MS in Education Faculty
Meet The Faculty
GSEP's MS in Education faculty holds degrees from some of the most prestigious universities. They are accomplished professional scholar-practitioners with exemplary academic achievements, professional expertise, scholarly credentials, and educational experience. All GSEP faculty offer an important balance between theory and practice in a practitioner-based curriculum.
Seher Awan, EdD
Adjunct Professor
Dr. Seher Awan is a passionate educator, administrator, and advocate. As a community college graduate herself, she began her career as an hourly staff member at College of the Canyons. She earned a contract classified position in EOPS/CARE & CalWORKs, falling in love with the transformational change that occurs through the community college system. She served some of the most disadvantaged and underrepresented populations and has continued to build on her passion for helping others during her tenures at San Jose City College and Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Awan has an extensive educational background and has earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration, a Masters of Business Administration, a Masters of Public Administration and a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership.
Ebony Cain, PhD
Associate Professor of Education
Prior to joining GSEP, Dr. Cain served as a nonprofit leader building programs that focus attention and services on the educational inequity and academic advancement of at-risk and low-income students and communities. She previously taught at the University of Southern California. Additionally, Dr. Cain worked within urban schools as they implemented and created instructional and structural programs promoting greater equity, access, and choice for students of modest means.
Terrance Cao, EdD
Adjunct Faculty
Dr. Cao has extensive and diverse experience in education, having also served as a Science Teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and a New Student Advisor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He holds a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership from Pepperdine University and both a Masters of Education and Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from UCLA. Dr. Cao currently shares his expertise with students at GSEP by teaching Research Capstone courses.
Ron Costello, EdD
Adjunct Professor
Dr. Ronald J Costello is the Associate Dean of eLearning at Camden County College. Dr. Costello has previously served as Associate Vice Chancellor of Distance Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, as the Director of Academic Technology at Immaculata University, and as the Director of Penn State Abington’s Center for Teaching and Learning. He has authored faculty development programs for online teaching, online course development, and several instructional technology training seminars. Dr. Costello has published articles on instructional technology and faculty development in e-learning, including "Voicethread as a Cognitive Tool" and "Perspectives of E-Learning: Faculty Development in Online Learning and E-Learning Engagement".
Eric Hamilton, PhD
Jan and Robert Davidson Endowed Professor of Education and Technology
Dr. Eric Hamilton is a learning scientist and technologist who directs the Asset-Based Learning Environments project, a multiyear research effort funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). His current NSF effort involves learners from six countries collaborating in digital makerspace activities and the study of identity formation in that process. He has directed numerous research projects funded by NSF, the Department of Education, the US State Department, and the Microsoft Research Foundation since coming to GSEP. He is currently heavily involved in the growing international research community applying principles of quantitative ethnography, and he carries out research efforts separate from NSF projects focusing on depolarizing political discourse.
Samaa Haniya, EdD & PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Samaa Haniya has many years of experience designing, implementing, evaluating, and researching e-learning practices both in small and large-scale learning environments, such as MOOCs. Her research interests focus on humanizing education practices through digital transformation and innovative pedagogies to foster mastery learning for all learners. To achieve this goal, she examines user experience, instructional models, and learning behaviors taking place in different online courses and e-learning platforms in relation to learner differences. Her research has been published in well-known national and international journals, books, and conference proceedings, such as ACM, E-Learning and Digital Media, Routledge and IGI Global.
Carlos Jimenez
Adjunct Professor
Carlos is the Assistant Director of Writing Support Services at Pepperdine GSEP and a graduate of the Master of Arts program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL) in 2012.
He currently serves as an adjunct professor for the GSEP Education division and specializes in working with multilingual learners. In addition, Carlos manages the Dissertation Clearance process for GSEP doctoral candidates.
Stephen Kirnon, EdD
Visiting Faculty
Dr. Kirnon has over 30 years of operational experience in biomedical and medical device organizations. Dr. Kirnon is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Shawshank Therapeutics, Inc. Since January 2009, he has served as the Co-founder and CEO of PharmaPlan LLC and Vitavis Laboratories Inc, which was sold to Nestle Health Sciences in 2017.
