Our Team

IPSR Leadership

	Donna Ginther Interim Director, IPSR, Director, Center for Science Technology & Economic Policy, and Professor, Economics dginther@ku.edu As Interim Director, Donna is responsible for developing the IPSR multi-disciplinary research program by engaging faculty from across the university and overseeing the management and direction of the Institute. Under her leadership, IPSR continues to be an international center for research on some of today’s most pressing topics, including the human dimensions of climate change, race and gender questions in the scientific workforce, urban sustainability, indigenous communities, environmental policy, and human trafficking. As Professor, her major fields of study are scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality, scientific entrepreneurship, and children's educational attainments. Read more
Jena Gunter Assistant Director kujena@ku.edu As Assistant Director, Jena has administrative responsibility for all Institute operations including sponsored project development and administration, human resources and payroll, fiscal operations, computing services, and conferences for IPSR. Read more

Administration & Award Management

	Carrie Caine Research Development and Administrative Specialist caine@ku.edu In her role as Research Development and Administrative Specialist, Carrie coordinates staff travel, assists with purchasing, maintains grant files, and provides support to IPSR research centers. Read more
Mandy Frank Education Program Specialist mandy.frank@ku.edu As Education Program Specialist, provides administrative support for research team(s), IPSR Center Directors and research staff. This includes organization of workshops, conferences, and other events. Mandy processes travel, initiates purchases, and processes invoices for sponsored research. Read more
	Christie Holland Research Project Specialist christieh@ku.edu As Research Project Specialist, Christie provides administrative support for research team(s), IPSR Center Directors and research staff. This includes organization of workshops, conferences, and other events. Christie processes travel, initiates purchases, and processes invoices for sponsored research. Read more
Abby Byrd Student Administrative Assistant abmbyrd@ku.edu Abby is currently working on degrees in Economics, History, and French. She plans to pursue a PhD in Economics upon graduation, with a focus on economic history and data analytics.
	Mel Saldaña Fuentes Student Administrative Assistant m987s217@ku.edu Mel is pursuing degrees in psychology and WGSS (women, gender, and sexuality studies), and exploring options post-graduation between pursuing counseling psychology or social psychology.

Research Development

	Carrie Caine Research Development and Administrative Specialist caine@ku.edu Carrie provides direct support for proposal preparation to investigators, research teams, faculty affiliates, and graduate students. She provides guidance to investigators on strategic approaches to funding calls and agency priorities. Read more
Nancy Cayton Myers Research Development Officer ncmyers@ku.edu As Research Development Officer, Nancy leads the IPSR research development team; provides direct support for research proposal preparation to investigators and teams; facilitates research planning, strategy, and networking; assists with grant management and reporting; and conducts outreach activities and research development-related presentations to faculty, staff, and students. Read more
	Whitney Onasch Research Development Specialist wonasch@ku.edu As a Research Development Specialist for the Institute for Policy & Social Research (IPSR), Whitney facilitates and administers research proposal development and submission on behalf of faculty affiliates and graduate students. She provides guidance to investigators on strategic approaches to funding calls based on the guidelines and agency priorities, and serves as the primary liaison between faculty and the KU Office of Research during the development and award/contract negotiation stages. Read more

Research & Data Support

	Jennifer Boden Researcher Project Manager jenboden@ku.edu Jennifer Boden is a Researcher Project Manager at KC-AERC. She is a lecturer and doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Kansas. Her current work at KC-AERC focuses on utilizing her quantitative skills. Jen has extensive experience in working with large, complex datasets using SAS, STATA, and SQL. She holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Northern Iowa and a M.A. in Economics from the University of Kansas.
Karin Chang Executive Director, Kansas City Area Education Research Consortium (KC-AERC) kcr@ku.edu As the Executive Director of the Kansas City Area Education Research Consortium (KC-AERC), Dr. Chang has managed local, state and national evaluations, including 30 multi-site evaluations in the area of early childhood, K–12 education, and post-secondary attainment. Most of her research work utilizes experimental or quasi-experimental research designs. Dr. Chang is a member of the American Evaluation Association and presents nationally on such topics as systems evaluation, college readiness, afterschool evaluation, instrument development, and statistical modeling techniques. She earned her Ph.D. in Education Research and Psychology from the University of Kansas. She holds a B.A. in History from Amherst College and a M.A. in Education Policy and Administration from Stanford University.
	Larry Hoyle Senior Scientist larryhoyle@ku.edu Larry has overall responsibility for planning the Institute’s computing infrastructure. He has more than a few years’ experience in the data management phase of the research lifecycle and teaches a graduate course focusing on those skills. In recent years, he has been actively involved in the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) – helping advance an international standard for machine actionable description of data and its lifecycle. He has done a number of invited and contributed presentations at SAS and DDI related international conferences and has chaired or co-chaired the North American DDI Conference and the IASSIST conference. Read more
Genna M. Hurd Associate Researcher ghurd@ku.edu Genna provides research assistance to several vital IPSR projects and programs, including its Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy. Research assistance includes research project management, program evaluation, focus group facilitation, interviews, survey development and analysis, data collection, management, and analysis, and report writing. Genna is Co-I for the KU EDA University Center, a partnership between the KU Center for Entrepreneurship in the School of Business and IPSR. She also is Editor of the Kansas Statistical Abstract, an online compendium of socio-economic and demographic data on Kansas. Read more
	Lindsay Jorgenson Research Associate lelliott@ku.edu Lindsay is a Research Associate with KC-AERC and primarily focuses on a project that supports English Learners, their families, and their educators within the Kansas City Kansas Public School District. Lindsay’s expertise includes social research evaluation, data visualization, project management and community organizing. She has worked in rural and urban communities to support greater equity within systems, policies and the built environment – namely those involving housing, education, and food systems. Lindsay holds an M.S.W. and M.P.H. from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.A. from the University of Kansas.
Renee Pualani Louis Associate Researcher pualani@ku.edu I am a Hawaiian woman and an Indigenous cartographer passionate about Hawaiian storied place names, cross cultural ethical research standards, and advocating the integration of Indigenous spatial knowledge systems with Western geosciences. I believe Indigenous wisdom has long held steadfast in the margins of society. Our elders have watched in silence or were silenced as consumer driven economics ravaged our lands, waters, and skies. Academia and science has played an active role in ensuring the knowledge of our ancestors remained ghostly whispers. It is time to bring Indigenous voices front and center. It is time to move beyond the politics of science where recognizing those realities that lie beyond the realm of our senses is not a debate about belief systems, so much as an examination of alternative methodologies. It is time to acknowledge the multiplicity of experiences that contribute to our understanding of the world in which we live. Read more
	Pat Oslund Associate Researcher poslund@ku.edu Visit staff page for information.
Aurora Sanchez Emerging Scholar aurorasanchez@ku.edu Aurora Sanchez is a second year emerging scholar and peer mentor for the program. She is currently working with Xan Wedel, her research mentor, providing research assistance for a variety of IPSR projects. She is a current student at the School of Business working towards a B.S. in Accounting with a concentration in International Business.
	Xan Wedel Senior Research Data Engineer xan@ku.edu Xan is the primary liaison for data requests received by the Institute from the public or members of the university community. Xan leads the Kansas State Data Center (SDC), a partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau. She also serves as web application developer and GIS analyst for the Institute. In addition to these duties, Xan advises students and researchers on data visualization techniques including GIS and coordinates the data compilation and visualization, programming, and production of the Kansas Statistical Abstract. Read more