Biography Dr. Jennifer Friend is Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Education at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her Ph.D. in Urban Leadership and Policy Studies in Education from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) in 2004, with dissertation research on same-gender grouping in eighth-grade science classes (Friend, 2006). Her professional career began in 1992 as a middle grades language arts teacher and principal in Kansas before transitioning to higher education in 2005 as a faculty member in educational administration at UMKC. Dr. Friend's leadership roles at UMKC included Director of the pK-12 Educational Administration and Preparing Future Faculty programs, Interim Director of Academic Assessment, Interim Deputy Provost, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies.
Dr. Friend's research agenda focuses on educational leadership and issues of social justice in U.S. public education. She uses advanced technologies and digital video production techniques grounded in post-qualitative and arts-based inquiry to illuminate existing inequities in education. She is an experienced independent film producer of award-winning narrative films such as The Rest of Her, and documentary films including, Kansas City Speaks: The Geography of School Segregation. She is the co-author of the book, Great Expectations: What Kids Want from Our Urban Public Schools and Co-Editor of the book, Principal 2.0: Technology and Educational Leadership. She founded and co-chaired the University Council for Educational Administration’s annual UCEA Film Festival for five years and recently gave a presentation on documentary film as a qualitative research method at the International Visual Methods in Research conference in the United Kingdom. Current projects include the Kansas City Desegregation oral history and digitization educational website project. Recent publications have appeared in the open access International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research (IJLTER), the Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research (JULTR), the Journal of Research in Leadership Education (JRLE), and Educational Studies. (c) All content Copyright Dr. Jennifer Friend under creative commons. |
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