Brody Tate has built a professional and academic record around higher education, curriculum development, online learning, and questions of representation in graduate education. His work has spanned Loyola University Chicago, Academic Programs International, and the University of Chicago, while also developing into published research focused on queer and rural student experiences.
His 2025 Doctor of Education dissertation brought several of those interests together by examining how queer graduate students experienced identity representation in their coursework. That same year, Loyola University Chicago recognized him with a Research Excellence Award. More recently, Tate said his University of Chicago position was eliminated during a February 2026 restructuring, placing his career in a new transition period.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Education | BA in Communication, M.Ed. in Higher Education, and EdD |
| Universities | University of Wyoming and Loyola University Chicago |
| Professional areas | Curriculum development, online learning, program management |
| Research focus | Queer representation, rural student experiences, graduate curriculum |
| Academic recognition | Loyola University Chicago Research Excellence Award |
| Previous role | Online Program Manager for UChicago’s MS in Applied Data Science |
| Published work | Higher education, ePortfolio pedagogy, queer and rural student experiences |
His Higher-Education Path Began at Wyoming and Loyola
Tate completed a Bachelor of Arts in Communication at the University of Wyoming in 2013 before earning a Master of Education in Higher Education from Loyola University Chicago in 2016. After completing those degrees, Tate’s documented work at Loyola focused on student learning, leadership education, and higher-education programming.
By 2020, he was working at Loyola as a Learning Portfolio Program Manager while also teaching leadership seminars. His responsibilities went beyond administrative program management. He also engaged in scholarship examining how students and faculty used digital portfolios in teaching and learning.
Tate later pursued doctoral study at Loyola. That academic path culminated in an EdD in 2025, after his professional experience had expanded into curriculum development and online graduate education.
Loyola’s ePortfolio Work Connected Teaching, Reflection, and Assessment
One of Tate’s documented projects at Loyola involved the university’s ePortfolio program. With Patrick M. Green, he co-authored the 2020 publication Modeling Pedagogy: Portfolios at the Intersections of Teaching and Learning.
The work examined a review and redesign of Loyola’s portfolio practices. It focused on how digital portfolios could support student reflection while also informing faculty teaching and assessment.
Rather than treating a portfolio simply as a place to collect assignments, the project considered how the process could connect different parts of the learning experience. As Learning Portfolio Program Manager, Tate was directly involved in that work.
The publication was practitioner-focused scholarship rather than a conventional empirical research study. Still, it provides a clear record of the educational questions he was working on before moving into later curriculum roles.
Curriculum Development Became a Larger Part of His Career
On October 4, 2021, Tate announced that he had accepted a Curriculum Developer position with Academic Programs International, commonly known as API. The move marked a shift from his Loyola portfolio work into a role more explicitly centered on designing learning experiences.
API later identified Tate and instructional designer Jamie Weaver as members of the team behind its Quarantine and Self-Isolation Learning Experience. The project was created as an online educational experience, and API subsequently received a GoAbroad Innovation in Online Programming award for the program.
The recognition belonged to the API project rather than to Tate as an individual award recipient. His involvement nevertheless provides a documented example of his curriculum development work outside a university-based portfolio program.
That experience added another dimension to a career already concerned with how learning environments are structured and how students engage with educational content.
His Published Work Examined Queer and Rural Student Experiences
Alongside his professional roles, Tate developed a body of published work addressing queer experiences in higher education, particularly where identity intersects with rural background and belonging.
He co-authored work including Too Queer for the Country, Too Country for College, and later contributed to scholarship on supporting queer students from rural backgrounds. That 2024 work addressed challenges, resilience, and the experiences of students navigating higher education from rural contexts.
In 2025, Tate also co-authored work exploring queer joy in nature. In his own first-person contribution, he described being born and raised in southwest Wyoming in a Mormon cattle-ranch family. He wrote about nature as a place connected with learning, refuge, and a continuing relationship to home.
Those autobiographical details come from Tate himself and help explain why rural experience appears repeatedly in his scholarly work. They do not, however, provide a broader family biography beyond the background he chose to discuss publicly.
