The International and Comparative Education students and graduates have been wildly successful this academic year! We have over 40 congratulations to dole out and are thrilled to highlight a few!
In terms of awards from Teachers College, the 2023 United States-South Africa Racial Justice Fellowship was awarded to Ph.D. student Kemigisha Richardson which engages fellows in issues of race and racial justice through higher education institutions in both countries. Another one of our Ph.D. students Theresea Cann received the Shirley Chisholm Trailblazer Award which recognizes students and programs that have created a significant impact at the college through innovation, commitment, and advocacy. Additionally, three groups of students were awarded the Vice President’s Grant for Diversity and Community Initiatives 1) Darren Rabinowitz, Sarah Lewis, Claudia Hui, and Noa Urbach for their workshop titled Decolonization and Decarbonization 2) Theresea Cann, Kella Merlain-Moffatt, Nick Haffner, Ismael Hammoudi and Alex Rodriguez hosted Invisibility & Erasure: Making Visible Critical Reflexive Methodologies in Research in Education and 3) Samaya Mansour who discussed Decolonizing citizenship through the lived experiences of Syrian refugee youth in Lebanon.
This year, six students were awarded the Carmela and Marie F. Volpe Fellowship for International Service in Education. This award recognizes students who are working on issues related to child rights, child labor, indigenous or marginalized youth, and allows them to participate in an internship with a non-governmental organization committed to these issues. Successful recipients are Vikas Tatad, Sarah Etzel, Sabrina Huang, Kemigisha Richardson, Jiayi Cao, and Claire Laslett.
Five students have been recognized for their exemplary commitment to the International and Comparative Education Program and contributions to the collaborative spirit of the program through the George W. Perkins Memorial Scholarship. These students are Renna Bazlen, Sara Pan Algarra, Theresea Cann, Vikas Tatad, and Zining Zhu. Also, Ismael Hammoudi, Sarah Eztel, and Kemigisha Richardson were granted the Center for African Education Travel Grant to conduct research on the African content and diaspora.
Our students have also been awarded with generous grants that recognize exemplary scholarship and allow them to continue with their research. Tomás Esper has been awarded the Education Policy Dissertation Research Fellowship and Institute of Latin American Studies Grant. Marcela Winter received a dissertation fellowship from the Center on History and Education. Asel Dorombaeva and Jade Sheinwald received the Martindale Endowed Fellowship
Students also received recognition for their completed integrative projects. In the Three Minute Masters Thesis competition, Kella Merlain-Moffatt took 1st place. Kella also received the honor of being a premier speaker at the 2023 Teachers College Graduation Ceremony. Congratulations Kella!
We also want to congratulate the ten masters and doctoral students who received the International and Transcultural Studies Summer Research Grant. These students include Hyungoo Lee, Chris Henderson, Gareth Brinkworth, Jose La Rosa, Paula Mantilla-Blanco, Samaya Mansour, Sara Pan Algarra, Tatiana Cordero-Romero, Tomás Esper, and Victoria Jones.
I&CE students have also received a number of external awards, too. Doctoral students Theresea Cann and Mia Chin were awarded the Boren Fellowship to conduct research and language learning in underrepresented regions around the globe. We also wanted to extend a special congratulations to Dr. Laija Lajiadou who was selected for the McKenzie postdoctoral position at the University of Melbourne. During his postdoc, Dr. Lajiadou will be working on a book which investigates how the expansion of diversity programs in tertiary education may have impeded the participation of minority students in China’s multicultural and multi-ethnic society.
The student Ángela Sánchez Rojas was awarded the International Fellowship of American Association of University Women (AAUW) to pursue her second year of her M.Ed. Moreover, she was awarded the International Peace Scholarship (IPS), which is given to women who have worked on issues related to peace. The International Fellowships have been financed by women. The scholarships provide support for women pursuing full-time graduate or postdoctoral studies in the US who are not US and who intend to return to their home country to pursue a professional career.
Last but not least, our recently minted doctoral students snagged two prestigious paper awards. Dr. Erika Kessler paper titled Neworks of Change in the In-Between: Brokering within the Youth Climate Movement was selected for the American Education Research Association - Environmental Education Special Interest Group (SIG) best paper award. Also, Dr. Daniel Shephard’s paper titled The Effect of Refugee School Inclusion Models on Student’s Sense of School Belonging was selected for the best paper award for the Comparative and International Education Society - Education in Emergencies SIG.
Keep an eye out for updates to this story as more awards are scheduled to be announced over the coming weeks.
Congratulations to all students who have received grants and awards this semester, we can't wait to engage with your continuing research and achievements.