Meet the Department Chairs
New chairs are heading three of CEHD’s eight departments
Department of Curriculum and Instruction: Nina Asher, Ph.D.
Nina Asher, Ph.D.
“How do we renew our commitment to public education for an increasingly diverse and complex democracy?” asks Nina Asher, new chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. “A major challenge is working toward greater recognition of the intrinsic value of teaching and teacher education. That recognition needs to happen at every level, from the campus to the national conversation.”
Asher arrived in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in July from Louisiana State University. As an endowed professor in LSU’s Department of Educational Theory, Policy, and Practice, she coordinated the pre-service master’s program in elementary education, co-directed the Curriculum Theory Project, and served on the faculty of programs in women’s and gender studies and comparative literature.
Asher draws on experiences in India, where she earned her master’s degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and in New York, where she earned her Ed.D. from Columbia University Teachers College.
She was attracted to her new position by the national reputation of the department and University and the opportunity to work with the outstanding curriculum and instruction faculty on challenges to education posed by massive cultural and global changes.
School of Kinesiology: Li Li Ji, Ph.D.
Li Li Ji, Ph.D.
Li Li Ji comes to the School of Kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he developed research and leadership in exercise physiology, nutrition, and aging and served 10 years as a department chair.
Ji was coaching basketball in China just after the period of ping-pong diplomacy when, in 1979, he turned his focus to science. He became the first Chinese student to study exercise physiology in the United States. Inspired by the work of a pioneer researcher at the University of Wisconsin, he went on for a Ph.D. and postdoctoral work in biochemistry. He began to study animals to gain insight on what happens—down to the cellular level—when the body exercises.
In Illinois and Wisconsin, Ji helped to build strong ties for CIC institutions with partners in China. Moving to the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities was a logical step. The School of Kinesiology offers a broad range of potential academic partners, strong ties with China through the China Center, and a large sports community, from educators to professional teams.
As lifestyles change, the importance of exercise has never been clearer, says Ji. The School of Kinesiology has an outstanding mix of academic programs, growing enrollment, and a research tradition highlighted by the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene and Exercise Science, established in 1938.
“All this makes the school very vibrant,” Ji says. “What we need to do now is increase our research rigor. It’s very exciting.”
Institute of Child Development: Megan Gunnar, Ph.D.
Megan Gunnar, Ph.D.
Megan Gunnar’s knowledge of the top-ranked Institute of Child Development runs deep. After 30 years at the University, she knows her colleagues and students, the University’s structure and culture, facilities and budgets, and well as peers and stakeholders around the world.
To describe the institute’s work, she dashes off a Venne diagram with overlapping circles for social development, cognitive development, and developmental psychopathology. She notes the growing importance of developmental neuroscience.
But what fuels Gunnar’s passion every day are the children themselves. ICD’s work depends on carefully designed research that often engages children and parents in labs and in the Shirley G. Moore Laboratory School.
As a Regents Professor, Gunnar’s research and teaching loads continue while she puts her knowledge of the institute to work as chair.
“With reductions in state funding, difficulties with national funding, aging facilities, and four faculty retirements in the last four years, we really have to focus on sustainability—keeping the institute healthy and growing,” she says. “We are doing amazing work here. A lot is at stake.”
