Marlissa Hughes Stauffer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Education, joined Ohio Dominican
University as a full-time faculty in the fall of 2008. She currently serves as the
Chair of the Division of Education and the program director of the Adolescence to
Young Adult Education program.
During her own undergraduate education, Dr. Stauffer did not know if she wanted to
be a teacher; it was hard for her to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.
She earned a degree and teaching certificate, but was still unsure if the teaching
profession was for her. Once she realized that her passion to love others for Jesus
could be met as she gave herself wholeheartedly to her students, she knew she had
found her calling. She taught English, Biblical and Religious Literature, and debate
for 11 years in Evansville, Indiana, and she credits that experience as inspiring
her now to help ODU teacher candidates prepare to make a lasting difference in the
lives of their own students.
During her time as a high school teacher, Dr. Stauffer was awarded the Armstrong Teacher
Award from Indiana University, was a recipient of the U.S. Department of Education
Teacher Recognition Award, Presidential Scholars Program, and was named an Indianapolis Star and Indiana Department of Education Academic Mentor.
During her time at ODU, Dr. Stauffer has taught both undergraduate and graduate classes,
with a particular emphasis on the foundation course where she and her students wrestle
with issues of justice in the history, policies, ideas and practices of education.
Dr. Stauffer anticipates that each of her students will go on to work for a more just
learning environment within their own classroom and beyond. Some of her own work in
the area of justice is aligned with serving on the board of the Masters Preparatory
Academy, a boarding school for African-American males in Central Ohio that is still
in developmental stages.
Dr. Stauffer has worked on multiple grants, but she is currently focused on the $1.2
million NSF Noyce Fellow grant, which is designed to prepare teacher candidates to
teach high school mathematics and science in high needs school districts.
Dr. Stauffer holds a Bachelor of Art in English/Secondary Education from Indiana Wesleyan
University, a MA in Secondary Education from University of Southern Indiana, and a
Ph.D. from Indiana University in Curriculum and Instruction, with emphases in Teacher
Education, the History of Education, and Education Policy Studies.
