HGSE Community Celebrates 2025 Honors, Awards, Fellowships

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

FACULTY

• Professor Carola Suárez-Orozco was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
• Associate Professor Gabrielle Oliveira was honored with an Early Career Award at Teachers College Alumni Day.
• Professor Adriana Umana-Taylor was honored for her Distinguished Contributions to Mentoring of Developmental Scientists by the Society for Research in Child Development.
• Professor Danielle Allen received an honorary degree at Smith College's Commencement on Sunday, May 18.

STUDENTS

• Ph.D. student Joshua Gilbert is among the current recipients of the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for "Synthesizing Psychometrics and Causal Inference: Applications of Latent Variable Models to Treatment Heterogeneity, Psychological Networks, and Learning Transfer."
• Ph.D. student Kemeyawi Wahpepah was named a Radcliffe Fellow for 2025–26. Her dissertation focuses on "schooling stories" of Native and Indigenous children.
• Jacqueline Kelley, Ed.M.’25, has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to serve as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Greece for the 2025–2026 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
• Nancy Yee has been selected as a 2025 Rappaport Public Policy Fellow by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University. Twenty graduate students will spend the summer working with state and municipal agencies across Greater Boston on policy initiatives that improve service delivery and address the pressing needs of vulnerable populations.
• Games For Ed, a venture co-created by Mridula Chalamalasetti, Ed.M.'25, was runner-up in the 2025 Seed for Change competition. Games For Ed "seeks to integrate playful learning into mainstream education."
• Bharath Babu Nunna, Ed.M.'25, was named the 2024 Ambrose Amos Shaw Endowed Chair at Weber State University College of Engineering, Applied Science & Technology.
• Maria Olumayowa Arogundade, Ed.M.'25, and Ed.L.D. student Deniann Grant were named 2025 Summer Fellows by the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.
• Project Zero named Ph.D. students Jen Ha, Woohee Kim, and Ivelisse Ramos as PZ Doctoral Fellows.
• Two ventures led by HGSE students were finalists in the 2025 President's Innovation Challenge from the Harvard i-lab: Maka Media, from Tanyella Allison Leta, Ed.M.'25, and Blossom Academy, from Jeph Acheampong, Ed.M.'25.

ALUMNI

• Lisa Delpit, Ed.M.'80, Ed.D.'84, was one of 22 educators elected to the National Academy of Education.
• Luisa Sparrow, Ed.M.'14, was named 2025 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year after her second consecutive nomination.
• Andreas de Barros, Ph.D.’20; Carly Robinson, Ed.M.’17, Ph.D.’20; and Mark Chin, Ed.M.’16, Ph.D.’22 have been awarded with NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowships.
• Anita Chaudhary, Ed.M.'24; Anna Guadarrama, Ed.M.'22; Chauncey Brown, Ed.M.'24; Maclean Rozansky, Ed.M.'24; and Rola Tarek, Ed.M.'24, were awarded the 2024–2025 Education Pioneers National Impact Fellowship which "matches emerging leaders with school districts, charter management organizations, and education support organizations and equips them with hands-on experience and leadership skills to advance education as a great equalizer for opportunity."
• Zhan Okuda-Lim, Ed.M.'16, was named a 2025 David L. Clark Scholar in Educational Administration and Policy by the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA).
• Nancy Gutiérrez, Ed.L.D.'13, and Matthew Mugo Fields, Ed.M.'02, received Innovators of Color Awards at the 2025 ASU+GSV Summit.
• Francesca DuBrock, Ed.M.'17, chief curator at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, was awarded the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History which recognizes museum professionals and art historians in the United States who set the standard for curatorial excellence and cultural stewardship.
• John McQuillen, Ed.M.'24, and Jack Anderson, Ed.M.'25, were named Schwarzman Scholars.
• Mark Salzer, Ed.M.'97, was honored with the Excellence In Education award from the Michigan Lottery last fall. The award recognizes outstanding public school educators across Michigan during the school year.
• Anny Chan, Ed.M.'24, won the Unsung Hero Award from the Massachusetts Asian American & Pacific Islanders Commission.
• Bili, a culturally responsive learning app founded by Veronica Benavides, Ed.L.D.'16, won the Community Choice Award in the SXSW EDU 2025 Launch Startup Competition.
• Slam Out Loud, from Jigyasa Labroo, Ed.M.'22, was a finalist in 2025 President's Innovation Challenge from the Harvard i-lab.
• Nakul Grover, Ed.M.'22, was named among the Most Promising L&D Professionals Under 30 by the Learning Guild.
• Shu-Ling Chen, Ed.M.'92, Ed.D.'00, was the recipient of the 2025 Amy J. Blue Award from Stanford for exceptional service to the university. She is associate dean for academic affairs in the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
• Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.'75, was bestowed an honorary Doctor of Social Science degree from Boston College.

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.