Awards & Honors

Dr. Brian Dew, associate professor of counseling and psychological services, was awarded the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision's Courtland C. Lee Social Justice Award at the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision conference. This award is in recognition of his research related to MSM and methamphetamine research.

Dr. Lisa Martin-Hansen, assistant professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology, was recently elected president of the Southeastern Association for Science Teacher Education (SASTE).  She will be coordinating next year's annual conference in the metro Atlanta area.

Dr. Susan McClendon, associate director for the Center for Urban Excellence, received the Regional Counselor Award for the southeast territory of Kappa Delta Pi. KDP presents this award to the counselor of one chapter per territory biennially.

Dr. Karen Zabrucky, regents professor of educational psychology and special education, has joined the editorial board of the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education.  Dr. Zabrucky is one of five editorial board members from the U.S. with remaining board members from Turkey, Norway, Australia, Belgium, Portugal, Canada, Israel, Slovakia, Nigeria, and New Zealand.

Congratulations to the Atlanta After-School All-Stars who have formed a new partnership with the United States Tennis Association to conduct a tennis workshop for students from the B.E.S.T. Academy, Sandy Springs Middle School and Harper-Archer Middle School. Hosted at Woodward Academy, the Recreation Coaches Workshop gave the students an opportunity to learn how to play tennis. Trainers of the U.S. Tennis Association taught the students a variety of serves.  This event was a big success, and After-School All-Stars extends its utmost gratitude to its new partner, the U.S. Tennis Association, along with the Georgia Afterschool Investment Council and United Way, for co-organizing the event.

Dr. Walt Thompson, regents professor of kinesiology and health, is one of the co-principal investigators and part of an international collaborative for a study that has been approved by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to study the effects of sildenafil on athletic performance in athletes with spinal cord injury.  The international team is composed of scientists from the U.S., Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. The title of the study is “Effect of sildenafil on athletic performance in athletes with spinal cord injury:  a prospective, placebo controlled, blinded, crossover study.”

Dr. Christopher Ingalls, associate professor of kinesiology and health, and co-investigators from Baylor College of Medicine and UCLA have been awarded a five year, $2 million NIH grant to study the role of FKBP12, a small immunophilin that binds to sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release channels and transforming growth factor receptors, in regulating skeletal muscle strength associated with fatigue and injury.  Dr. Ingall’s total award from this grant is $321,965.

Dr. Caroline Sillivan, assistant professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology, was elected to serve as a member on the Executive Board of CUFA (College and University Faculty Assembly - affiliated with the National Council for the Social Studies) for 2009-2011.

The following faculty and staff recently received a $13 million grant entitled, “The Network for Enhancing Teacher Quality (NET-Q):  Dr. Gwen Benson (PI), Associate Dean of the College of Education, and co-PIs: Drs. William Curlette, professor of educational policy studies; Susan Ogletree, Director of the Educational Research Bureau; Caitlin Dooley, assistant professor of early childhood education; Joseph Feinberg, assistant professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology; H. Richard Miller; and Hayward Richardson, assistant professor of educational policy studies. NET-Q's emphasis will include initiatives such as Teachers in Residency, Leaders in Residency, Induction, Cross Career Learning Communities (for new and veteran teacher support and retention), Teacher-Intern-Professor (TIP) Model, First-tier Collaborative Action Research/Inquiry (university-school teams), Second-tier Competitive Research Fellowship Mini-Grants, and Georgia Public Broadcasting Digital Partnership Collaboratives, etc. Within these initiatives, the grant will support teacher learning about the following areas: special education, English language learners, (ELL), literacy, science, mathematics, and related content areas.

In May of this year, Dr. Jerry Brandon, professor of kinesiology and health, taught a class at the University of The West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad-Tobago.

Dr. Lisa Martin-Hansen, assistant professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology, is a Co-PI on a grant funded by NASA collaborating with science faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences (Cherilynn Morrow, Crawford Elliott and Jeremy Diem). Georgia State University will use a recently awarded $499,950 grant from NASA to help improve learning about global climate change for high schoolers, undergraduates and teachers in training, in addition to purchasing a unique urban carbon dioxide monitor to further research and teaching in the field.

Dr. Peggy Albers, associate professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology, has been invited to serve as section editor and contributing author for the Handbook on Research on Teaching the English Language Arts.

The Communication Disorders Program sponsored its 11th Annual Summer Institute on June 18 & 19 under the coordination of Dr. Debra Schober Peterson, clinical associate professor of educational psychology and special education.

Dr. Brenda Pitts, professor of kinesiology and health, was a 2009 nominee of the Georgia State University Instructional Innovativeness Award 2008-2009.

Dr.  Philo Hutcheson, associate professor of educational policy studies, has just finished a year of mentoring a Ph.D. student in American history at Brown University, sponsored by a Lumina Foundation grant.  The student is writing her dissertation on a topic related to Dr. Hutcheson's nearly completed book manuscript on the 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education, providing both of them with invaluable discussions.

Dr. Walt Thompson, regents professor of kinesiology and health, received a $50,000 grant from the Sandy Springs Education Force for the creation of an After-School All-Stars program at Sandy Springs Middle School.  The program started there on August 24.

After-School All-Stars has received additional grant funding from the Marcus Foundation in the amount of $124,995, which brings their total commitment to ASAS to $1,179,833. The additional funding was a result of the work ASAS does at Coretta Scott King Young Women's Leadership Academy, B.E.S.T. Academy for Boys, and Harper-Archer Middle School.