Dr Kirnon was previously the President and Chief Executive Officer of Pepgen Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company based in Alameda, CA, specializing in autoimmune diseases. He was formerly the President and CEO of Target Protein Technologies, Inc., a pharmaceutical company based in San Diego and specializing in the development of pharmaceutical compounds targeted to specific tissues and organs of the human body.
Seung Lee, PhD
Assistant Professor of Education
Dr. Lee's research focuses on collaborative learning, online interactions, socio-cognitive processes and creativity among K-12 students, particularly in the context of STEM education. He is currently involved in two studies funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Lee's methodological expertise is in quantitative ethnography and epistemic network analysis (ENA), which apply statistical and visualization techniques to model the structure of connections in the data. He served as the Program Committee Co-chair for the 2020 International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. His previous professional experiences include policy research and program management roles with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and nonprofit foundations in Korea and the U.S.
Jennifer Miyake-Trapp, EdD
Associate Professor of Education
Dr. Miyake-Trapp has over a decade of experience in K-12 public schools. She has taught middle school and continuation high school in both urban and suburban settings, coached new teachers, and designed professional development workshops focused on meeting the needs of linguistically and ethnically diverse learners. Her primary interests center on teacher preparation for urban contexts, culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, elementary and secondary curriculum and instruction, project-based learning, and teacher reflection. Other areas of interest include second language acquisition and online learning.
Kfir Mordechay, PhD
Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy
Dr. Kfir Mordechay’s research focuses on how social, demographic, and spatial factors contribute to the formation of racial and economic inequalities. His current research is funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation and explores the relationship between residential and school segregation in gentrifying neighborhoods across California.
Dr. Mordechay’s scholarship has been published in journals such as Educational Policy, The American Journal of Education, Urban Education, and Teachers College Record. His work has been featured and cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR, among others. In addition to his scholarly work, Mordechay has served as an expert consultant for the U.S. Department of Education and other organizations.
Santor Nishizaki, EdD
Adjunct Professor
Dr. Santor Nishizaki is the Founder and CEO of the Mulholland Consulting Group, LLC., whose mission is to help organizations increase generational awareness and create a happier workplace. His company specializes in training and consulting organizations from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors that are interested in growing their Millennial and Generation Z employment engagement, as well as team-building, strategic planning, interpersonal skills, and leadership development using a strengths-based approach.
Paula Thompson, EdD
Adjunct Faculty
Dr. Paula Thompson teaches graduate-level courses in organization design and culture, organization change, qualitative analysis, and doctoral writing. She also chairs dissertations and is proud to have multiple graduates from GSEP. In addition to teaching, Paula is a leadership and career coach for BetterUp, a positive psychology-based company that provides virtual coaching services to Fortune 100 companies.
Ricardo Vigil, EdD
Professor
Dr. Vigil serves as the director of field experience for the teacher preparation program at GSEP. Previously, he taught as a secondary social studies instructor and was a K-12 administrator and adjunct professor. Dr. Vigil uses his background knowledge of K-12 education to maintain and develop partnerships with schools in the greater Los Angeles area. He currently teaches clinical courses, secondary methods, and instructional design and enjoys guiding and developing new educators as they journey through their programs and into their careers. In 2011, Dr. Vigil was a finalist nominee for dissertation of the year at the University of Southern California, and other research interests include technology and teacher feedback, and instruction. Dr. Vigil is a passionate supporter of STEM, urban education, and innovative schools.
Maria Wright, EdD
Adjunct Professor
Dr. Maria Wright is currently the Director of GSEP Talent Management and Adjunct Professor for Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP). As a student affairs administrator, she has extensive experience in Student Affairs, Multicultural Affairs, Enrollment Services, Academic Affairs, course and program development and instruction, and special projects in higher education. She currently teaches Ethics, Values and Inclusion, Action Research, Self in a Social World, Educational Foundations, Social Justice and Equity, and Contemporary Issues courses in the Education Division at GSEP. She leads the Department of Talent Management and GSEP Diversity Council and participates in course development for the Education Division at GSEP.