Photo caption: The College of Education & Human Development celebrated its 2018 Faculty Award recipients at a luncheon on March 27. Top row (l to r): Laura May, E. Namisi Chilungu, Joel Meyers, Dean Paul Alberto, Gary Bingham and Jessica Scott. Bottom row (l to r): Ann Cale Kruger, Sarah Carlson, Don Davis and Judith Emerson.
story by Claire Miller
The College of Education & Human Development is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2018 Faculty Awards.
These faculty have published extensively, mentored numerous educators and peers, secured significant grant funding, and represented Georgia State University and the College of Education & Human Development in school systems, community organizations and in their disciplines.
The 2018 recipients are:
Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching
E. Namisi Chilungu, clinical assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding achievement in the area of teaching.
E. Namisi Chilungu’s examines issues related to access, including: race/ethnicity, bi/multiracial identity and school experiences, and engaging students in empowering experiences (e.g., problem-solution projects). She also works with pre-service and in-service teachers on culturally responsive pedagogy and understanding the psychology of learning and instruction to create empowering classrooms.
Chilungu is interested in partnerships and community-based work that can enhance teacher preparation and PK-12 students’ learning experiences. In addition, she has extensive experience working on various grants (ranging from university-level to federal grants), and with several education nonprofit organizations. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence and the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Learning and Development program.
Outstanding Faculty Service to the Profession Award
Judith Emerson, clinical associate professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member who fulfills in an exemplary way the college’s commitment to service and has consistently demonstrated exemplary service to their profession at a national level.
Judith Emerson teaches in the college’s deaf education teacher preparation program and serves as director of the college’s American Sign Language Visual Resources Labs. She coordinates the American Sign Language (ASL) course offerings and supervises the ASL instructor pool. She is also a member of the SCALE edTPA National Academy with Stanford University, has been directly involved with the implementation of the edTPA in Georgia since 2013 and currently serves as the special education edTPA coordinator.
In 2011, Emerson was appointed by Georgia State University Provost Risa Palm as the Faculty Associate for Disabilities for the Georgia State campus, where she works toward improving the campus environment for individuals with disabilities. Her research interests include investigating ways in which universal design can be implemented in physical and educational environments and best practice strategies for the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in all settings.
Outstanding Faculty Service to the Community Award
Ann Cale Kruger, associate professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member who fulfills in an exemplary way the college’s commitment to service and has consistently demonstrated exemplary service to the community and/or campus.
Ann Cale Kruger is a developmental psychologist whose research investigates the functions of discourse, relationships and thought in the development of cultural knowledge and self-understanding. She has presented her research at professional conferences around the world and has published in journals such as Child Development, Social Development, Developmental Psychology, Human Nature, Journal of Child Language, Journal of Educational Research and Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Kruger has received federal funding for several research projects; her current National Science Foundation-funded project investigates the psychological predictors of neuroplasticity in tool use learning. She is a member of the research faculty in the college’s Center for Research on School Safety, School Climate and Classroom Management, where she directs Project PREVENT, an intervention to promote the psychological health of Atlanta school children most at risk of commercial sexual exploitation.
Outstanding Urban Education Research Award
Gary Bingham, associate professor, Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
This $500 award, funded by Dr. Ron Colarusso, Dean Emeritus of the college, recognizes a tenured or tenure-track faculty member for outstanding achievement in the area of scholarship and creative activity in urban education.
Gary E. Bingham serves as the associate director of the college’s Urban Child Study Center and is a member of the Board of Regents Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy (RCALL) Initiative. His scholarship examines home and school factors that contribute to the early language, reading and writing development of culturally and linguistically diverse children. Specifically, his research seeks to document the importance of high quality adult-child learning interactions (i.e., emotionally and instructionally sensitive interactions) on children’s language and literacy skills. A strong focus of this scholarship is on the assessment of classroom practices and children’s learning that are malleable to early intervention efforts.
