Faculty Associates

Stephanie Flores-Koulish is Professor and Program Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Social Justice. She is also the Faculty Director of Community-Engaged  Learning and Scholarship (CELS). Her primary area of expertise and research has been within the field of Critical Media Literacy Education. She also has conducted research on identity and adoptees, education policy and practices, and critical multicultural education. Her research provides her with many opportunities to practice engaged scholarship in and around Baltimore City. She serves on the board for the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and is on the executive committee for the Alliance of Adoption and Culture (ASAC). Flores-Koulish is also an alumna and mentor of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT).

Dr. Marie K. Heath is the Chair of Education Specialties and Associate Professor at Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests center inquiry on young people attending high-poverty, majority-minority public schools, technology use, and civic engagement in online and offline spaces. Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Heath taught secondary social studies in Baltimore County Public Schools.

Dr. Lambrinou is a Research Associate with the School of Education and the Center for Equity, Leadership, and Social Justice in Education (CRE) at Loyola University Maryland. A native of Cyprus, Marina situates her work at the intersections of migration policy and education and grounds her research in an interdisciplinary and critical approach to policy and education. Her research interests include immigrant youth and education, educational policy, student voice and activism, identity intersectionalities, minoritized youth in STEM, undocuactivism in the Nuevo South, interpretive and critical policy analysis, phenomenological research, LatCrit, ethnography and autoethnography centering the immigrant experience.

Marina received her doctorate in the Cultural Foundations of Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNC Greensboro) in May 2023. Her dissertation is entitled: “The United States, it’s supposed to be where dreams come true”: Rhizomatic Familias, Nested Policy Contexts and the Attendant Shaping of Undocumented and Mixed-Status Students’ Lived Experiences in North Carolina. Marina's work has been published in various esteemed journals, including Educational Policy, Equity in Education and Society, Frontiers in Education and Journal for Leadership, Equity, and Research.

She has also contributed chapters in books about Latinx youth and migration and has presented her work at multiple educational conferences (AESA, AERA, UCEA). She currently has two articles in publication, two articles under review, and three articles in progress.

Dr. Leah Katherine Saal is a Co-Director and Professor in Literacy Education. Dr. Saal’s engaged scholarly agenda focuses on the intersectionality of literacy and social justice. Her work is informed by her ongoing experiences teaching with and learning from families, adults, and communities in and out of school settings in the greater DMV region. Dr. Saal and her colleague Dr. Lisa Schoenbrodt, professor of speech-language-hearing-sciences at Loyola University Maryland, are principal investigators for several interdisciplinary engaged research projects focused on training adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to serve as Self-Advocate Educators (SAEs) in training and advocacy environments including law enforcement and emergency medical services, among others.