Neag School Welcomes New Faculty Members

Pictured L-R: Joseph Abramo, Christopher Rhoads and Rachel Gabriel. Photo credit: Shawn Kornegay.
Picture L-R: Joseph Abramo, Christoper Rhoads and Rachael Gabriel.

The following are recently hired Neag faculty members. Congratulations and a warm welcome from the Neag School of Education.

Joseph Abramo

Joseph Abramo, Ed. D., is a clinical assistant professor of music education in the Neag School of Education where he teaches courses in instrumental methods and supervises student teachers. In February he was the recipient of the Outstanding Emerging Researcher Award from the Center for Music Education Research at the University of South Florida. He is a co-editor of the on-line, peer-reviewed journal Gender, Education, Music, and Society. His articles include publications in the Journal of Research in Music Education, Music Education Research, and Music Education Research International and his areas of research include popular music, gender, cultural studies, race and multiculturalism, poststructuralism, and constructivism. He holds degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, Michigan State University, and the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. He previously served as an assistant professor of music education at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY.

Rachael E. Gabriel

Rachael Gabriel received her Doctor of Philosophy in Education with a concentration in literacy studies in 2011 from the University of Tennessee after earning her M.A. in Secondary English in 2007 from American University. Gabriel has served as a graduate teaching associate in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at the University of Tennessee and was a Baker Scholar at the Baker Center for Public Policy. Most recently, Gabriel worked as a member of the transition team for the new Commissioner of Education in Tennessee where she focused on recommendations for teacher professional development. Gabriel’s areas of interest include education policy, teacher preparation and professional development, reading instruction and qualitative methods. Gabriel is an assistant professor of literacy education in the Neag School of Education.

Christopher H. Rhoads

Chris Rhoads received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Northwestern University in 2008, where his dissertation research focused on developing methods for improving the statistical power of cluster randomized experiments. Since then, he has been an Institute of Education Sciences postdoctoral fellow in policy research at the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University. Rhoads is assistant professor in the Neag School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, where he will focus on methods for improving causal inference in educational research, particularly in the areas of experimental design and the analysis of multi-level data structures.