Kellogg Institute Faculty Biographies

Ed Morante

This will be Ed Morante’s 20th year teaching at the Kellogg Institute. His seminar on Assessment and Placement gets the Institute off to a good start where he believes in working hard and playing hard. The latter is a reference to his leadership of nightly Trivial Pursuit games in the Kellogg residence hall; he swears he has not been studying the answers since his last game.

Ed is currently a grant writer and consultant in higher education. He retired from College of the Desert in 2005 after being named a Professor Emeritus after working there for 14 years as a faculty member, counselor, grant writer and administrator. As COD’s Dean of Student Services and Learning Resources, he was responsible for 16 programs including Admissions, the Learning Center, Counseling, Financial Aid, TRIO, International Students, Student Activities, Disabled Students, Library, Institutional Research, Media Center and Athletics. Prior to moving to California in 1991, Ed worked for nine years at the New Jersey Department of Higher Education, first as the statewide director of the Basic Skills Assessment Program and then as the Director of the College Outcomes Evaluation Program. He began his professional career in higher education in 1970 as a counselor and later became Director of Counseling at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Currently he consults with a number of colleges on issues related to student success, including active involvement with the national initiative, Achieving the Dream. He is also a member of the Assessment Council for Western Governors University, a university without walls.

Dr. Morante is the author of several journal articles and book chapters and was featured in an interview with the Journal of Developmental Education in 1998. He has been a frequent speaker, trainer and workshop leader and is an active grant writer with over $20 million won for various colleges. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Manhattan College in New York and a Masters and Doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Barbara Bonham

Barbara Bonham is a Professor in the Higher Education Graduate Program, Department of Leadership and Educational Studies at Appalachian State University, Boone, NC. She teaches graduate courses such as The Adult Learner, Designing Adult Learning Experiences, Planning Educational Programs, Comparative Higher Education.

She serves as Senior Researcher for the National Center for Developmental Education and a faculty member for the Kellogg Institute. Barbara has taught twelve years in the field of developmental education at Bloomsburg University as a math instructor, lab coordinator, tutorial supervisor, and assistant to the Director in a Student Services Program (TRIO).  She has over 30 years teaching experience. She has served as consultant to numerous two-year and four-year colleges in the area of developmental education particularly mathematics as well as a program reviewer and evaluator for Title III, Title V, FIPSE, and Achieving the Dream projects. She has worked with State Boards of Higher Education and in business and industry.  She has also conducted workshops and keynote presentations at local, state, national, and international conferences. 

Her publications, presentations, and areas of research interest include adult learning, designing culturally responsive learning environments, program planning, active learning techniques, assessment and evaluation, instructional design, developmental mathematics, educational systems in other countries, etc. 

She earned a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Design from the Pennsylvania State University with a concentration in statistics and adult education.  She has three children - Bryan, Heather, and Shawn, a daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters - Kana and Abigail.  Her hobbies include learning Japanese, gardening, bicycling, reading historical novels, cooking, collecting teddy bears and watching butterflies.

Robert Sanders is an assistant professor in the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies at Appalachian State University, where he teaches in and serves as the director for the library science program. Prior to this position, Dr. Sanders worked professionally as a teacher, media specialist, administrator, and instructional technologist. He has also served as the president of several organizations, including the Ohio Distance Learning Association and the League of Worlds, the international virtual world collaborative. He is also a Fellow with the Carolinas Virtual World Consortium, a collaborative research and development effort between Appalachian State University and Clemson University focused 3D immersive learning environments for teaching and learning. Dr. Sanders’ current research is focused on the use of Action Learning pedagogy in these 3D virtual worlds and the symbiotic relationship that exists in the convergence of these two phenomena as it relates to our understanding of teaching and learning in these virtual environments.

Jane Neuburger

Currently the Director of the Tutoring & Study Center at Syracuse University, Jane Neuburger has been an educator since 1972. She has taught English and reading in junior and senior high schools, including New York City, but the bulk of her experience has been as a teacher of college writing, developmental reading and writing, study strategies, and tutor training as a three-credit course. Additional teaching interests have included children’s literature, adolescent literature, first-year seminars, and critical/creative thinking and reading in art and business.

Jane has been active at the state and national level, focusing her efforts on tutor training, ethics and standards and assessment/evaluation. She served as Noozleter editor, political action chair, president-elect, and president of NYCLSA, the New York chapter of the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE). Currently, she is the Chair of the NADE Certification Council, a Council that was created by NADE in 1996 to help programs assess their impact on student success through the use of best practices, effective evaluation, and quality research. In addition, she is co-authoring the rewrite of the chapter on developmental courses in the NADE Self-Evaluation Guides.

Jane has been a frequent presenter at NYCLSA and NADE. She also belongs to CCCC, AMA, NTA, CRLA, ATP, and NCLCA.

Nwachi Tafari

Nwachi Tafari serves as Division Chair of Developmental Education at Guilford Technical Community College's Jamestown, NC campus. He was formerly Coordinator for Master of Education programs and Graduate Professor of Education at Coppin State University. Prior to joining Coppin, Tafari served the developmental education field for over ten years as the Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Acting Director of Publications, Director of Baltimore City Community College’s Institute of InterCultural Understanding, and an Assistant Professor of Developmental Writing at Baltimore City Community College.

His award-winning doctoral research is on Black Racial Essentialism and the attitudes of African-American developmental writing students towards education and language. He has presented and co-presented for colleges and universities throughout Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, and Australia. His research on Black and White English and Developmental Education has been published in The State of Black Baltimore, Minority Retention: What Works?, and the Journal of Adult and Continuing Education. He has collaborated with Morgan State University’s Dr. Christine Johnson McPhail and Appalachian State University’s Dr. Hunter Boylan and Dr. Barbara Bonham.

Hunter Boylan

Hunter Boylan is Director of the National Center for Developmental Education and a Professor of Higher Education at Appalachian StateUniversity. He received his B.A. in political science and history from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his M.Ed. in counseling from Temple University in Philadelphia. His Ph.D. is in higher education from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

From 1969 until 1980, Dr. Boylan held a variety of positions in TRIO and developmental education programs. He has coordinated tutoring programs, taught study skills courses, served as an academic advisor, and directed a learning center.  In 1980, he became the founding Director of the Kellogg Institute.  From 1981 to 1983, he served as President of the National Association for Developmental Education.   In 1987 and 1988, he directed the Doctoral Program in Developmental Education at Grambling State University.  In 1988, he returned to Appalachian State to direct the National Center for Developmental Education. Between 1989 and 1995, he directed the largest study of developmental education ever undertaken, the National Study of Developmental Education funded by the Exxon Education Foundation.

Dr. Boylan is the author of 4 books and over 90 articles and book chapters on developmental education. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Developmental Education, the Journal of Teaching & Learning, the Journal of Individualized Instruction, , and the ASHE/ERIC Research Report Series. He serves on the Advisory Board of the National College Transitions Network, the Community College Research Center at Columbia University, the Center for Research in Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, and the Emeritus Council of the National Association for Developmental Education. He is past Chairperson of the American Council of Developmental Education Associations.

Dr. Boylan’s hobbies, interests, and leisure activities include racquetball, volleyball, canoeing, wine collecting and tasting, folk music, target shooting, and collecting and restoring military firearms.