Awards, Hires, Honors, and Major Grants
by John Conroy
Student Jennifer Eaton, who is currently enrolled in the orientation and mobility certificate program, was selected to receive a Delta Gamma Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship to attend the American Foundation for the Blind's 2017 Leadership Conference in Washington, DC.
Emeritus faculty member Nancy Elman received the 2017 Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association.
Community Engagement in Higher Education: Policy Reforms and Practice, edited by faculty members James Jacob, Stewart Sutin, John Weidman, and the late John Yeager, received Honorable Mention for the Best Book Award of 2017 from the Higher Education Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society.
Distinguished Professor John Jakicic is leading a $170 million, 19-center research project on the molecular benefits of exercise. Funding for the study, titled "Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity (MoTrPAC)." In addition, an article by John Jakicic and Assistant Professors Renee Rogers and Kelli Davis, "Effect of Wearable Technology Combined With a Lifestyle Intervention on Long-Term Weight Loss: The IDEA Randomized Clinical Trial," was named #8 in the top 100 peer-reviewed science articles of 2016 by Altmetric.
Katrina Loutzenhiser, technology and media services director within the School of Education, has been honored with the Exemplary Course Program Award from Blackboard Inc. The honor recognizes higher education officials who have best emphasized learning and technology through the design of engaging and innovative courses.
Student Oscar Medina has been chosen as a 2017 Graduate Fellow for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE).
Professor Rich Milner and Assistant Professor Lindsay Page were both included in the 2017 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, published by Education Week. Page was also ranked #5 in the junior faculty top ten.
Assistant Professor Lindsay Page was recently named to the Board of Directors for the Society of Research on Educational Effectiveness.
Associate Professor Najeeb Shafiq has been invited as an Academic Assessor by the United Kingdom’s Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Department for International Development (DFID). In this capacity, he will be reviewing proposals submitted in response to the funding call under the Raising Learning Outcomes in Education Systems Research Programme.
Doctoral student Tracie Tomichek-Michalowski, currently assistant principal of Marshall Middle School, was appointed as principal of Ingomar Elementary.
EdD student Sarah Wagner's Vira I. Heinz Program for Women in Global Leadership was honored as a Model of Excellence winner from the University Business magazine. The Heinz Endowment also renewed the program's grant of $525,000 for 2017 through the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
Assistant Professor Shannon Wanless co-authored a paper, titled "Behavioral self-regulation and relations to emergent academic skills among children in Germany and Iceland," that was recently listed as one of the most cited papers in Early Childhood Research Quarterly since 2012.
Associate Professor Ming-Te Wang has been honored with a Richard E. Snow Award for Early Contributions, which honors an individual's significant career contribution in the field of educational psychology. The award is given to an individual who has made a significant career contribution and completed his/her doctoral dissertation within the previous 10 calendar years.
EdD student Vanessa Ju-Chun Wei was awarded a grant for $79,800 from StarTalk to launch a three-week Chinese summer language program to grade 9-12 students in the Greater Pittsburgh area. StarTalk is a program sponsored by the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland.
Professor John Weidman was awarded the Exemplary Educator Award from the Government of Mongolia in recognition of his contributions to the development of higher education in Mongolia through research, technical assistance, and advising of Mongolian graduate students dating from 1992. He was nominated by his colleagues at the National University of Mongolia.
This article is a collection of news from the School of Education's In The News... bi-monthly email newsletter, which were published between January 6, 2017 and March 17, 2017.