CAROLINA BAND - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director of IT and Operations
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- Information Resource Consultant
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- Chairman
- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Assistant Professor of Physical Education at the USC College of Education
Ali S. Brian is an Assistant Professor of Physical Education at the USC College of Education. Her research focuses on fundamental motor skill competence in disadvantaged, young children, including interventions that change motor competence in historically developmentally delayed children, and exploring the relationship between motor competence, perceived motor competence and physical activity within the context of preventing childhood obesity.
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- Associate Professor at USC
Amit Almor is an Associate Professor at USC. His research areas are psycholinguistics, neuroimaging of language and language impairments, the processing of anaphoric expressions in discourse, sentence production and comprehension, lexical representations and processing, and the connection between language and memory.
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- Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
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- Member of the Executive Board
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- Member of the Governance Committee
- 8th Judicial Circuit Chief Executive Officer B.S., Business Administration, USC, 1990 Current Term, 2020 - 2024
Bridget Miller is an Assistant Professor in science education in the Instruction and Teacher Education department at the USC College of Education. Her research investigates the integration of commercial technologies such as tablet computers and their use in the STEM classroom to support instructional objectives in authentic and meaningful ways.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Governor
- Member of the Governance Committee
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chairman Emeritus
- Member of the Governance Committee
3rd Judicial Circuit | Physician | B.S., biology, Wofford College, 1980 | M.D., University of South Carolina, 1985 | General Surgery Residency, USC, 1985-1990 | Cardiothoracic Surgery Fellowship, Medical College of Georgia, 1990-1992 | Board member since 2010; current term, 2023-2026 | Board chairman, 2020-2022
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- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Assistant Director of Development
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- Program Coordinator for the South Carolina Child Care Inclusion Collaborative
Carrie Trivedi is the Program Coordinator for the South Carolina Child Care Inclusion Collaborative. Previously, Carrie served as an Inclusion Specialist, providing assistance and support to child care providers across the state of South Carolina. Carrie received her Bachelors in Experimental Psychology and Masters of Arts in Teaching in Early Childhood Education from the University of South Carolina.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Governance Committee
Christine DiStefano is a Professor in the Educational and Developmental Science department at the USC College of Education. Her research interests include structural equation modeling, survey design and latent class clustering/cluster analysis. She is also involved with the application of advanced statistics and measurement methods to issues related to school psychology.
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- Member of the Steering Committee
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- Assistant Dean for Professional Partnerships
Collin Perryman is a graduate assistant for CEEAAS.
Job Titles:
- Department of Leadership, Learning Design, and Inquiry
- Member of Committee
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- Member of the Steering Committee
- Chairman Elect
- Professor
David Stodden is a Professor in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science at the College of Education. His research agenda focuses on promoting the acquisition and development of fundamental motor skills and the association of motor skill competence with physical activity, health-related physical fitness, perceived competence and obesity across the lifespan.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Della Thigpen is the Language Immersion Lead Teacher in Richland School District One in Columbia, SC. She coordinates the district's immersion program which offers Spanish and Chinese options for students beginning in Pre-Kindergarten. Prior to Richland One, she taught internationally in China, and in a Chinese immersion school in Washington, DC.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Governance Committee
- USC Alumni Association President
Attorney | B.A., education, secondary english, USC, 1974 | J.D., USC School of Law, 1989 | Board member, ex officio; current term, 2022-2024
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- Member of the Governance Committee
- State Superintendent of Education
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- Member of the Governance Committee
- 10th Judicial Circuit Attorney B.S., Business Administration / Finance, USC, 1992 J.D., Samford University, 1995 Current Term, 2020 - 2024
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- Member of the Executive Board
Ernesto Bernal is originally from Colombia, South America. Bernal has been working in the United States for a decade trying to bring learning opportunities to students and teachers that open their minds to new challenges inside and outside of this country.
Bernal believes that learning new languages and discovering new cultures allows us to be not just bystanders, but real global citizens of a more interconnected world. Currently, Ernesto Bernal is the World Languages and ESOL Programs Coordinator for Richland School District One.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Professor
Eurydice Bauer is Professor and the John E. Swearingen Chair of Education in the department of Teacher Education. She is the director of Bilingualism Matters at USC. Bauer is part of an international group linked by the Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE, 2016) that focuses on understanding how bilingualism impacts learning and cognition. Currently, Bauer is interested in understanding how the benefits of bilingualism can be leverage to better support low-income students' learning.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Academic Program Chairs and Directors Team
- Department Chair, Teacher Education
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- Research Assistant Professor
Fred Greer is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science at the USC College of Education. His expertise and research involves early childhood assessment, social-emotional behavior assessment, and early intervention.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean for Democracy, Education, and Inclusivity
- Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Education
- Member of Committee
- Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Gloria Boutte is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students. Her scholarship, teaching and service focus on equity methodologies.
