Jessica Leveto, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology | Scholar-Practitioner in Higher Education and Institutional Change

Jessica A. Leveto, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University whose scholarship examines how identities, relationships, organizational conditions, and institutional structures shape human experience. Her work spans sociological social psychology, identity and emotion, neurodiversity, caregiving and motherhood, higher education, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Across these areas, her work is guided by a central question: 

How do social and institutional environments shape people’s opportunities to belong, participate, develop agency, and thrive?

Research & Scholarship

Dr. Leveto’s research focuses on:

• Identity, emotion, and sociological social psychology
• Neurodiversity and the sociology of autism
• Motherhood, caregiving, and academic work
• Higher education, belonging, and student success
• Scholarship of teaching and learning
• Organizational and institutional conditions that shape participation, trust, and agency

Her emerging research agenda extends this work into human-centered institutional change in higher education, with particular attention to how faculty, staff, students, and leaders make sense of complex challenges and translate evidence and lived experience into sustainable institutional responses.

Evaluation, Research Methods & Organizational Learning

Dr. Leveto has expertise in program evaluation and mixed-methods research, including:

• Qualitative interviewing and analysis
• Survey research
• Mixed-methods evaluation
• Theory of change and logic-model development
• Program and institutional assessment
• Qualitative and quantitative data analysis

Her current methodological interests focus on qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to studying institutional life, including how organizational structures, relationships, culture, and inequality shape belonging, participation, and experiences of change.

Higher Education Change & Human-Centered Design

Dr. Leveto applies her sociological and methodological expertise to institutional-change initiatives focused on student success, belonging, faculty and staff capacity, and regional-campus sustainability.

She co-developed and co-leads Kent State’s Sensemaking Collaboratory, which brings together organizational sensemaking, change scholarship, stakeholder inquiry, human-centered design, prototyping, coaching, and evaluation to help faculty and staff address complex institutional challenges.

Her work increasingly examines:

• How institutional innovations move from ideas to implementation
• The conditions that support or constrain adoption and sustainability
• Cross-silo collaboration and organizational learning
• Relational trust, belonging, and change agency
• The role of workload, recognition, leadership support, and infrastructure in institutional change

Coaching & Change Leadership

Dr. Leveto’s work is also informed by formal training in coaching and intentional change through Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. She integrates coaching principles with sociology, organizational sensemaking, and human-centered design to support individuals and teams navigating complex change.

Her approach emphasizes the relational conditions that make change possible, including:

• Trust
• Psychological safety
• Belonging
• Agency
• Shared purpose
• Meaningful participation

Teaching

Dr. Leveto approaches teaching as another site for evidence-informed, human-centered design. Her pedagogy centers relational trust, accessibility, metacognition, authentic assessment, and applied sociological inquiry.

She is particularly interested in creating learning environments that support intellectual risk-taking, student agency, belonging, and success across diverse student experiences.