About

Ashley B. Akenson, Ph.D. has worked in program planning and evaluation (PPE) and administration in academic healthcare, higher education, government, and finance. She is passionate about bringing multicultural awareness and mindfulness to PPE practices and everyday interactions. Her other scholarly interests include basic goodness and compassion, nonviolent communication, intersectionality, marginalized and underserved populations, perception/bias and its power and influence, PPE in education and nontraditional educational contexts as well healthcare, transformative learning, learning transfer, and research methods. Her work seeks to enact critical, mindful examination without reinscribing deficit conceptions of others and continuing cycles of blame and shame.

Degrees and Certifications

• PhD, Exceptional Learning - Program Planning & Evaluation, Tennessee Tech University
• MA, Curriculum & Instruction, Tennessee Tech University

Teaching, Research, and Professional Interest

• Mindfulness
• Program planning & evaluation in service organizations and outreach
• Quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Transformative learning