COVID may have driven us all indoors, but members of the Teachers College community continue to win recognition from the wider world. Among those recently or currently being honored are:
Alex Bowers, Associate Professor of Education Leadership, was appointed as an Associate Editor to Educational Administration Quarterly, the leading peer reviewed research journal in education leadership. Bowers, who has served for the past several years on the publication’s editorial board, will be in charge of shepherding research articles through the peer review process, recruiting reviewers, and evaluation contributions for inclusion. Bowers also has been appointed to the editorial board for AERJ (the American Educational Research Journal), among the top global research journals in education.
TC Student Senate Vice President Charmagne (Cha Cha) Jones. Jones, who will graduate this spring with a master’s degree in Applied Physiology, has been named to receive The Campbell Award, given by the Columbia University Alumni Association Award. The award, established in 2016 by the University Trustees and the Board of the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA), recognizes exceptional leadership and Columbia spirit. It is presented by the CAA to a graduating student at each School within the University who has demonstrated a commitment to building University community and pride, as exemplified by the late Bill Campbell ’62CC, ’64TC, University Trustee Chair Emeritus and CAA co-founder.
Alumnus Patrick O’Connor (M.A. ’91), a former teacher in Jericho, New York who overcame life-threatening injuries and now tutors youth through a Long Island-based afterschool academy, saw 25 of his proteges take home 25 gold medals in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition, held by The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Past winners of the awards include past winners include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Robert Redford and Joyce Carol Oates.
Carrie Safron, a doctoral student in Movement Sciences, received this year’s Lawrence F. Locke Graduate Student Paper Award from the Special Interest Group on Research on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education, of the American Educational Research Association. The award is given to the graduate student that is first author on a paper and is rated the highest according blind peer reviews. Safron’s paper for AERA, of which she was the sole author, was titled “Affective bodies: Scrapbooks, health and fitness in an urban after-school program.” In it, she draws on her dissertation research, to explore the affects of a nine-week scrapbooking project, related to health and fitness, with Black and Latino youth in an urban after-school program. This paper specifically looks at the ways in which pedagogical sites (such as health and fitness related magazines) open and close potential for change. the paper examines approaches such as scrapbooking and collaging, which enable youth, researchers, practitioners and communities to look at bodies, health and fitness from broader perspectives.
“The work from Carrie’s dissertation has already made an impact in her field,” says Dillon Landi (Ed.M. ’15), Assistant Professor at the College of Health Professions at Towson University and Honorary Adjunct Assistant Professor at TC. “Thus far, she has three published manuscripts at highly reputable journals in education – all three of these papers were solo-authored.”
Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis, will receive the 2020 Samuel Untermyer Award, given by the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy. Recipients are honored for reflecting the bravery of the award’s namesake, who was an advocate for stock market regulations, government ownership of railroads and various legal reforms. Sabic-El-Rayess grew up in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina and survived the ethnic cleansing there to become an advocate for social justice, education, inclusion, and women. As a scholar, she explores what drives societies apart and the role education can play in rebuilding decimated communities.
Thuy Hang Tran, who will graduate later this month with a master’s degree in Education Policy, has been awarded a Davis Project for Peace Fellowship. The Davis Fellowship is a prestigious scholarship awarded to only 100 recipients from universities and colleges nation-wide. The Davis Projects for Peace was founded in 2008 by Kathryn W. Davis, the American philanthropist, scholar of world affairs, and longtime promoter of women's rights and planning parenthood, on her 100th birthday. Davis died in 2013. The initiative aims to promote peace and global understanding by challenging students to build peacemaking projects.
Born in a former war zone in South Vietnam, TC’s Tran, who is a Gates Millennium Scholar and also a Teachers College’s Zankel Fellow for Urban Educators, is committed to giving back to her former home, where educational opportunities are scarce. This past year, through a human rights and peace education course taught by Lecturer Felisa Tibbits, she created a proposal for building a youth after school learning center and implementing a summer peace program in her home village. The Davis Projects for Peace Grant Recipients receive $10,000 in funding which will support the first two years of the project’s implementation. [Read a story about Thuy Hang Tran.]