AHS Adds Two Faculty Members

Dr. John Kosciulek joined KCH as a professor after 19 years at Michigan State University, where he was a professor in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education and director of the doctoral program in Rehabilitation Counselor Education.

His research focuses on the social determinants of health of people with disabilities who live in poverty as well as bioethics and disability. He is collaborating with researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy on an investigation of the relationships among policy, disability status, income, and such material circumstances as living conditions, food availability, health equity, and quality of life. In the area of bioethics and disability, his research focuses on such issues as genetic engineering, the right to die, and the relationship between mental illness and gun violence. He developed the Theory of Informed Choice in Vocational Rehabilitation and Consumer-Directed Theory of Empowerment. Dr. Kosciulek earned his Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has received a research award from the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association and served as editor of Rehabilitation Education, the flagship journal of the National Council on Rehabilitation Education.

Dr. Kosciulek said the opportunity to collaborate with other members of the Community Health faculty to develop a master’s degree program in Rehabilitation Counseling was a strong motivator for making the move from Michigan State to Illinois. “The Chez Veterans Center, Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services, and other local and statewide programs offer maximum potential for high-quality clinical training, research, and service provision to individuals with disabilities,” he said. He also is looking forward to developing collaborative research projects focused on community health, rehabilitation counseling, and disability with colleagues within AHS and across campus.

The Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism welcomed assistant professor Dr. Suiwen Zou to its faculty. Her Ph.D. in Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences is from Texas A&M University. After completing her degree, she joined the U.S.-Asia Center for Tourism and Hospitality Research at Temple University as a postdoctoral fellow. She came to RST from a visiting professor position at San Francisco State University.

Dr. Zou’s research seeks to predict tourists’ decision-making behaviors through the application of marketing and psychology principles. She is specifically interested in improving the tourism experience and perceived price fairness through the exploration of behavioral pricing, service recovery, and leisure constraints among marginalized groups. She is applying Justice Theory to explore the effectiveness of different resolution scenarios in restoring travelers’ satisfaction and loyalty after experiencing a canceled flight. She also is examining how skin color and gender impact the participation of Asian American women in pickup basketball and plans to extend this line of research to examine causes of discontinuing basketball participation from high school to college.

The quality of the research produced by RST scholars attracted Dr. Zou to her present position. “Joining RST means that I will have the privilege of working with a group of exceptional scholars,” she said. She also liked the emphasis within the department and the college on the role of leisure and tourism in individual and community well-being and was impressed by the “amazingly substantial” teaching and research support RST and AHS offer.