Gloria Swindler Boutte is a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her scholarship focuses on equity pedagogies. She is the author/editor of five books: (1) We Be Lovin' Black Children: Becoming Learning to Be Literate About the African Diaspora; (2) African Diaspora Literacy: The Heart of Transformation in K-12 Schools and Teacher Education (2019 AESA Critics Choice Award) (3) Educating African American Students: And how are the children; (4) Resounding Voices: School Experiences of People From Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds; and (5) Multicultural Education: Raising Consciousness. She has nearly100 publications.
Boutte has presented nationally and internationally on equity issues and has received prestigious awards such as the Fulbright Scholar; Fulbright Specialist; 2020 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts-Elementary Section; and the 2021 American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2021 Division K Legacy award. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students (CEEAAS). She has served as a Visiting Scholar and presented her work internationally on every continent except for Antarctica.
Job Titles:
- Director, South Carolina Child Care Inclusion Collaborative
- Research Associate at the Yvonne & Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center
Heather Googe is a Research Associate at the Yvonne & Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center at USC and Director of the South Carolina Child Care Inclusion Collaborative. She has more than 15 years experience in early childhood special education, and holds a Ph.D. in Special Education from the USC College of Education.
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- Member of Committee
- Student Representative
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- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Governor of South Carolina
A.B., history, USC, 1969 | J.D., USC School of Law, 1973 | The Governor is the ex officio Chair of the Board and serves for the duration of his tenure as Governor.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Associate Professor in the Instruction and Teacher Education Department at the USC College of Education
Jan Yow is an Associate Professor in the Instruction and Teacher Education department at the USC College of Education. Her research and teaching focus on mathematics teacher education and leadership. She views teacher education as a process that begins with pre-service teachers and continues throughout a teacher's career. Her research investigates how teachers develop as teacher leaders in mathematics education.
Jarvais Jackson is the Director of the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students.
Job Titles:
- Information Resource Consultant
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- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Member of the Diversity Committee
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Ex - Officio
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Steering Committee
Kara Brown teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in social foundations, comparative education and qualitative research methods. Her research focuses on language policy, minority schooling and teacher migration. Brown has well-established projects in Estonia with more recent lines in the U.S. Southeast. Her work appears in Anthropology of Education Quarterly, European Education, European Journal of Language Policy, as well as in edited volumes. Brown's research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, Fulbright, the International Research and Exchange Board, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, and the University of South Carolina.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Special Education
Kate Ascetta is an assistant professor of Early Childhood Special Education in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science. Her research interests include the development and assessment of effective instructional practices, specifically online, that promotes professional growth in teachers and leads to increased language and communication skills in young children. Ascetta also had an interest in developing equitable education practices aimed to close the opportunity to gap experienced by some young children.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Special Education
Katie Wolfe is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science at the USC College of Education. Her research includes the development and implementation of interventions to promote language and communication skills in young children with autism, the synthesis of single-subject research to identify empirically-supported treatments, and the use of technology in training individuals to analyze single-subject data.
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- Program Coordinator for South Carolina Partners
Kerri Kannengieser is the Program Coordinator for South Carolina Partnerships for Inclusion. She holds an M.Ed. in Special Education and has 15 years of experience in the field.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Member of the Executive Board
- Co - Director of Bilingualism Matters at USC
Lenny Sánchez serves as co-Director of Bilingualism Matters at USC and is a faculty member in Language and Literacy Education in the Department of Teacher Education at University of South Carolina. His research focuses on intersections of literacy, inquiry, and social justice teaching and learning. More recent scholarship examines global literacies and bilingual learning.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Steering Committee
Liz Lawrence-Baez currently serves as the Dual Language Immersion Lead Teacher at Polo Road Elementary School in Richland School District Two. Previously, she worked in Lexington School District One where she taught Spanish and German in their FLES programs, served as the Lead Teacher for World Languages, and taught Kindergarten/1st Grade German Immersion. Lawrence-Baez is also an adjunct instructor of German at the University of South Carolina.
A strong advocate for bilingual education and social justice, she engages with many local, regional, and national leaders in the Dual Language and Immersion education field to build strong and equitable programs. Her professional interests focus on teacher training, specifically international teachers, and biliteracy development among immersion students.
Lawrence-Baez holds a BA in German, an MAT in Foreign Language Teaching from the University of South Carolina and an Advanced Certificate in Dual Language and Immersion Education from the University of Minnesota.
Job Titles:
- Coordinator for World Languages
Liza Speece is the Coordinator for World Languages and Dual Language Immersion for Lexington School District One. She was previously the World Language Teacher Support Specialist for Lexington One. Prior to this position, Liza taught Spanish at the elementary, secondary and college levels, third grade Spanish immersion, and ESOL at a variety of levels. She also taught Spanish and Service Learning at Columbia College.
Speece also teaches as an adjunct professor at USC in the College of Education and for the College of Charleston. Liza holds a B.A. in Spanish from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an MAT in Foreign Language Teaching from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in Language and Literacy from the University of South Carolina.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Mark A. Bounds is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He received his undergraduate degree from Towson University and was commissioned as a Distinguished Military Graduate from the Johns Hopkins University ROTC program in 1980. He spent the next twenty years serving our nation as an officer in the United States Army. While in the Army, Mr. Bounds served tours of duty in the United States and Europe and earned numerous decorations and awards.
