Teachers College Faculty Tenured in 2024

Six Teachers College professors joined the tenured faculty in 2024. Tenure is a distinction that recognizes scholarly excellence, demonstrated capacity for imaginative, original work, and great promise for continued contributions at the forefront of their fields.

Chia-Yi Chiu

Chia-Yi Chiu

Associate Professor Applied Statistics, Teachers College

While research on “big data” in educational measurement is thriving, Chia-Yi Chiu focuses on “small data.” She is well recognized for her award-winning research on the advancement of educational assessments for the classroom that permit monitoring teaching and learning in real-time.

Dr. Chiu has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of nonparametric cognitive diagnosis, both in developing its theory and implementing innovative algorithms for STEM assessments. She is a recipient of the Provost Award in Innovations in Education and Teaching Pilot Grant and the Chancellor’s Scholar Award: Innovation in Research from Rutgers University. 

Dr. Chiu earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously served on the faculty of the University of Minnesota and Rutgers University before joining the Teachers College faculty in 2024.

Chia-Yi Chiu's Faculty Profile


Rajashi Ghosh

Rajashi Ghosh

Associate Professor of Adult Learning and Leadership, Teachers College

Rajashi Ghosh is a leader in adult learning and development. Her scholarly interests include developmental relationships, leader development, and workplace learning.

Dr. Ghosh’s research aims to explore how different developmental initiatives (e.g., mentoring, coaching, leadership development) can facilitate workplace learning and development through building inclusive relational spaces and countering the prevalence of workplace incivility. Her publications include several articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, and she has published two books, Connecting and Relating – HRD Perspectives on Developmental Relationships and Indian Women in Leadership. Dr. Ghosh has won prestigious awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), The Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD), and Academy of Management (AOM), including the most recent 2022 AHRD Wayne Pace Book of the Year Award for her book, Connecting and Relating at Work. She is also the recipient of the 2021 Mid-Career Award (MCA) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Ghosh’s extensive service to the field includes serving as Editor-in-Chief of Human Resource Development International and two terms as a board member in AHRD. Dr. Ghosh is also the incoming Co-Editor in Chief for Human Resource Development Quarterly (HRDQ), a premier journal in the field. Her recent research focuses on developing an identity-based model of mentoring.

Dr. Ghosh earned her doctorate in Human Resource Development (HRD) from the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She served on the faculty of Drexel University before joining the Teachers College faculty in 2023.

Rajashi Ghosh's Faculty Profile


Kevin Heffernan

Kevin Heffernan

Associate Professor of Movement Science and Education, Teachers College

Kevin Heffernan is the director of the newly created Applied Neurovascular Physiology Lab. His current research utilizes a multi-modal approach to explore the impact of exercise (with an emphasis on resistance exercise) on vascular and neurocognitive aging.

Dr. Heffernan’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities), the Dairy Research Institute, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Sports Medicine. With over 200 peer-reviewed publications, his forthcoming papers focus on vascular aging and dementia risk, discrimination and cardiometabolic health, and the association of traumatic brain injury with hypertension risk in U.S. military veterans. He is a member of the Teachers College Institutional Review Board. 

Dr. Heffernan earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MS from Teacher College. He served on the faculty of Syracuse University before joining the Teachers College faculty in 2023.

Kevin Heffernan's Faculty Profile


Patricia Faison Hewlin

Patricia Faison Hewlin

Professor of Social-Organizational Psychology, Teachers College

Patricia Faison Hewlin’s scholarship primarily centers on factors that facilitate and impede authenticity and overall well-being in everyday work interactions. 

Dr. Hewlin developed the behavioral construct, “facades of conformity” to illustrate the degree to which employees suppress personal values and pretend to embrace dominant organizational values and perspectives. Her research also addresses employee responses to organizational value breaches, callings in the workplace, and the interpersonal dynamics associated with the entrance of robots into the workplace. She has articles published in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science. She has written for and is quoted in practitioner and media outlets such as the Financial Post, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes. Dr. Hewlin is currently writing a book, The Middle Self: What We Get Wrong About Authenticity and Conformity—and How to Thrive as the Real “You”.

Dr. Hewlin received her PhD from New York University. She served on the business school faculties of McGill University and Georgetown University before joining the Social-Organizational Psychology Program faculty at Teachers College in 2024. In addition to Teachers College, Dr. Hewlin is a visiting professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China.

Patricia Faison Hewlin's Faculty Profile


Beth Rubin

Beth Rubin

Professor of Social Studies Education, Teachers College

Beth Rubin investigates young people’s civic understandings and experiences amid the interwoven contexts of classroom, school, and society, with particular attention to the complexities of youth civic learning at the intersection of classroom practice and historical and contemporary injustice. She collaborates with educators to design and study curricular and pedagogical innovations that build upon this critical, sociocultural understanding of youth civic learning, and is principal investigator on the Civically Engaged Districts Project.

Dr. Rubin is the author of multiple books, including Design Research in Social Studies Education and Making Citizens: Transforming Civic Learning for Diverse Social Studies Classrooms, and her work appears in numerous journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, the Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, and the Anthropology & Education Quarterly.

Dr. Rubin earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She served on the faculty of Rutgers University before joining the Teachers College faculty in 2023.

Beth Rubin's Faculty Profile


Tyler Watts

Tyler Watts

Associate Professor in Developmental Psychology, Teachers College

Tyler Watts has dedicated his research to studying the long-term effects of educational interventions. Through his research, he attempts to understand whether impacts on early cognitive and social-emotional skills lead to long-lasting changes in children's developmental trajectories.

Dr. Watts has published more than 30 articles and book chapters, and his research is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences. His work has been published in journals such as Child Development, Psychological Science, Educational Researcher, American Psychologist and Science. His research on the long-term development of self-regulation has been featured in The Atlantic, Vox, Forbes and NPR. In addition to his scholarship, Watts is a dedicated mentor to graduate students at Teachers College, and he has fostered partnerships in the local community to provide mentoring to first-generation college students.

Dr. Watts earned his PhD from the University of California, Irvine. He joined the Teachers College faculty in 2019.

Tyler Watts' Faculty Profile