About The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs

Three in five college students do not have enough to eat or a stable place to live, and millions of students experience basic needs insecurity, including a lack of access to adequate housing, food, health care and mental health services, child care, internet connectivity, transportation, and mental health services. Basic needs insecurity is a social determinant of health that hampers postsecondary student success, inhibits social mobility, and deepens inequities. We are changing the unjust status quo.

The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University is a leading national action research center removing barriers to student success and well-being through:

Research: investigating students’ lived experiences with basic needs insecurity and evaluating interventions
Policy: informing and advocating for systemic policy change to make college more affordable
Practice: collaborative coaching with colleges, universities, and states on meeting students’ basic needs through systems transformation

We are researchers, scholars, advocates, conveners, and storytellers who envision a world where basic needs insecurity is no longer a barrier to pursuing and completing college. We take a systems-change approach to creating a higher education landscape where educational opportunity is universal and equitable.

Our Team

Dr. Sara Abelson

Senior Director of Education Training Services

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Rjaa Ahmed

Communications Associate

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Lauren Bohn

Senior Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing

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Mark Huelsman

Director of Policy and Advocacy

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Dr. Christine Leow

Senior Director of Research and Evaluation

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Dr. Anne Lundquist

Director

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Bryce McKibben

Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy

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Eliza Mongeau

Administrative Coordinator

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Chas Nystrom

Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow

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Renny Perla

Project Coordinator

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Dr. Stacy Priniski

Senior Evaluation Associate

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Joshua Rudolph

Communications Associate

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Sarah Stanfield

Learning & Outreach Coordinator

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David Thompson

Practitioner Researcher

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Dr. Jiayao Wu

Senior Evaluation Associate

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Partners

Funders

Affiliates

Christelle Bamona

Researcher, Center for Responsible Lending

Christelle Bamona is a Researcher for the Center for Responsible Lending, an economic justice organization. She specializes in the application of quantitative methods to produce research reports in support of the policy team’s work related to federal and state consumer protections. She works primarily on student lending issues. Prior to CRL, Christelle was an associate at Vega Economics where she conducted data analysis for financial security litigation involving investment banks. Previously, she conducted economic research on risk management in agriculture for the International Food Policy Research Institute. She received her master’s degree in economics from the University of San Francisco, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Catholic University of Congo.

Dr. Divya Bheda

Director of Education and Assessment at ExamSoft Worldwide LLC

Dr. Divya Bheda is an independent consultant and the Director of Education and Assessment at ExamSoft Worldwide LLC (a part of the Turnitin family). She has over a decade of experience leading program evaluations, strategic planning, and assessments efforts, while also facilitating faculty and organizational development related to curriculum-design, teaching and learning, and social justice. She is committed to advancing collaborative, transformative, and restorative learning in a safe space as a champion for professional accountability and growth for all higher education professionals. She has experience in online, and brick and mortar educational contexts and is passionate about centering student lived experiences, catalyzing student success, and building organizational responsiveness. She holds a PhD in Critical and Socio-Cultural Studies in Education, an M.S. in Educational Leadership, and an M.A. in Mass Communication.

Dr. Gresham D. Collom

Assistant Professor at St. Cloud State University

Dr. Collom (he/him) is an incoming (fall 2023) assistant professor at St. Cloud State University in their Higher Education Administration program. Gresham is also a research affiliate with the University of Wisconsin Madison’s SSTAR Lab. He serves as the PI on a recently awarded a $500,000 research grant to increase access to scholarships and grants for Indigenous American college students. Broadly, Gresham conducts research exploring how educational policies impact student success and equity in education. He conducts critical research which informs policy and practice, and uplifts those who are often harmed by the exclusion of their voices in the policy context. Gresham’s research agenda is driven by his experience as an Indigenous (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), first-generation student who benefitted from effectively structured programs and policies created to uplift marginalized students.

Dr. Antonio Duran

Asst. Professor in Higher & Postsecondary Education at Arizona State University

Dr. Antonio Duran (he/él) is an assistant professor in higher and postsecondary education at Arizona State University. Antonio received his B.A. in English and American Literature from New York University, his M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Miami University, and Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University. His scholarship seeks to understand how historical and contemporary legacies of oppression influence college student development, experiences, and success. In his research, he is passionate about centering the lives of queer and trans communities, people of color, and those with multiple minoritized identities.

