (no matter one’s paradigmatic perspective or methodological approach), critical inquiry, Critical Advocacy Inquiry (CAI), and beyond. Specifically, she studies qualitative (non)methodologies and methods that work toward social justice and educational equity. Her content area is higher education organization & policy. She’s in the Department of Educational Studies’ Higher Education & Student Affairs program and affiliate in the Philosophy, History, & Policy program. Pasque’s research has appeared in over 100 journal articles and books. Pasque is editor of The Review of Higher Education (with Dr. Thomas F. Nelson Laird). RHE is considered one of the leading research journals in the field. She thinks the QualLab team is AMAZING! For more on Dr. Pasque, see:

Rhodesia McMillian (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of educational policy and a nationally certified school psychologist. She serves as QualLab’s NVivo expert. Utilizing critical methodologies and theories, she is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research bridges K-12 education reform law, education policy, elementary and secondary educational governance, special education law, and sociology. Dr. McMillian’s primary scholarship investigates how federal, state, and local education policies impact the educational experiences of students of color and students with disabilities, as well as the ways in which educational disparities persist in k-12 public education.

Mianmian Fei (she/her) is a second-year doctoral student in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at the Department of Educational Studies. She has a background in anthropology and sociology and believes in the power of interdisciplinary research. She is interested in the internationalization of higher education, comparative higher education, and sociology of education. She spent her formative years in China, the United States, and Switzerland and strives to become a global-minded researcher with cultural sensitivity and competence.

Anna Zaitseva (she/her) is a third-year doctoral student in the Multilingual Language Education program at the Department of Teaching and Learning. Anna’s experience with teaching and an M.A. in Second Language Acquisition led her to work with pre-service World Language teachers. It also allowed her to serve as an instructor for teacher preparation courses in the department. Her academic research interests include language assessment, critical approaches to teacher education research and praxis, antiracist pedagogy, and social justice in education.

Kieren Bode (he/him) is a third-year honors student majoring in Public Affairs and Economics with a minor in French. He is passionate about improving equal opportunity in early childhood education and plans on working in education policy. Through his work at the QualLab, Kieren hopes to explore the realm of education research and policy, while also acquiring valuable tools through QualLab networks to properly assess how diversity is being acknowledged in the educational world.

shea wesley martin (they/them) is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. In their scholarship, shea employs critical methodologies to explore the intersections of literacy, community, and archival justice in queer and trans communities of color. A nationally-recognized educator, shea was the 2022 recipient of ALAN’s Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature. Their work appears in multiple scholarly and creative outlets, including Research on Diversity in Youth Literature and Radical Teacher.

Joe Spurlock (he/him) is a fourth-year PhD student in the Teaching and Learning Department studying early childhood education. His research focuses on equity and interdisciplinarity between literacies, literature, and STEM, particularly pedagogical practices that explore these concepts to humanize science education and undermine neoliberalism in early learning spaces. Joe’s education experience includes classroom teaching, youth services for Columbus Metropolitan Library, and three years as a Graduate Teaching Associate for various courses in Teaching and Learning.

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Past QualLab contributors:

Graduate Research Associate: Tesss Smith, Hannah Reyes, Chelsea Gilbert, Dr. Ruth Lu, Dr. e alexander, Adrian Bitton, Bakari Lumumba, Dr. Sina Saeedi
Postdoctoral research: Dr. e alexander
Ph.D. Intern: Faustina Mensah
Master’s Intern: Jennifer Watley, J-Mi DeLeon
Undergraduate Student Coordinator: Dahianna Ontaneda