As evidenced by numerous publications, presentations and external grants, Bingham’s scholarship creates innovate approaches to supporting early education settings in meeting the needs of diverse children and their families. He is currently validating how the state of Georgia rates the quality of early childhood programs (Quality Rating and Improvement Study, QRIS), a study that impacts all children within licensed childcare in the state. An ongoing intervention project utilizes an online, hyper-media based, professional learning approach (Project iWRITE) for improving the quality of early childhood teachers’ writing and literacy instructional practices. A core component of his scholarship is the importance of leveraging research in ways that informs policy and practice, particularly for populations that have been traditionally underserved.
Innovation in International Education Faculty Award
Jessica Scott, assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for their outstanding achievement in international education.
Jessica Scott began her career in deaf education as a high school English teacher at the Alaska School for the Deaf. While earning her master’s degree, she also worked as a reading specialist at The Learning Center for the Deaf in Massachusetts. Her dissertation won Harvard University’s Jeanne S. Chall Student Research Award. In it, she focused on the influence of American Sign Language and academic English proficiency on reading comprehension among deaf and hard of hearing middle and high school students.
As an assistant professor in deaf education, Scott is interested in further exploring the role that American Sign Language plays in the reading of deaf and hard of hearing students, as well as literacy instruction for deaf students. She is also interested in the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students in developing countries. She is currently serving as secretary for the Association of College Educators of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Amy R. Lederberg Award for Outstanding Research in Educational Psychology
Sarah Carlson, assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders
Established by Carol Springer Sargent to honor her dissertation chair, Dr. Amy R. Lederberg, this award is given to a new faculty member to support the development of their research agenda and recognize research-related accomplishments.
Sarah Carlson’s research primarily focuses on understanding human learning through assessing readers’ cognitive processes of comprehension. This work is currently supported through an IES Goal 5 Measurement grant, where she and her colleagues are developing and refining a diagnostic reading comprehension assessment geared towards identifying why readers in grades 3-5 struggle with comprehending narrative texts. She is interested in extending this work with struggling readers in secondary education as well as adults.
Her other recent endeavors include exploring the cognitive processes of learning through using mindfulness techniques to help reduce stress and improve learning outcomes. Her overall goal with her work is to gain a better understanding of human cognition in order to inform instructional changes used for improving the lives and learning for struggling students. Her research has been published in several journals, including Reading Psychology, Assessment for Effective Intervention, Learning and Individual Differences and the International Journal of Disability, Development and Education.
Outstanding Faculty Research Award
Laura May, associate professor, Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding achievement in the area of scholarship.
A former elementary teacher and literacy specialist, May studies how literacy teachers use talk and texts in ways that increase students’ educational opportunities and how teachers develop more equitable ways with talk and texts. This work primarily takes place in culturally and linguistically diverse settings.
She serves as the associate director of research for the college’s Center for Transnational and Multilingual Education and is the principal investigator for two federally-funded projects, Todos Juntos: Uniting Communities to Improve Practice for English Learners (Juntos) and Equipping Schools, Communities and Universities for Excellence in Language Acquisition (ESCUELA).
Outstanding Faculty Research Mentoring Award
Don Davis, associate professor, Department of Counseling and Psychological Services
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member who fulfills in an exemplary way the college’s commitment to providing mentoring in the conduct of research to faculty colleagues and doctoral students.
Don Davis is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services. His research generally falls under the umbrella of positive psychology and he leads the college’s Humility and the Advancement of Positive Psychology Interventions (HAPPI) Lab, which conducts both basic and applied research and generally studies the virtues humility, forgiveness and gratitude. He also does work on spirituality as an aspect of diversity.
College of Education & Human Development Distinguished Faculty Award
Joel Meyers, Regents’ Professor, Department of Counseling and Psychological Services
This $1,000 award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding contributions to their discipline through a combination of research and service.
Joel Meyers is executive director of the college’s Center for Research on School Safety, School Climate and Classroom Management. He previously served as president of the American Psychological Association Division 16 and has served as the editor of the Journal of School Psychology. Meyers has over 150 publications and his research interests include bullying, school climate, school-based mental health, commercial sexual exploitation of children and school-based consultation.
College of Education & Human Development Faculty Awards are given annually and are by nomination. This year’s recipients were recognized at a luncheon held in their honor on March 27.