Dr. Elmira Jangjou

Analyst at Ithaca S+R

Dr. Elmira Jangjou (she/her) is an analyst in Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums program at Ithaka S+R. She recently finished her doctoral studies in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests focus on basic needs insecurity (BNI), including food and housing insecurities, in higher education. For her dissertation, she focused on the often-overlooked non-U.S. citizen students’ experiences with BNI, the barriers to their basic needs security, and their help-seeking behaviors to cope with the related issues using the #RealCollege Survey Dataset. Elmira's work is driven by a commitment to fostering an inclusive and equitable educational environment for all students, ensuring that they have the necessary support to thrive academically and personally. She has been recognized with the International Community Advocacy Award for her efforts in advocating for international students' basic needs at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Lara Perez-Felkner

Associate Professor of Higher Education & Sociology at Florida State University

Dr. Lara Perez-Felkner is an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Sociology in the Higher Education Program within the College of Education at Florida State University. She is also an Affiliated Faculty member in the Department of Sociology, and Senior Research Associate with FSU’s Center for Postsecondary Success. Her research uses developmental and sociological perspectives to examine how young people’s social contexts influence their college and career outcomes. She focuses on the mechanisms that shape entry into and persistence in institutions and fields in which they have traditionally been underrepresented. In particular, she investigates racial-ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic disparities in post-secondary educational attainment and entry to scientific career fields.

Dr. Delma Ramos

Associate Professor of Higher Education at UNC Greensboro

Dr. Delma Ramos (she/her) is Associate Professor of Higher Education at UNC Greensboro. Dr. Ramos' work examines the experiences of minoritized populations in higher education from an equity and social justice lens. Her research is unified by a focus on interrogating paradigms and ideologies that sustain inequity in higher education while highlighting the assets, agency, and resistance of minoritized communities. Dr. Ramos is a first-generation graduate; she earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education with a concentration in Research Methods and Statistics from the University of Denver.

Dr. Jessica Ezell Sheets

Organizational Change Management Specialist, University of Arkansas System

Dr. Jessica Ezell Sheets currently serves as an Organizational Change Management Specialist with the University of Arkansas System. In her current role, Jessica engages in applied research to support University of Arkansas System campuses in transitioning to Workday Student. As a change management practitioner, Jessica believes change management can effectively guide higher education institutions’ transformation into modern, equitable institutions that meet the basic needs of students, staff, and faculty. Jessica’s academic research has explored campus-based and policy-level structures and practices that promote equity in higher education, including characteristics supporting work-life integration and success for students, faculty, and staff with caregiving responsibilities.

Dr. Krista M. Soria

Assistant Professor of Leadership & Counseling at the University of Idaho

Dr. Krista M. Soria (she/her) is an assistant professor of leadership and counseling at the University of Idaho. She is a critical quantitative researcher seeking to investigate the most equitable and inclusive programmatic practices and institutional conditions to prepare students to engage in the complexities of social change. She examines how higher education institutions can create a more supportive campus climate for students from diverse backgrounds, whether programs are equitably accessible and beneficial to all students, and how we can create structural conditions to support students’ development and success. Dr. Soria has published over 70 journal articles, edited five books, and authored a book on social class in higher education. She co-edited a New Directions for Student Leadership volume on evidence-based practices in leadership education and is a principal investigator on several grants.

Dr. Cynthia Toms

Visiting Faculty

Cynthia Toms, Ph.D., is Professor of Global Studies and Kinesiology at Westmont College. She has worked at the intersection of health, communities, and higher education for more than 15 years. Cynthia has held posts at the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, Uganda Studies Program in Mukono, Uganda, and Peking University in Beijing, China. Since moving to Santa Barbara in 2013, she has partnered with the Food Bank of Santa Barbara to research food security, along with her students, on the Westside of Santa Barbara, most recently serving as the principal investigator for a projects addressing food security among at-risk Santa Barbara County college students from 2016-2021. Her work has been supposed by grants from the USDA, American Immigration Council/CCCU, California Endowment and the Santa Barbara Foundation.

Dr. Teniell L. Trolian

Associate Professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York

Dr. Teniell L. Trolian is Associate Professor in the department of Educational Policy and Leadership at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research focuses on the educational experiences that contribute to student learning and outcomes in higher education, including students' experiences inside and outside of the classroom, students' experiences with faculty, and students' experiences with diversity.

Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab founded the Hope Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013 and moved the Center to Temple University in 2018.

Today the Hope Center resides in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. Dr. Anne Lundquist serves as the Director.

The Hope Center

About The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs