Dr. Adam Voight is the Center for Urban Education Director and an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, Research, and Technology at CSU. He has a Ph.D. in Community Research and Action from the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has a Master’s in school counseling and taught high school social studies. He has substantive expertise in youth development, urban education, and implementation science and methodological expertise in quantitative and participatory methods. Dr. Voight is the principal investigator on SchYPAR and is responsible for overall project management, research supervision, and managing partnerships with districts and schools. He is a founding member of the Cleveland Alliance for Education Research, a research-practice partnership between CSU, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and the American Institutes for Research; the mission is to use research to improve outcomes for K-12 students in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr. Molly Buckley-Marudas is an Associate Professor of Adolescent/Young Adult English Education at the Levin College of Public Affairs & Education. As part of her work at CSU, Dr. Buckley-Marudas serves as faculty-in-residence at Campus International High School. In 2017, she helped design and launch a school-based YPAR course for 9th graders at CIHS. The course, positioned as the first year of a four-year research sequence, continues to be part of the school’s curriculum for all 9th graders. Tied to this, Dr. Buckley-Marudas initiated Campus Conference: A Youth Research Symposium as the culminating event for the students’ YPAR projects. Dr. Buckley-Marudas is involved in several projects related to Youth Participatory Action Research in Ohio. She is the director of one YPAR project funded by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation that helps support the YPAR work at CIHS and co-PI of two federally funded YPAR projects (Project HighKEY and SchYPAR). On the team, Molly’s work is focused on supporting teachers in designing and implementing YPAR for different classroom and school contexts and directing the annual Campus Conference at CSU to showcase students’ work.

Dr. Keith M. Bell, the originator, director and facilitator of THE Ohio State Student Leadership Research Collaborative (OSU SLRC) and Director of Leadership Services for the Educational Service Center (ESC) of Northeast Ohio. Currently, he works with Cleveland State University as an Instructional design leader for SchYPAR (School Based YPAR) and the University of Cincinnati as an Advancing Inclusive Principal Leadership Coach (AIPL Ohio). Prior to that time, Dr. Bell was the Deputy Superintendent/Chief Academic Officer for Columbus City Schools. He also served as the Secondary Director/Academic Affairs and Principal at Westerville City Schools for Westerville City Schools. From 2000-2004, Dr. Bell was Principal of Groveport Madison Local Schools and from 1993-2000, he was Assistant Principal at Gahanna Jefferson Public School. He began his career in education as a marketing education high school teacher and basketball coach at South-Western City Schools.

Dr. Rosalinda Godinez is a postdoctoral fellow for the Center for Urban Education at Cleveland State University (CSU). At SchYPAR (School-Youth Participatory Action Research), she is excited to support teachers and students in their YPAR process while contributing to reformating the SchYPAR resources and website. Dr. Godinez is trained as an education ethnographer and is committed to establishing collaborative and action-based partnerships that document and honor peoples' everyday life and education practices of community, movement, and imagination. Through PAR (Participatory Action Research) paradigm—grounded in Chicana feminist epistemologies and decolonize methodologies such as testimonio—she has previously worked with Latinx families, both in California and Washington, to identify systemic problems affecting their lives, engage in reflective practices for social change, and co-create educational materials from peoples' experiences.

Diane Stultz, M.S. Ed. currently serves as an independent contractor and consults for several educational organizations. She has more than 47 years of experience in education as a successful teacher, instructional coach, school change coach, facilitator of professional learning, leadership coach, and a senior Director of Learning and Leading for a not-for-profit organization. She has worked with rural, urban, and suburban schools (K-12) throughout the United States and with public schools in Hong Kong. Because she is a life-long learner, Diane earned her National Board Certification and other post-graduate courses and has been passionate about teacher and leader empowerment ever since. Ms. Stultz attended Bowling Green State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Vocational Education and a Master of Science degree in education with an emphasis on adult learning from The Ohio State University.

Katelyne Griffin-Todd is a research assistant at the Center for Urban Education. She is a second-year doctoral student in the Urban Education program at Cleveland State University, specializing in Counseling Psychology. She earned her Bachelor of Science from Florida State University in psychology and her Master of Science in psychology from the University of North Florida. Katelyne embraces Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a tool to elevate youth voices and collaboratively shape knowledge. Aligned with her belief in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, YPAR empowers youth to actively shape their educational journeys, bridging personal experiences with broader contexts. This approach offers marginalized youth a vital platform to voice trauma-related concerns, express needs, and envision aspirations, fostering agency, resilience, and societal change.

Amirhassan (Amir) Javadi is a Center for Urban Education research assistant. He moved from Iran to the U.S. to enter the Urban Education doctoral program at Cleveland State University, where he is a first-year student specializing in counseling psychology. Amir earned a Master’s degree at the University of Tehran in clinical psychology and has worked as a psychotherapist. His research interests include critical consciousness, multicultural counseling, and the processes and outcomes of psychotherapy. Working alongside the CUE team, he serves as a graduate assistant, dedicating his efforts to research and implementation of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) in school settings. Amir is interested in discerning how YPAR contributes to the cultivation of critical consciousness and the deconstruction of prevailing power structures within educational environments.