After transitioning from the Army, Bounds began a career in education. His senior education positions include: South Carolina Department of Education Deputy Superintendent for School Effectiveness, State Director Communities in Schools of South Carolina, South Carolina Department of Education Director of School Leadership and Chief Information Officer School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties. Bounds currently serves as the Head of Schools for East Point Academy.
Bounds possesses a Master of Science degree in Administration from Central Michigan University and a Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the College of Naval Command and Staff. He is a graduate of the Center for Creative Leadership Education Leader Development Program, the International Center for Leadership in Education, the Riley Institute Diversity Leadership Initiative and is a South Carolina Education Policy Fellow.
He and his wife Kathleen are the proud parents of two grown children, April and David and the proud grandparents of four grandchildren, Addison, Eleanor, Natalie and Samuel.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director
- Director
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Director of USC 's Child Development Research Center
Matt Irvin, Director of USC's Child Development Research Center, is an Assistant Professor in Educational Psychology and Research in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science at the College of Education. His research focuses on the academic, social, and behavioral development of adolescents from rural communities. This includes students' risk and resilience, motivation and engagement, learning in online courses, youth with disabilities, and peer relations.
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- Provost Visiting Scholars
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- Fellow at the Yvonne & Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center
Megan Irwin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yvonne & Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center at USC. She received her Ph.D. in Kinesiology with a specialization in Motor Behavior from Auburn University. Her research focuses on improving motor skill competency and increasing physical activity in children and youth with and without disabilities.
Job Titles:
- Department of Teacher Education
- Member of Committee
Strompolis is Director of Research and Evaluation at the Children's Trust of South Carolina. She also serves as the leader for KIDS COUNT South Carolina, collecting and sharing data that informs decisions on child well-being. Her advocacy and policy work has been published in multiple professional publications and outlets, and she is chair of the national policy committee of the Society for Community Research and Action, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association.
Job Titles:
- President
- President of the University
Michael Amiridis became the 30th president of the University of South Carolina on July 1, 2022. Before he served as chancellor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he was executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of South Carolina from 2009 to 2015.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Governance Committee
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- Member of the Steering Committee
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- Member of Committee
- Student Representative
Job Titles:
- Department of Educational and Developmental Science
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Academic Program Chairs and Directors Team
- Member of the Steering Committee
- Department Chair, Leadership, Learning Design, and Inquiry
Job Titles:
- Director of Student Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement
Job Titles:
- Member of the Governance Committee
Job Titles:
- Governor
- Member of the Governance Committee
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management and Academic Program Development
Robbie Ross investigates factors that influence the link between cognitive control skills and learning among young children, including peer effects, teaching practices, and children's self-perceptions of skill. Her research is also focused on discovering the ways in which understanding these factors might shape how educators can best support the development of cognitive control skills in the classroom.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Governance Committee
- Vice Chair
- Ex Officio / University System
14th Judicial Circuit | Banker | B.A., finance and economics, Converse College, 1992 | MBA, USC, 1994 | Board member since 2018; current term, 2020-2024
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
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- Assistant Professor
- Member of the Academic Program Chairs and Directors Team
- Interim Department Chair, Educational and Developmental Science
Ryan Carlson is an Assistant Professor in Counselor Education in the Department of Educational and Developmental Science at the USC College of Education and a licensed mental health counselor. He has worked in private practice and community mental health. He is published in the areas of outcomes for low-income couples and individuals who received relationship education; efficacious recruitment/retention of low-income participants into research; and intimate partner violence typologies & implications for counseling.
Job Titles:
- Administrative Assistant for the South Carolina Child Care Resource
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chairman of the Board
- Ex Officio
The primary library for students at the University of South Carolina, Thomas Cooper Library houses seven levels of research materials, subject matter experts and partner organizations that complement your learning experience.
In August 2012, Thomas Hodges joined the Instruction and Teacher Education faculty at the University of South Carolina. Hodges has previously served as coordinator of Elementary Education programs, Chair of the Department of Teacher Education, and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Valerie Byrd Fort is a Ph.D. student in the Language and Literacy program, and the Coordinator for Cocky's Reading Express, USC's Literacy Outreach Program. She teachers courses about children's literature to pre-service teachers and to future school and youth services librarians at the School of Information Science at USC. Her research focus is on diversity in children's literature.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director at the USC Child Development Research Center
Vasanthi Rao is the assistant director at the USC Child Development Research Center. Her current work with the South Carolina Child Care Resource & Referral Network involves analyses of large scale administrative databases related to early childhood in the state. Her past and present research interests include assessment, special education, measurement, comparative international education and big data.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina
Yang Wang is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. She earned her Ph.D. in Literacy and M.Ed. in TESOL from the University of Missouri. She completed her B. A. in English Education in China and taught English as a Foreign Language there. Her research focuses on reading comprehension, reading assessment, English language teaching and learning, and biliteracy.