Photo caption: (l-r) Michelle Zoss, Brett Wong, Teri Holbrook, Sheryl Cowart Moss, Dean Paul Alberto, Nadia Behizadeh, Peter Rohleder and Carla Tanguay pose for a photo after the College of Education & Human Development's 2019 Faculty Awards Luncheon.
The College of Education & Human Development is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2019 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. Award recipients were recognized at a luncheon in their honor on March 5.
The 2019 recipients are:
Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching
Peter Rohleder, clinical instructor, Department of Kinesiology and Health
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding achievement in the area of teaching.
Peter Rohleder is a clinical instructor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health and has extensive experience in the fields of exercise, fitness, athletic performance, movement enhancement and correction, and specialized body transformation. He has 16 years of experience working as an instructor, performance specialist, strength coach, consultant, and fitness studio owner. Rohleder holds a master’s degree in exercise science from Wichita State University and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. He has a passion for educating and helping students discover their potential in the field and looks forward to contributing to the Georgia State community.
Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Graduate Teaching
Michelle Zoss, associate professor, Department of Middle and Secondary Education
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding achievement in the area of teaching.
Michelle Zoss focuses her research and teaching on the integration of visual arts in language arts teaching. Her publications include research on teachers’ curriculum decisions for teaching secondary students to communicate via writing and drawing. She also studied pre-service teachers to examine their uses of metaphors for teaching literacy in urban schools and their understandings of aesthetic experiences. Other publications argue for the need for students to learn to write and draw as they move through the K-12 school system. Her forthcoming book is entitled, “A Symphony of Possibilities: A Handbook for Arts Integration in Secondary English Language Arts.” In 2013, Zoss received the CEHD‘s Outstanding Faculty Research Award at the assistant/associate professor level.
She earned honors bachelor’s degrees in art and English and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Iowa. She also earned certification to teach secondary English and K-12 art at Iowa. At Stanford University, she earned a master’s degree in curriculum and teacher education. At The University of Georgia, she earned a doctoral degree in language education and received multiple awards for travel and tuition funding, including the Graduate School Dissertation Completion Assistantship and the Carol J. Fisher Award for Excellence in Graduate Research.
Outstanding Faculty Service to the Profession Award
Sheryl Cowart Moss, clinical associate professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies
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.
A former high school principal, Sheryl Cowart Moss has teaching and administrative experience in general and special education at every level of P-12 public education. She directs the college’s advanced programs (Tier II and Ed.D.) in educational leadership and is a faculty affiliate of the college’s Center for Evaluation and Research Services. Cowart Moss is an invited member of the Council of Professors of Instructional Supervision, where she is also the president, and the National Collaborative for Inclusive Principal Leadership, a project of the Council for Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C. As part of this work, Cowart Moss leads a national topical action group whose mission is to infuse inclusive leadership practices into leadership preparation programs across the country. She is a site visitor for the Georgia Professional Standards Commission and she chairs the Teacher and Leader Preparation Committee for the CEEDAR-GA Project, a partnership between the state of Georgia and the national CEEDAR Center, bringing together general education, special education and educational leadership. Cowart Moss is president of the Georgia Educational Leadership Faculty Association and a member of the board of directors for the Georgia Association for Educational Leaders.
Outstanding Faculty Service to the Community Award
Carla Tanguay, clinical assistant professor, Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
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.
Carla Tanguay is the associate to the dean for clinical practice, supporting all initial teacher preparation programs in teacher performance assessment and clinical practice. Since joining Georgia State in 2007, Tanguay has served as the program coordinator for the bachelor of science in education program in elementary education with concentrations in ESOL and special education. She serves on the Georgia edTPA Policy and Implementation Advisory Committee and is chair of the CEHD’s Assessment and Accreditation Committee. She was co-chair of the Local Arrangements Planning Committee for the 2019 Association of Teacher Educators Conference. Tanguay continues to prepare candidates for the teaching profession by strengthening P-12 partnerships though her involvement in the P-20 Metro Collaborative and by serving on the DeKalb County Public School and Gwinnett County Public School Education Advisory Boards. She is a member of the Corners Outreach Education Board supporting high-need DeKalb and Gwinnett public schools in after-school tutoring and work-based programs. Her scholarly interests include teacher development, induction and retention, assessment, program evaluation and educational policy.
Outstanding Urban Education Research Award
Nadia Behizadeh, associate professor, Department of Middle and Secondary 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.
Nadia Behizadeh is an associate professor of adolescent literacy and her scholarly endeavors are centered on increasing access for students in urban, public schools to critical literacy instruction that prepares them to envision and enact a more just world. Because lack of access is created by complex factors, Behizadeh has employed an interdisciplinary research agenda that approaches the problem from three different angles: authentic and critical writing instruction, large-scale writing assessment and social justice-oriented teacher preparation, particularly for English language arts teachers. She has published in a wide range of journals, including Review of Research in Education, Educational Researcher, Journal of Teacher Education, English Journal, Equity & Excellence in Education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Assessing Writing. Behizadeh’s research has been funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and English Language Arts Teacher Educators. She serves on multiple editorial boards, including the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Language Arts, and is the research director for the Collaboration and Reflection Enhancing Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness teacher residency program.
Outstanding Faculty Research Mentoring Award
Teri Holbrook, associate professor, Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education
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.
Teri Holbrook is an associate professor of literacy and language arts in the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education. Her research interests include multimodal and digital composition, writing pedagogy, arts-infused and digital literacies, and arts-based and poststructural qualitative research methods. As a teacher, author, artist, and literacy scholar, Holbrook’s work spans education, the humanities and the arts. Her scholarly work often integrates written word, photography and collage and has been published in such academic journals as Qualitative Inquiry, Literacy Research Yearbook, Frontiers, Visual Arts Research, Visual Inquiry, Children’s Literature in Education and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Her fiction work includes novels, short stories and hypermedia fiction.
Outstanding Faculty Research Award
Brett Wong, assistant professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health
This award recognizes a full-time faculty member in the college for outstanding achievement in the area of scholarship.
Brett Wong earned his B.S. from the Department of Exercise Science at the University of California at Davis in 1999, his M.S. from the Department of Exercise and Movement Science at the University of Oregon in 2003 and his Ph.D. from the Department of Human Physiology at the University of Oregon in 2005. Following his doctoral work, he completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Iowa. From 2007-2013, he was an assistant/associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Kansas State University.
His primary research interest is focused on the physiological mechanisms regulating the cutaneous vasculature in humans. His research is currently funded by a four-year grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The aim of the grant is to investigate mechanisms of cutaneous microvascular and sensory nerve function in non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites.