Karen Eppley
Kansas Regional Hub Contact - Manhattan, KS
A former rural K-12 student and rural fifth-grade teacher in Northern Appalachia, Karen Eppley is an Associate Professor of Rural Education at Kansas State University where she directs the Rural Education Center. Her research agenda explores the ways in which opportunity does not manifest equally across space and asks questions about teaching and learning at the intersection of placed-identities, rural education, and policy. She is a co-author of Why Rural Matters (2023 & 2025), Teaching in Rural Places: Thriving in Classrooms, Schools, and Communities and a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Rural Education in the United States. She edits the open access publication, Journal of Research in Rural Education.