Coordinator / Advisor

Dr. Barbara N. Young
Professor / Department of Educational Leadership
Certified Online Educator / Certified Online Faculty Developer
Middle Tennessee State University
College of Education
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Program Coordinator & Advisor  
Specialist in Education Degree (Ed.S.)
Curriculum & Instruction Major
Culture, Cognition, & Learning Process (CC/LP) Specialization

Office: College of Education 383
E-mail: Barbara.Young@mtsu.edu
Office: 615.898.2209

Dr. Young strives to create a challenging and engaging virtual learning classroom environment in which students become life-long scholars and learners. Her  professional career experience includes K-12 teaching as well as university level onsite and online teaching experience.

Dr. Young  pursues research and work that further the goals of the Ed.S. degree with Specialization in Culture, Cognition, and the Learning Process. Along with Dr. Laura Clark, Dr. Young wrote and helped implement a project funded by a Tennessee Board of Regents Student Engagement, Retention, and Success grant for the 2016-17 academic year. This project, La Comunidad @ MTSU, currently serves a targeted population that is underrepresented, composed of many first-generation college students, and is part of an ethnic minority.

In addition, Young, who joined the MTSU faculty in 1989, is principal investigator in ongoing research projects involving Saudi Arabian women international graduate students who are studying at MTSU and interacting with Americans in a mixed-gender classroom environment for the first time—a situation significantly different from the segregated-gender environment of their homeland. Also, research projects focusing on Saudi undergraduate students, both male and female, are ongoing. 

Dr. Young also conducts ongoing research projects involving international students with various ethnic backgrounds that are undergoing effects of initial acculturation experiences at MTSU.  “Both the TBR grant and the ongoing research projects focus on cultural diversity and the teaching/learning process and are clearly aligned with existing intercultural and diversity initiatives at MTSU,” Young observes.

In addition to a focus on cultural issues in education and contributions of psychology to the field of education, Dr. Young is involved in research endeavors that focus on the academic discipline called educational neuroscience or mind, brain, and education science. This field of inquiry explores how research finds from neuroscience, education, and psychology inform understandings about teaching and learning.

This interdisciplinary approach is emphasized in specialized courses offered in the Educational Specialist Degree Program with Specialization in Culture, Cognition, and the Learning Process.