Kessa Robert

Field:
Areas of Focus:

Expertise

• Rural Education
• Education Policy
• Postsecondary Access/Planning
• School Crisis
• Crisis Leadership
• Student Homelessness
• Natural Disasters & Schools
• Family-School-Family Relationships
• Dual Credit Policies

Bio

I am currently an Assistant Professor at Utah State University, having earned my Ph.D. in Education Policy from The Ohio State University. Prior to my position at Utah State, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Southern Methodist University. Additionally, I bring with me several years of K-12 educational leadership experience in school districts serving high-needs communities during which I developed district policy and best practices for school and district administrators, classroom teachers, and other school personnel; created and led building- and district-level initiatives to improve students’ academic and socio-emotional growth; and partnered with families, community organizations, and governmental entities to build strong school-family-community relationships.

My research employs qualitative and mixed methods to explore the social context of educational policy and leadership, attending primarily to students in underserved rural and urban contexts who have been historically marginalized by societal and educational institutions. I am particularly interested in the ways that various stakeholders – including educational leaders, parents, students, and community and governmental actors – shape policy and practice across these contexts. Paramount in my work is attention to how policy and practice serve to exacerbate or ameliorate current structures of inequality in our educational and social systems.

My current and prior research projects and publications have focused on the following topics:

• Rural students' postsecondary trajectories
• Dual credit policy implementation in rural schools
• Student homelessness and Covid-19
• Student homelessness and natural disasters
• School leadership in crises (natural disasters, Covid-19, etc.)
• School and community partnership
• Dissemination of research findings in non-traditional formats