Dr. Gul Nahar is the Interim Director of the Center for Educational Development and Research (CEDaR). She earned her Ph.D. in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum (ILAC) from the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education (JRCoE) at the University of Oklahoma in spring of 2019, with a concentration in English Education. Previously, she received her second Master’s, in Bilingual Education (M.Ed.) from the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). She also received her Bachelor of Arts and first Master’s degree, both in English Literature, from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. After obtaining her first Master’s, she taught English language and literature at elementary and secondary schools in Bangladesh and Brunei. During her teaching tenure, she developed writing and reading curriculum and applied innovative teaching strategies and methods to create an engaging learning environment for students from multicultural and multilinguistic backgrounds.
Nahar’s emphasis is on qualitative research. Since the fall of 2015, she led projects at CEDaR by writing grant proposals, analyzing and evaluating data, writing reports for both college and NSF funded research projects, creating survey instruments for the evaluation of an Oklahoma City public charter school as CEDaR’s Interim Director from spring 2017 to summer 2018. In addition, she presents workshops on Qualitative Case Study Research Design, and Academic Writing Style in APA to graduate level Introductory Research students. This semester, she is co-teaching EDLT 4813, “Children’s Literature and Writing across the Curriculum,” with Dr. Jeining Ruan in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum (ILAC). She also serves as an academic editor to faculty and graduate students’ manuscripts, articles, prospectuses, dissertations, and theses, in addition to transcribing and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data.
Prior to CEDaR, she worked as a media publicist for the Mark Allen Everett Poetry Reading Series and solicited articles and research for the online journal Study and Scrutiny: Research and Young Literature. From 2013- 2015, Dr. Nahar was a Graduate Writing Consultant at the OU Writing Center to develop college students’ writing skills and knowledge, review graduate students’ academic papers, theses, dissertations and prospectuses, and provide online feedback to academic papers submitted by faculty, administrators and undergraduates. While consulting at the Writing Center, she also taught First-year Composition (FYC) at the OU’s Department of English. Her work has been published in English Journal, as well as the books titled, The changing world language map, and Gateway to College Learning. She recently co-authored a conceptual paper with Educational Leadership and Policy Studies faculty, titled A Framework for Cohesive School Improvement: Integrating Plans, Evidence Use and Resources in a Local U.S. Context, which currently awaits review and publication in the Improving Schools journal.
