Where is your hometown?

I live in Avon, IN with my husband, Corey, and two daughters, Simone (16) and Corinne (14).

What are a few of your favorite hobbies?

I enjoy baking and supporting our daughters in their endeavors; we spend a lot of our time watching softball and show choir.

Where did you obtain your bachelor’s and/or master’s degrees, what were your major(s)?

I graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (Bourbonnais, IL) in 2004 double majoring with B.S. degrees in Business Administration and Marketing. In 2009, I completed my M.S. in Hospitality & Tourism Management from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). I began pursuing my Ph.D. program at Ball State in 2020 and along the way I have picked up an M.A. in Executive Development for Public Service (2023) along with graduate certificates in: Computer Education (2023); Diversity Studies, Ethical Leadership, & Social Justice (2023); and Curriculum Development (2024). I also hold professional Certificates in Education Foundation Leadership (CEFL) from National University (2019), and Fundraising Management (CFRM) from the IU Lilly School of Philanthropy (2020).

Why did you choose Ball State for your graduate studies?

I considered programs at all of the Indiana public institutions and ultimately decided I’d like to situate my research, which deals with private contributions to K-12 public education, within broader academic conversations in education. Ball State’s Teacher’s College is well-recognized as a leader in this field.

What first interested you about your graduate program?

My personal and professional background led me to support fundraising efforts for K-12 public schools. However, to have a real impact in this area, I needed to address my lack of understanding in education, the field I was aiming to serve. Ball State’s Department of Educational Studies recognized the opportunity for contributing to scholarly discourse in this field and supported my intentions of blending multiple disciplines to approach my research.

What is one lesson you have learned as a graduate student?

Graduate school is an investment; it requires inputs and intentionality to succeed. The major inputs I can identify include time, money, curiosity, ideas, and people. Maximizing the graduate experience requires continual and simultaneous emphasis in all these areas. Committing the time and money to a doctoral program carries little meaning if curiosity into the ideas of others is
neglected. While my research interest varies greatly from the interest of my peers, we have been intentional about connecting our ideas and understanding, both in and out of class. It was an honor to lead a group of my peers in the Society of Educational Studies (SES), our department’s graduate student organization, to connect our research through a common lens at a national academic conference last fall. For many of us, it was the first time we had ever met face to face, but our intentional investment in our research topics and each other over several semesters, even in a remote environment, allowed us to engage in something bigger together.

Describe your capstone research project and how you used the funds from the fellowship to help complete the project.

My capstone research project is a dissertation titled “The Hidden Economy of Public Schools: A Case Study of the Intentions and Consequences of Private Contributions to a Rural Midwest K-12 School District.” The primary question of this study is: How do private contributors make sense of their donations to Firefly [pseudonym] School District? This is further supported by sub questions that seek to understand: What are the donors’ intentions? What are the results of these private contributions? What are the unintended consequences? This qualitative project includes an attempt to identify all sources and approximate amounts of private funding that support the research site, and subsequently conduct semi-structured interviews with representatives of identified nonprofit organizations to capture the community’s perspective. It is approached with the assumption that public school-sanctioned programs and initiatives are becoming increasingly reliant on private funding sources; however, these sources are not easily identified, and many are not individually sizable enough to require detailed public reporting. Therefore, current quantitative methods have failed to account for this hidden economy. Shining a light on practices within this scope will provide guidance to the schools, nonprofit organizations, and policymakers for providing and managing private contributions while increasing opportunities in public education for all K-12 students. Funding from this fellowship will be primarily used to share my research at academic and professional conference over the next year. This includes offsetting the cost of memberships, registrations, and travel expenses. The three organizations that I expect to be most interested in this research include the American Educational Studies Association (AERA), American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the National Association of Education Foundations, Inc. (NAEF).