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Family and Consumer Sciences

Faculty Research Interests

Fashion Design and Merchandising

  • Jennifer Banning

    Highest Degree: PhD, Louisiana State University

    Research Areas:

    • Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)
    • Sustainability
    • The social, cultural, and historical aspects of dress

  • Yoon Ma

    Highest Degree: PhD, Iowa State University

    Research Areas:

    • Social responsibility in the fashion industry(consumption, manufacturing, and retailing)
    • Industry 4.0 Technologies in the fashion industry
    • Collaborative robots and automation system in fashion manufacturing
    • Consumer behaviors

  • Xun (Catherine) Sun

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Missouri

    Research Areas:

    • Retail automation technology, Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in retail and consumer contexts
    • Big data and business analytics in fashion
    • Organizational change and digital readiness
    • Human capital and workforce development
    • Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)

  • Ui-Jeen Yu

    Highest Degree: PhD, Iowa State University

    Research Areas:

    • Financial analyses in merchandising performance.
    • Fashion retailing technology and innovation.
    • Social and psychological aspects on clothing and behavior.
    • Luxury brand marketing and retailing.
    • Wearable technology applications.

  • Kelly L. Reddy-Best

    Highest Degree: PhD, Oregon State University

    Research Areas:

    • History, cultural studies, critical theories, and ethnographic approaches, with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century dress, fashion, and appearance.
    • Justice-centered analysis of fashion systems, examining how products, management practices, and media are produced, distributed, consumed, regulated, and represented across time and space.
    • Niche and marginalized consumer markets, including their emergence, dynamics, and the social, political, and economic forces shaping them.
    • Fashion brand engagement with justice work, emphasizing how fashion companies navigate activism, ethics, and social responsibility within capitalist structures.
    • Media, culture, and dress regulation, along with the lived experiences of historically marginalized people across formal and informal economies and how they engage with, resist, and are affected by the fashion system.

Food, Nutrition, and Dietetics

  • Amy Bardwell

    Highest Degree: PhD, Auburn University

    Research Areas:

    • Community based food systems
    • Local food movement
    • Consumer behavior in food and beverage
    • Rural tourism

  • Jennifer Barnes

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

    Research Areas:

    • Dietary interventions in chronic disease, particularly kidney failure
    • Nutrition education in college athletics

  • Julie Schumacher

    Highest Degree: EdD, Illinois State University

    Research Areas:

    • Community nutrition interventions to alleviate food insecurity
    • Nutrition education in East Africa
    • Educational technology for dietetics education

  • Erol Sozen

    Highest Degree: PhD, Auburn University

    Research Areas:

    • Food allergies, food safety, and consumer food choice behaviors in food service.
    • Environmental sustainability in the food and beverage sector.
    • Consumer behavior in food service, including perceptions of menu labeling, service quality, and tipping behavior.

Human Development and Family Science

  • Tammy Harpel

    Highest Degree: PhD, Purdue University

    Research Areas:

    • Lived experiences of endometriosis & reproductive health disorders.
    • Experiences of college students and sexual minority and nonbinary individuals with reproductive health issues.
    • Scholarship of teaching and learning (transformative learning in family science courses).
    • Various types of technology (medical, social media) and the pregnancy experience.

  • Luke Russell

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Missouri

    Research Areas:

    • Diverse family structures (single-parent, post-divorce, stepfamilies, cohabiting families)
    • Promoting resilience, health, and well-being in families
    • Chronic illness and families
    • Social institutions (health care systems, schools, government agencies) and families

  • Chang Su-Russell

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Missouri

    Research Areas:

    • Socialization of young children in challenging social contexts
    • Scholarship on teaching and learning

Interior Design

  • Elke Altenburger

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Missouri

    Research Areas:

    • Socio-physical educational environments
    • Design education
    • Inclusive intergenerational environments

  • Connie Dyar

    Highest Degree: MS, Illinois State University

    Research Areas:

    • Building codes and standards that impact the well-being of occupants
    • Feminist theory applied to power of women in interior design
    • Physical and psychological wellbeing of older populations

  • Gabriela Fonseca Pereira

    Highest Degree: PhD, Oklahoma State University

    Research Areas:

    • Housing solutions for aging-in-place
    • Gerontechnology
    • Virtual environments and aging simulation for interior design

  • Reem Bagais

    Highest Degree: PhD, Texas Tech University

    Research Areas:

    • Home design's impact on children’s emotional and social growth
    • Play environment that foster social skills
    • Inclusive environments that support interaction across different generations
    • Ecological & Theoretical Foundations in Environmental Psychology field

Family and Consumer Sciences Teacher Education

  • Sally Arnett

    Highest Degree: PhD, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

    Research Areas:

    • Improve the content and practices of career and technical education teachers

  • Micheal Rowley

    Highest Degree: PhD, University of Oklahoma

    Research Areas:

    • Family and Consumer Sciences Pedagogy & Andragogy
    • History of Home Economics
    • Home Economics and Gender
    • Public Policy, Gender, and Education in Career and Technology Education