Co-Directors & Staff

Advisory Board

Dr. Jim Van Overschelde is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the REDEE Center, an associate professor of secondary education in Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education at Texas State University, and director of evaluation and research for the University’s Office of Educator Preparation. His quantitative and mixed-methods research focuses on improving the equity and effectiveness of educator preparation and education employment environments at the local, state, and national levels. He teaches research methods and statistics. He is also President of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Research on Teacher Preparation Topical Action Group, a member of the Texas State Board of Educator Certification’s Educator Preparation Data Workgroup, and chair of the Data Advocacy Group for the Texas Association of Teacher Educators. He currently serves as an associate editor for the premier Journal of Teacher Education. Dr. Van Overschelde is actively engaged with state education policymakers and researchers, and actively collaborates with senior leaders and researchers from the 20 largest EPPs in Texas

Dr. Minda M. López is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the REDEE Center, and professor of Literacy in Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education at Texas State University with 25 years of experience in education as a teacher, specialist, teacher educator, and education researcher. Dr. López conducts mixed-methods research on topics of teacher education, equity, ideologies, literacies, and language acquisition in various contexts. She has served on the editorial team for the Bilingual Research Journal and the Journal of Language, Identity and Education; is an editorial board member for Language Arts and has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals.  Some of the journals where she has published her scholarship include Teaching and Teacher Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, Equity & Excellence in Education, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Bilingual Research Journal, and the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. In addition, she has disseminated her research findings across the globe at conferences such as American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, American Educational Research Association, Literacy Research Association, World Congress of Applied Linguistics, International Literacy Association, and the European Conference on Literacy. Dr. López is the recipient of numerous excellence awards for teaching, service, and scholarship. She is bilingual, fluent in English and Spanish.