Dr. Ashley Nichol Patterson

Ashley N. Patterson is the Acting Assistant Vice Provost for Educational Equity and an Associate Professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University where she also has affiliation with the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department. She joined the University in 2015 after earning her PhD in Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education from The Ohio State University. She also holds a B.S. in Special Education and Elementary Education (Boston University, 2006), a M.S. in Reading Specialization (Hood College, 2010) and an M.A. in Quantitative Research, Evaluation and Measurement (The Ohio State University, 2014).

Dr. Patterson's work in the educational field began as an elementary-level inclusive special educator. She is committed to preparing educators who take up a critical lens to working with children and best serving their needs while seeking ways to deconstruct inequities woven into the US's existing public school system and structure. To this end, Dr. Patterson serves as a co-coordinator for the newly (2020) established Social Justice in Education minor available to students across the University. She also co-directs the DC Social Justice Fellowship, a two-semester course that provides Penn State students with the opportunity to both learn and facilitate learning about social justice topics, culminating with a three-week teaching internship in Washington, DC. Overall, Dr. Patterson’s undergraduate and graduate instructional focus is on literacies, social justice and critical approaches to qualitative inquiry.

Broadly, Dr. Patterson’s research observes, measures and documents patterns of (in)equity in a variety of educational settings for the purpose of informing the envisioning of new, inclusive, justice-oriented learning environments where students and teachers thrive in the shared space. Patterson highly values collaborative generation of knowledges as witnessed by her many partnerships with community members, nonprofit and corporate entities, school systems, and colleagues both inside and beyond the academic realm. She holds dearly, as a responsibility and an honor, the opportunity to infuse the ways she has come to know the world as a Black woman into all aspects of her work.