The Indiana University Board of Trustees has approved promotion and tenure for six faculty members from the IU School of Education. The promotions are effective July 1, with the appointment with tenure effective July 1, 2022.
Alexander Cuenca
Alexander Cuenca has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Cuenca’s research focuses on social studies teacher education, the pedagogy of teacher education, and teacher education policy. In 2020, Cuenca was recognized with the Early Career Award by the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies. He is currently leading an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education that brings together representatives from the Indiana Department of Education and local education agencies in Indiana to develop more equitable and inclusive assessments for prospective teachers. Cuenca earned a Ph.D. in Social Studies Education from the University of Georgia.
Sarah Hurwitz
Sarah Hurwitz has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Special Education Program, part of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Dr. Hurwitz’s research focuses on interventions for children with disabilities, with a particular interest in autism. Her recent work examines how special education teams have adapted instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic to support students’ behavioral and academic needs. Dr. Hurwitz has a Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completed her postdoctoral training in Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and is an Affiliate Faculty member in the School Psychology program at IU.
Anne Leftwich
Anne Leftwich has been promoted to Professor in the Department of Instructional Systems Technology. She also serves as the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology and is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science. Her expertise lies in the areas of the design of K-12 curriculum resources (particularly focused on technology and computer science), as well as teacher education and professional development around technology integration and computer science for K-12 teachers. She has a Ph.D. in Educational Technology, emphasis in Teacher Education, from Purdue University.
Leslie Rutkowski
Leslie Rutkowski has been promoted to Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology. Her research is in the area of international large-scale assessment. Her interests include latent variable models and examining methods for comparing heterogeneous populations in international surveys. Rutkowski is also the chair of the PISA Technical Advisory Group and the NAEP Questionnaire Standing Committee. She has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois.
Hannah Schertz
Hannah Schertz has been promoted to Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her primary interestsconverge around early childhood special education and autism. She has obtained approximately $5 million in federal and other research funding to address the core social challenge during the critical period when signs of autism first emerge. Her research has focused primarily on the parent-child relationship as a medium for promoting developmentally situated social communication at the preverbal level for toddlers with autism. Schertz has a Ph.D. in Special Education from Indiana University – Bloomington.
Quentin Wheeler-Bell
Quentin Wheeler-Bell has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Wheeler-Bell is originally from Denver, Colorado. His interests are in critical pedagogy, critical theory and radical conception of democracy. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in philosophy of education from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.