Penn State's College of Education is regularly ranked among the nation's best graduate schools by U.S. News & World Report, and the online courses for the Master of Education in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education degree are taught by the same nationally recognized faculty.
You will benefit from frequent interaction with the faculty during your online courses.
William C. Diehl, Ph.D.
Lead faculty member, M.Ed. in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education and Distance Education Certificate
Areas of Interest:
- Adult Education
- Open and Distance Education
- Social, Cultural, and Historical Foundations of Education
- Emerging Technologies
- Intercultural Communication
- Social Mobility
As lead faculty member for the online M.Ed. in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education, Dr. Diehl provides both coordination and leadership for the use of web-based learning in graduate-level education. He also serves as the Interviews Editor for the American Journal of Distance Education. Dr. Diehl is the author of numerous book chapters and journal articles, and is a consultant to nonprofit, corporate, and government agencies. He has a background in elementary education, web design and development, social networking, and multimedia.
Eunice N. Askov, Ph.D.
Areas of Interest:
- Workplace Literacy
- Technology for Instruction
- Family Literacy
- Special-Needs Populations
- Staff Development
As former director of the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy, Dr. Askov provided leadership and research in adult literacy through various projects relating to applications of technology to instruction, workplace literacy, family literacy, special-needs populations, and staff development. She was the first Literacy Leader Fellow at the National Institute for Literacy in Washington, D.C., carrying out research related to skill standards and workplace literacy. She has also conducted research in adult literacy at the University of Western Australia under a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (1983). She was named Distinguished Fellow at the Flinders University Institute of International Education in Adelaide, Australia (1998), and given the University of Wisconsin School of Education Alumni Achievement Award (1994).
Esther S. Prins, Ph.D.
Areas of Interest:
- Adult and Family Literacy
- Civic Engagement
- Gender
- Participatory Research
Dr. Prins's research interests include critical and sociocultural perspectives of adult basic education, adult literacy, and family literacy; gender; rural adult education; and participatory approaches to education, community development, and research. In particular, her scholarship examines the "wider benefits" of adult education and how it reproduces and/or mitigates gender, racial, class, and cultural inequalities. She has also brought adult education expertise to two National Science Foundation projects involving adults and science: Marcellus Matters: EASE (Educating Adults about Science and Energy) and ALCCAR (Anticipatory Learning for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience).
Dr. Prins's newest project is titled "Career Pathways Programming for Lower-Skilled Adults and Immigrants: A Comparative Analysis of Adult Education Providers in High-Need Cities" and is funded by a $400,000 Institute of Education Sciences grant. Dr. Prins's recent awards include the Mildred B. and Charles A. Wedemeyer Award for Outstanding Scholar in Distance Education (with Cathy Kassab, Brendaly Drayton, and Ramazan Gungor, American Journal of Distance Education, 2013); Outstanding Researcher Award (Penn State College of Education, 2011); the Imogene Okes Award for Outstanding Research (American Association for Adult and Continuing Education, 2010); and the Outstanding Paper by an Early Career Scholar Award (with Kai Schafft, Adult Literacy and Adult Education, American Educational Research Association, 2007).
Adnan Qayyum, Ph.D.
Areas of Interest:
- Adult Education with Digital Technologies
- Globalization and Distance Education
- Open and Distance Learning
- Distance Education Policy Development
- Management and Planning of Distance Education and e-Learning
- Evaluation of Distance Education
Dr. Qayyum has worked in distance education since 1996. He has been a learning designer, trainer, and director of a distance education department. He has consulted for numerous organizations — government, universities, community groups, non-governmental organizations, businesses, accreditation bodies, and international financial institutions — on the effective management, design and evaluation of distance education programs. He has been a reviewer or editor for various journals including the American Journal of Distance Education, Journal of Distance Education, and Distance Education.
Fred M. Schied, Ed.D.
Areas of Interest:
- Sociohistorical Approaches to Adult Education
- Workers and Workplace Learning
- Community and Nonformal Education
Dr. Schied has served as an administrator of a large, urban adult basic education program, taught English as a second language, and worked as a community educator in community development projects in Chicago. His research has addressed the questions of how workplace learning is defined and conceptualized, who does the defining, whose interest is being served, and what impact workplace learning has on workers. His book, Learning in Social Context: Workers and Adult Education in Nineteenth-Century Chicago, received the 1994 Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education from the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education.
Ladislaus M. Semali, Ph.D.
Areas of Interest:
- Comparative and International Adult Education
- Language and Literacy Education
- Indigenous and Ecological Literacies
- Multicultural Education in schools and workplace
- African Adult Education
Dr. Semali is professor of education, specializing in adult literacy education, comparative and international education and non-Western educational epistemologies. Professor Semali has extensive experience in organizing internships and workshops for adult learners in Africa, and is currently directing research on the crisis of interest in STEM science in East Africa. Semali's research and teaching interests include non-traditional adult postsecondary education; comparative and international education; adult literacy education; communications media; and the use of technology to enhance and develop curriculum.
Dr. Semali's work has been published in the International Review of Education; Comparative Education Review; International Journal of Educational Research; International Journal of Higher Education; and Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education. He is author of "Literacy in Multimedia America" (Routledge/Falmer); "Postliteracy in the Age of Democracy" (Austin & Winfield); and "What is Indigenous Knowledge?: Voices from the Academy" (Routledge).