His 2025 Dissertation Focused on Queer Representation in Graduate Curriculum
Tate completed his Doctor of Education at Loyola University Chicago in 2025. His dissertation was titled Mirrors and Windows: Exploring Queer Identity Representation in Graduate Curriculum.
The study used a narrative ethnographic approach to examine how queer graduate students experienced representation within their coursework. According to Loyola’s dissertation record, participants often struggled to see their identities meaningfully reflected in course materials.
Tate’s research considered how curriculum can affect students’ sense of recognition and belonging within graduate education. The dissertation argued for more intentional inclusion in course content based on the experiences documented by its participants.
Its findings belong to the particular study and participants rather than representing every graduate program. Even with that limitation, the dissertation expanded themes already present in his earlier scholarship about identity, rural background, and higher-education experiences.
Loyola’s School of Education named Tate one of its 2025 Research Excellence Award recipients. The university publicly confirmed the recognition, and Tate also acknowledged it in his own professional updates.
UChicago Extended His Work Into Online Learning and Data Ethics
By 2025, Tate was serving as Online Program Manager for the University of Chicago’s MS in Applied Data Science. The position brought his background in curriculum and online learning into a graduate program focused on data science.
On March 26, 2025, he participated in the UPCEA Annual Conference with Emma Kerr-Ketchum and Taylor Alexander. Their roundtable, From Fear to Responsibility: Embracing Ethical Data Science in Higher Education, explored how institutions can approach data ethics in higher education.
The discussion used a framework built around ethical data collection, ethical data consumption, and ethical data interpretation. Because the session was collaborative, those ideas belong to the group rather than to Tate alone.
After the conference, Tate said he was encouraged by the range of institutions engaging with ethical questions around AI and data science. He also noted that participants reported reconsidering aspects of ethical AI use following the discussion.
His work at UChicago therefore extended beyond program administration into public professional conversations about how technical education can incorporate ethical reasoning.
His Public Reflections Add Context to His Research Interests
Some of Tate’s earlier public comments provide additional context for the subjects that later appeared in his research.
In 2011, Wyoming Public Radio interviewed a Brody Tate from Evanston who was then studying at the University of Wyoming. He described having been unable to attend his high school prom with a same-sex date because of the school’s approval process. He later participated in Laramie’s LGBTQ-inclusive Pink Prom and spoke about having an experience that had previously been denied to him.
The education timeline is consistent with Dr. Brody C. Tate, although the radio report itself used the name Brody Tate without his middle initial.
In his later first-person scholarship, Tate directly described his southwest Wyoming upbringing and the role nature played as a source of learning and connection.
After completing his dissertation defense in 2025, he also publicly thanked those who had supported him and called for opposition to bigotry and mistreatment while encouraging community and creative expression. Those remarks were personal statements, not positions issued by any of his employers.
His Career Entered a New Phase in 2026
Tate’s role at the University of Chicago did not continue indefinitely. Tate said his position was eliminated during a February 2026 restructuring; available University of Chicago material does not independently document the elimination of his specific position. He did not publicly attribute the decision to anything beyond restructuring.
Later in 2026, Tate said he had spent more than three months searching for a new role. He identified higher education, learning and development, instructional design, program management, nonprofit leadership, and mission-driven organizations as areas he was considering.
In describing what he could bring to a future organization, he emphasized curriculum and learning design, program management, relationship building, and operational work.
That update also makes some older professional biographies outdated. Profiles that still describe him as a current University of Chicago Online Program Manager or as a Loyola doctoral candidate no longer reflect his documented 2026 status.
Tate’s Work Links Curriculum Design With Representation
Brody Tate’s professional record spans several related areas rather than a single role. His work at Loyola addressed portfolios, reflection, teaching, and assessment; API moved him further into curriculum development; and the University of Chicago added online graduate program management and conversations about data ethics.
His scholarship developed alongside those positions. Research on queer and rural students eventually led to a 2025 doctoral dissertation centered on representation within graduate curriculum, followed by Loyola’s Research Excellence Award.
The most recent verified stage of his career is a transition. After his UChicago position was eliminated in February 2026, Tate publicly began looking for opportunities where his experience in curriculum, learning design, program management, and higher education could carry into a new role.