CED, ERM Alumni Carry UNCG Banner in Research, Teaching, and Professional Leadership

Alumnus Josh Goodman, recipient of the 2013-2014 Early Career Award from the UNCG School of Education, talks with UNCG students about his experiences in the field of educational measurement.

By Bruce Buchanan

The goal of any quality educational program is to prepare students to succeed after they leave school, and the UNCG School of Education’s Educational Research Methodology (ERM) and Counseling and Educational Development (CED) departments are doing just that. Recent alumni in the CED and ERM departments are making their mark across the nation in research, teaching and professional service.


At Purdue University, Dr. Carrie Wachter-Morris is a tenured associate professor and serves as Co-Director of the Masters Program in Counseling. She has been a leader in the Indiana School Counselors Association, where she has been actively involved in the association’s legislative advocacy. For example, thanks to the work of Dr. Wachter-Morris and the Indiana School Counselors Association, the state of Indiana now has a universal job description for school counselors.

“This gives school administrators something to look for when making hiring decisions,” she said.

Dr. Wachter-Morris has worked with the Indiana Department of Education to develop and pilot an evaluation for school counselors. Too often, she said, school counselors are evaluated by the same standards as teachers, even though their jobs are completely different. So she and other state leaders recognized the need for a separate evaluation for counselors.

The school counselor’s evaluation has been in place for nearly two years, and Dr. Wachter-Morris has presented it at a number of national conferences. Currently, she is working on a suicide prevention training module for new teachers and counselors.

In addition to her research and advocacy work, Dr. Wachter-Morris teaches at Purdue, primarily in the graduate program. She also has developed a computer learning game for counselors.

At the University of Tennessee, Dr. Melinda Gibbons focuses her career on the University’s school counselor education program.

“I oversee the program, addressing licensure, certification and accreditation issues,” Dr. Gibbons said. This includes the mental health and school counseling master’s degree tracks, as well as the Ph.D. counselor education track.

Her work includes matching graduate students with appropriate internships in local school districts, mentoring students and overseeing student orientation. The school counselor education program admits 10-12 students a year, with three applicants for every open slot.

Dr. Gibbons also continues to focus her research on first-generation college students and other underserved groups. In her five years as an elementary, middle and high school guidance counselor, she said, “I discovered the needs of these students are different.” She began her research on first-generation college students while in graduate school at UNCG.

Dr. Laura Welfare recently started her seventh year as an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech.

“I have continued the research I started at UNCG,” she said. Part of that work includes developing a scholarly instrument used in the counseling field. In all, she has authored or co-authored 15 articles, book chapters and instruments on such topics as counselor cognitive development, evidence-based practices in counselor education and supervision, supervisor development, and counseling assessment.

Two years ago, Virginia Tech started a medical school. Building on her existing work, Dr. Welfare now is doing research on how medical students conceptualize their patients. She also is working on a longitudinal study with the medical school and has an article being published this fall.

While she primarily studied in the CED Department, Welfare also took a number of ERM classes at UNCG.

“Those ERM courses have really helped me in my research,” she said.

Welfare said one of her current roles as a Virginia Tech faculty member is chairing dissertations for graduate students.

“That’s been very rewarding for me,” she said. “I feel grateful for the time Dr. DiAnne Borders and Dr. Terry Ackerman put in with me.”

Likewise, Dr. Josh Goodman is putting the skills he learned in the ERM Department to help craft better standardized test questions for public schools.

Dr. Goodman is working on the Next Generation Science Standards. He said, “The project is part of a larger effort by Pacific Metrics to develop more useful and appropriate test items.”

The new standards map out how students should progress and what they should be able to do at certain stages. Dr. Goodman’s research and the related test questions will help measure that progress. The goal, he said, is to build formative assessment tools that will help teachers use the results to provide students with meaningful feedback.

Several states already are using the Next Generation Science Standards, with many others scheduled to adopt them in the next few years.

Previously, he worked with Oklahoma on its transition to the Common Core Standards. Dr. Goodman worked on pilot test items based on the Common Core to both get students used to these types of questions and to help provide schools with baseline information.

“The types of test items you see with Common Core are very different than what you see with the state standards,” he said.

As UNCG students continue their work in the CED and ERM departments, they only have to look at Dr. Goodman’s work—as well as that of Drs. Gibbons, Wachter-Morris and Welfare—to see the type of impact a UNCG alum can have in the profession.

Dr. Carrie Wachter-Morris
Graduated from UNCG in 2003 (Masters), 2006 (Ph.D)
Currently Associate Professor, Purdue University

Dr. Melinda Gibbons
Graduated from UNCG in 1996 (Masters), 2005 (Ph.D.)
Current Associate Professor, University of Tennessee

Dr. Laura Welfare
Graduated from UNCG in 2007 (Ph.D)
Currently Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech University

Dr. Josh Goodman
Graduated from UNCG in 2006 (Masters), 2008 (Ph.D)
Currently Senior Psychometrician at Pacific Metrics