Tara Hudson
School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration
Dr. Tara D. Hudson is an assistant professor in the Higher Education Administration program. Her research focuses on two broad areas: (1) college students’ prosocial development, particularly resulting from community engagement and interactional diversity; and (2) the experiences of underserved and minoritized populations along their educational and career trajectories. Uniting these two areas is her desire to inform educational practice that advances higher education’s role in promoting social justice and equity within U.S. society.
In researching these topics, she employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, and she has particular expertise in grounded theory. Dr. Hudson’s dissertation research, which received the 2015 Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), examined how college students develop and sustain interracial friendships, with the aim of providing college and university educators with the “actionable insight” necessary to provide intentional support to foster the powerful prosocial development associated with these relationships. In recent years she has expanded this area of research to examine college students’ friendships across other social boundaries, including worldview identity and political ideology, utilizing quantitative and qualitative data from the national, longitudinal IDEALS research project.
Since July 2019, Dr. Hudson has served as principal investigator (PI) on a multi-institutional grant project to create seamless degree pathways and surrounding supports for students who begin their postsecondary journeys at an Ohio community college and seek to transfer to Kent State University to complete a bachelor’s degree. Dr. Hudson’s research has been published in top journals in the field of higher education, including the Journal of Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, and Teachers College Record.
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Kele Ding
School of Health Sciences
Kele Ding, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Health Sciences at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States. Dr. Ding’s primary research focus is on substance misuse and mental health, with topics ranging from drug use trends, drug initiation and the gateway concept, co-occurring drug use and mental disorders, and research methodology in drug use. Additionally, Dr. Ding has strong methodological skills and extensive research expertise in measurement and evaluation, survey research, and analyzing large surveillance data. In the past 10 years, he has also used innovative approaches to develop and test a community intervention trial for mental and psychological recovery among the homeless population by applying Creative Arts Therapy, Earth Medicine and the Therapeutic Community Model in practice.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period, Dr. Ding co-led a cross-sectional survey study across 11 countries that examined physical activity levels and mental health status. Ding has received several internal and external grants for his research including serving as a co-investigator on a feasibility study using a multilevel community health approach to promote physical activity among adult residents in a rural, Appalachian community in Ohio.
Currently, he is actively seeking federal funding and has submitted an NIH supplemental application as a co-investigator and site PI, and is submitting a project proposal as a multiple-PI and site PI on a CDC center grant application. In addition to his research, Dr. Ding teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses with a focus on research methods, application of theory, and advanced program evaluation. He has served on over 30 PhD dissertation committees. Dr. Ding has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and has received several awards for his excellence in teaching, research and service.