Dr. Cosner's research focuses on the development of organizational capacity within schools. She is particularly interested in the ways that administrative and teacher leadership supports the development of social capital; one important dimension of school capacity. From such a perspective, she is currently examining the development of trust and professional community--two important forms of within-school social capital.

Dr. Cosner is a former school and district-level leader. As a principal, she was hired to develop and open a new 1000 student middle school. As a district-level leader she worked with principals and their school-based leadership teams to strengthen schools' leadership capacity and develop evidence-based systems and approaches for improving student learning.

Dr. Cosner teaches in the Urban Education Leadership Ed.D. and Policy Studies  in Urban Education Ph.D. programs. She also is the Assistant Director of Leadership Research and Development for UIC's Partnership READ .

Pauline Lipman's research focuses on race and class inequality in schools, globalization, and the political economy and cultural politics of race in urban education. She is the author of two books: Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring (SUNY, 1998), High Stakes Education; Inequality, Globalization, and Urban School Reform (Routledge, 2004), and numerous articles on these topics. An advocate of activist and engaged scholarship, her current projects examine the relationship of school policy to neoliberal urban development. Her research as a UIC Great Cities Institute Faculty Scholar (2007-2008) focuses on; Chicago's Renaissance 2010 school policy in relation to gentrification and displacement of communities of color. She is also director of UIC's Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education;and a founder of Teachers for Social Justice.

Dr. Mayrowetz studies the ways in which organizational and institutional factors influence the creation and implementation of educational reforms. While the reforms that he explores are varied, ranging from attempts to change mathematics instruction to the development of "distributed leadership" in schools, to the placement of students with special needs in general education classrooms, one of the recurring motifs in his work is the effects that changes in general education have for special education students and programs and vice versa.

Dr. Mayrowetz regularly teaches courses on educational policy and education and the law. While at UIC, he also has taught classes on case study research, instructional reform, the foundations of educational administration, and decision making for school leaders.

Dr. Miller's research focuses on the diversity of school districts in the USA through an ecoevolutionary approach to organizations. He studies how the variability in organizational structures of school districts impact curriculum management, especially science curriculum and in particular how district central offices support elementary science teaching through such structures as K-12 departments. He is currently investigating the impact of NCLB on elementary science teaching.

Dr. Miller currently teaches research methods at the graduate level. For undergraduates, teaches courses on education foundations.

Pamela Anne Quiroz is Associate Professor of Policy Studies & Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1993. Her research interests are sociology of education, inequality, children and youth, identity and social trust. She is the author of Adoption in a Color-Blind Society (2007, Rowman and Littlefield, Joe Feagin's series Toward a Multiracial Society).The book provides a critical interpretation of the discursive practices of private adoption, particularly as these practices relate to race. Her current scholarship is a research action ethnography involving the recent Supreme Court decision on race-conscious assignment in K-12 public school systems. Mapping the development of social networks and cross-generational relationships between 18 African American freshmen males and their peers, parents, teachers, and university researchers, the project explores how successful exchange relationships actually develop, how and which school structures facilitate development and sustenance of cultural straddlers in a selective enrollment high school trying to meet the challenges to diversity.

Professor Quirozﾒ publications have been featured in the Sociology of Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization, Journal of Latino and Latin American Studies and Popular Culture. Professor Quiroz has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, American Sociological Association, U.S. Department of Education and Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. She has also served on the editorial board of Sociology of Education and as past Chair of the Educational Problems Division for the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Professor Quiroz has also been a fellow at Stanford University's Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is currently a fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy. She is currently working on a manuscript, Personal Advertising: Building Trust in a Distrusting Society (to be published by Cambridge Press), which focuses on the increasing use of personal advertising as a mode of trust-building within our larger social context of declining trust. The book treats personal advertising as one barometer of interpersonal trust illustrating how persons negotiate, innovate and meet the challenges of the postmodern world.

Ben Superfine is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Superfine received his J.D. and Ph.D. in Education Foundations and Policy from the University of Michigan.  Before joining UIC, Superfine practiced law at Dow Lohnes PLLC.  Superfine's research interests have focused on the intersection of education law and policy, school finance reform law and policy, standards-based reform and accountability policies, and the role of science in the educational policy process.   His research is interdisciplinary and addresses educational issues through the lenses of law, history, and social science.  Superfine's work has been published in various educational and legal journals, including the American Journal of Education, Cardozo Law Review, Educational Policy, and Teachers College Record.  Superfine's book, The Courts and Standards-based Reform, was published by Oxford University Press.  Superfine has taught various courses at UIC, including Educational Policy: Formation, Implementation, Outcomes; Standards-based Reform, Accountability, and Opportunities to Learn; Foundations of Educational Policy, and Current Issues in Educational Policy.

Dr. Weldon's intersts include school improvement broadly and school finance support of school improvement in particular. He reviews and evaluate school programs in terms of their contributions to student achievement.

Over the course of his nearly four decades at UIC, Professor Weldon has studied and taught courses in school finance, collective bargaining in education, administrative practice in education, foundations of education, educational supervision, philosophy of education, and urban school policy.