Image: The Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia will welcome two new faculty members in the fall. Amy Stich comes to IHE as assistant professor of higher education from the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations at Northern Illinois University, where she was an assistant professor. Gregory Wolniak comes to IHE as associate professor of higher education after serving as founding director of the Center for Research on Higher Education Outcomes and clinical associate professor of higher education at New York University. “We are so pleased to have these two exceptional young scholars join the institute’s faculty,” said IHE Director Libby V. Morris. “In these tenure-track positions, they will teach in our academic programs, advise students, and continue to conduct independent research.” Stich is interested in issues of inequality of educational access, opportunity, and outcome relative to social class and race. Her current research, supported by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, examines the structure and social consequences of postsecondary tracking. She has published widely in academic journals including Sociology of Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, American Educational Research Journal, Urban Education, and Review of Educational Research. She is the author of Access to Inequality: Reconsidering Class, Knowledge, and Capital in Higher Education (Lexington Books) and the co-editor of The Working Classes and Higher Education: Inequality of Access, Opportunity, and Outcome (Routledge). Stich received her Ph.D. in sociology of education from the University at Buffalo, where she was also a postdoctoral research associate on a longitudinal ethnographic study of student transitions from high school to college, supported by the National Science Foundation. Greg Wolniak conducts research on the socioeconomic effects of college. He is particularly interested in understanding how college students’ socioeconomic trajectories are affected by their experiences in college, their educational choices, their institutional environments, and the degree to which learning and developmental gains made during college translate to post-college outcomes. He has published extensively on the career and economic influences of the college experience and recently launched the Affordability and Transparency Initiative, aimed at improving the ways institutions communicate their tuition and cost information to the public. His work has been featured in recent articles appearing in The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Conversation, Inside Higher Education, and MarketWatch. In addition, Wolniak is co-author on the 3rd volume of How College Affects Students (Wiley/Jossey-Bass). He serves on the editorial boards of several journals. Wolniak received his doctorate from the University of Iowa, where he also did post-doctoral work. He has been principal investigator on numerous externally funded projects, most recently receiving grants from the Spencer Foundation, the AccessLex Institute/Association for Institutional Research, and a private national scholarship program. Type of News/Audience: General News Research
