Faculty Associates

Educational Leadership Program

Carey is an Associate Professor in the SOE’s Department of Education Specialties where she teaches and advises students in the Master of Education Leadership and the new Executive Leadership programs. Carey’s expertise and experience in student onboarding, coaching, and identity development align well with Loyola’s mission of educating the whole person and will contribute to SOE’s leadership development degrees. Her research publications and projects sit at the intersection of belonging, educating the whole person, leadership, and learning. Carey has published scholarship on best practices for online learning including cultivating community, connections, and belonging. She has written about faculty identity development, well-being, and the role of value congruence in cultivating inclusive and welcoming spaces for faculty and students. Most recently, Carey published her first book about noticing, naming, and navigating personal and professional transitions. Along with her research team, Dr. Borkoski is currently using data from her podcast to explore the many faces of belonging in schools, leadership, and during a global pandemic. Integrating Loyola’s core values and Carey’s expertise represents a tremendous opportunity to reimagine our definition of and approach to education leadership. Her approach integrates current scholarship, coaching strategies, and teaching opportunities to effectively support our diverse and talented students. Moreover, Dr. Borkoski’s training as a research methodologist will contribute to SOE’s ability to strengthen our scholarship, cultivate research collaborations among our Loyola faculty and programs, and build out the Center’s program evaluation projects and offerings.

Kristina Cardona Collins is a seasoned educator with over 20 years of experience teaching children and adults in both public and private schools.  Her current work is focused on preparing educators to become culturally and linguistically responsive teachers and reading specialists.   She began teaching in afterschool programs for elementary students in Prince George’s County, and teaching English at night to adults seeking their high school diploma in Washington, D.C.  

She is a Maryland Eastern Shore native.  After graduating high school, she attended the University of Maryland Eastern Shore where she obtained her Bachelor's of Arts degree with honors in English with a concentration in Telecommunications. After moving to the Baltimore-Washington area, she was accepted into graduate school at Towson University.  She graduated with her Master of Science degree in Professional Writing with a concentration in Teaching College Writing.  

In 2011, she began teaching English language arts and social studies to elementary and middle school students at Archbishop Borders School in southeast Baltimore city.  Borders is the only dual language Spanish-immersion school within the Archdiocese of Baltimore school system.  Still committed to public education, she also taught in afterschool and summer programs through EBLO (Education Based Latino Outreach), a Baltimore-based community organization.   

During her distinguished tenure at Borders, she developed her school leadership skills.  She chaired several committees, served as interim principal, and Dual Language Program Director.  She worked relentlessly to promote literacy, dual-language education, community and family engagement, and to help foster relationships within the school community across racial, cultural and socioeconomic lines.  

Her scholarly interests include: second language acquisition, language development for culturally and linguistically diverse students, literacy education, critical theory, culturally responsive pedagogy, and teacher development.    

Research Interest: 

• Intersections of Language, Literacy, and Culture 

• Teacher Development and Training 

Awards: 

2014 Loyola Literacy Educator of the Year 

Publications: 

Who Gets to Count as Emerging Bilinguals?: Adapting a Holistic Writing Rubric for All (2020). Margarita Gomez and Kristina Collins 

Whose Language Is Legit? Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Language (2016) Margarita Zisselsberger and Kristina Collins 

Curriculum and Instruction for Social Justice program

Stephanie Flores-Koulish is Professor and Program Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Social Justice. Her primary area of expertise and research has been within the field of Critical Media Literacy Education. She also has conducted research on identity and adoptees, education policy and practices, and critical multicultural education. Her research provides her with many opportunities to practice engaged scholarship in and around Baltimore City. She serves on the board for the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and is on the executive committee for the Alliance of Adoption and Culture (ASAC). Flores-Koulish is also an alumna and mentor of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT).

Educational Leadership program

Dr. Marie K. Heath is an assistant professor of educational technology at Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests center inquiry on young people attending high-poverty, majority-minority public schools, technology use, and civic engagement in online and offline spaces. Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Heath taught secondary social studies in Baltimore County Public Schools.

Dr. Lambrinou is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the School of Education and the Center for Equity, Leadership, and Social Justice in Education (CELSJE) at Loyola University Maryland. A native of Cyprus, Marina situates her work at the intersections of migration policy and education and grounds her research in an interdisciplinary and critical approach to policy and education. Her research interests include immigrant youth and education, educational policy, student voice and activism, identity intersectionalities, minoritized youth in STEM, undocuactivism in the Nuevo South, interpretive and critical policy analysis, phenomenological research, LatCrit, ethnography and autoethnography centering the immigrant experience.

Marina received her doctorate in the Cultural Foundations of Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNC Greensboro) in May 2023. Her dissertation is entitled: “The United States, it’s supposed to be where dreams come true”: Rhizomatic Familias, Nested Policy Contexts and the Attendant Shaping of Undocumented and Mixed-Status Students’ Lived Experiences in North Carolina. Marina's work has been published in various esteemed journals, including Educational Policy, Equity in Education and Society, Frontiers in Education and Journal for Leadership, Equity, and Research.

She has also contributed chapters in books about Latinx youth and migration and has presented her work at multiple educational conferences (AESA, AERA, UCEA). She currently has two articles in publication, two articles under review, and three articles in progress.

Dr. Leah Katherine Saal is an associate professor of literacy. Dr. Saal’s engaged scholarly agenda focuses on the intersectionality of literacy and social justice. Her work is informed by her ongoing experiences teaching with and learning from families, adults, and communities in and out of school settings in the greater DMV region. Dr. Saal and her colleague Dr. Lisa Schoenbrodt, professor of speech-language-hearing-sciences at Loyola University Maryland, are principal investigators for several interdisciplinary engaged research projects focused on training adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to serve as Self-Advocate Educators (SAEs) in training and advocacy environments including law enforcement and emergency medical services, among others.

Joshua Smith earned his B.A. in U.S. History, M.S. in Educational Psychology and Statistics, and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Methodology from the University of Albany, State University of New York, where his dissertation focused on parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of behavioral problems in pre-school children. He has provided professional consulting services to the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Public Schools, the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township (Ind.), and several other school systems and educational organizations. His awards and honors include the 2006 Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award and the National Advising Association’s 2002 Outstanding Advising Award. Smith has also participated in more than 50 grant-funded projects receiving more than $3,000,000 in institutional, foundation, corporation, and government support, most as principal investigator.