HGSE Community Celebrates Recent Honors

Below is a look at a small portion of the prestigious honors awarded to members of the HGSE community:

FACULTY

• Professors Heather Hill and Fernando Reimers were elected to the National Academy of Education which honors scholars for their valuable contributions to educational research and policy development. 
• Professor Catherine Elgin was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 
• At Commencement 2023, Lecturer Timothy McCarthy was honored with the Evelynn Hammonds Award for exceptional service to Harvard's LGBTQ+ community.

STUDENTS

• Ph.D. students Alexis Gable and Orelia Jonathan were awarded NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowships. Gable’s research focuses on the intersection of school and work. Jonathan’s dissertation looks at how educators in South Sudan use their own personal histories to teach the greater history of conflict in their county.
• Ph.D. students Maya Alkateb-Chami, Ed.M.’22; Jeannette Valerie Garcia Coppersmith, Ed.M.’20; and Garry Mitchell received honorable mention for the 2023 Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs competition administered by the Fellowships Office of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 
• Ph.D. students Alex Bolves; Caitlin Dermody; Bri Kightlinger, Ed.M.'19; Brein Mosely; and Liz Salinas, Ed.M.'15, were selected as Partnering in Education Research (PIER) Fellows by the Center on Education Policy Reasearch at Harvard University.
• Ed.L.D. students Lisa Kingsley, Gustavo Luna, Barbara Best, Justis Lopez, Aundrey Page, and Jadun McCarthy were named Krinsky Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fellows.
• Ed.L.D. students Phoebe Grant-Robinson, Anyeli Matos, Joseph Longbottom, Brendan Chan, and Jasmine Fernandez were awarded Ambach Fellowships for innovative projects and learning opportunities in State Education Agencies (SEAs). 
• Teaching and Teacher Leadership (TTL) master’s student Christian Melgar received the Outstanding Senior Award from the Bucknellian, Bucknell University’s student newspaper. Fellow TTL master’s student Anaya Benzan received the Bucknellian’s Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award. 
• Ed.L.D. student Tremain Holloway, Ed.M.'16, recieved the ‘Public Official of the Year’ Award from the Seattle Propeller Club for his exceptional leadership in the field of maritime education.
• Ed.L.D. students Everton Blair, Gustavo Luna, and Lisa Cenca were awarded Harvard Presidential Public Service Fellowships.
• The Linda G. Hammett Ory Fellowship at EdRedesign was awarded to Ph.D. students James Jack and Mary Laski, and Ed.L.D student Aundrey Page.
• Ph.D. student Matthew Lenard received an AERA-NSF Grants Program Dissertation Grant for The Impacts of High School Industry Certifications: Regression Discontinuity Evidence.
• Ph.D. student Alysha Banerji was awarded the GSAS Merit and Term-Time Fellowship. Banerji also won a WCFIA Dissertation Award.
• Ph.D. student Abhinav Ghosh received the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, awarded to Harvard graduate students for one academic year of travel, study, and/or research outside the United States.
• GSAS Summer Predissertation Fellowships were awarded to Ph.D. students Devika Agrawal and Michelle Wong.
• Ph.D. student Marta Dormal was named a Stone Ph.D. Scholar in Inequality and Wealth, awarded to Harvard Ph.D. students in the social sciences who will "advance a new generation of research on inequality, wealth concentration, and mobility."

• Project Zero Fellowships were awarded to Ph.D. students Nicolas Riveros-Medelius, Ed.M.'17; Kemy Wahpepah; Maya Alkateb-Chami, Ed.M.'22; and Kailah Adefolalu.
• Ph.D. student Farah Mallah, Ed.M.'18, was awarded a Russell Sage Dissertation Grant to "examine how the addition of advanced courses to a school’s curriculum impacts low-income students’ long-term educational and employment outcomes."
• Ph.D. student Maya Cohen won a Safra Center Design Studio Initiative Fellowship.
• Ph.D. student Jorge Cuartas, Ed.M.'20, receive a Patrice L. Engle Dissertation Grant for his research in global early development.
• Ph.D. student Avriel Epps was awarded the UCLA Center for Race & Digital Justice Dissertation Fellowship. 

ALUMNI

• Penn State's Mildred Boveda received the 2023 Scholars of Color Early Career Contribution Award from AERA.
• Paul Yoo, Ed.M.’15, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine, was awarded an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for his research on how schools shape opportunities and what can be done about childhood poverty.  
• Boston University’s Kirsten Slungaard Mumma, Ed.M.'15, Ph.D.'21, was awarded an NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research focuses on research the economics of education.
• University of Colorado Boulder’s Arturo Cortez, Ed.M.'08, received an NAEd/Spencer Research Development Award. His current work is on co-designing speculative pedagogies in videogame play.
• Renée Kapuku, Ed.M.'19, won The Diana Award for her work in education, gender equity and community building. The Diana Award recognizes "exceptional young people have demonstrated their ability to inspire and mobilize new generations to serve their communities and create long-lasting change on a global scale."
• Tony Delarosa, Ed.M.'18, was selected for the 2023 Community Trailblazer Award from The Asian American Foundation for which he was featured on the Hulu special, Heritage Heroes.
• Randy Ribay, Ed.M.'10, was awarded a 2023/2024 National Book Foundation Teacher Fellowship, a new initiative to support and celebrate 6th-12th grade teachers using innovative methods to make reading for pleasure a part of their students’ school day experience.
• Janey Pearl Starks, Ed.M.'06, was one of 15 people worldwide selected to participate in 2022’s American Express Leadership Academy 2.0 at the Aspen Institute: A Fellowship for Emerging Nonprofit Leaders. 
• Betsy Campbell, Ed.M.'93, won the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Practice award for her work organizing the CAPE: Community Advancing Pluralism in Entrepreneurship at Penn State. She also was named a fellow at the Edgelands Institute where she investigates issues of social justice in AI.
• Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala, Ed.M.'08, received the Donna Elder Inspired Leader Award (DEILA) last October from National University. 
• Todd Bland, Ed.M'01, who served as Milton Academy’s head of school from 2009–23, was awarded the Milton Medal, the school’s highest honor, recognizing his exceptional and dedicated service. 
• Kam Sripada, Ed.M.'10, received the 2023 Research Communication Prize from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The prize recognizes Sripada's efforts to bring research findings to a wide and diverse audience, bridging the fields of neuroscience, child development, social inequalities, and environmental health.
• Michele Rigolizzo, Ed.M.'10, was granted tenure earlier this year at Montclair State University, where she is an assistant professor of management.
• Sarah Surrain, Ed.M.'14, Ph.D.'21, received a Notice of Award from the NIDCD for an NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00 award) for her project, Identifying Caregiver Behaviors that Promote Spanish Development in Preschool-aged Emergent Bilinguals at Risk for Developmental Language Disorder.
• Juliana Kagami, Ed.M.'23, was awarded a Poy Fellowship from the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce. These scholarships to exceptional young professionals pursuing graduate studies who demonstrate outstanding leadership.
• Jessica Lander, Ed.M.'15, was named the 2023 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year by the The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

If you are a member of the HGSE community and recently have won an award or achieved a special honor, please email marin_jorgensen@gse.harvard.edu.