It has been a busy semester of grant proposal writing and conference presentations for International and Comparative Education (I&CE) students. If award announcements over the part two weeks are anything to go by, all the hard work is paying off.
In terms of awards from Teachers College, the Morton T. Ember Teaching Award, which recognizes an outstanding contribution to student learning, was awarded to doctoral fellow Marcella Winter. Marcella also received the Shirley Chisholm Trailblazer Award alongside master's students Izabela de Souza and Nadia Ford, recognizing students and programs that have created a significant impact at the college through innovation, commitment, and advocacy. Two I&CE initiated programs also received Shirley Chisholm Trailblazer Awards. Speaking Our Mind: Student Decolonization Movements in Diverse Higher Education Contexts, which comes out of the Center for African Education, and the Paulo Freire Initiative at Columbia University both received accolades.
This year five masters 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 Ally Gomberoff, Renna Bazlen, Sa’adat Mohammed, Vandita Churiwal, and Ye Huang.
Six 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 Brittany Kenyon, Marcella Winter, Nadia Ford, Margaret Kepley, Pia Maiti and Tracie Jarrard.
Three doctoral students have also been awarded with generous grants that recognize exemplary scholarship and allow them to continue with their research. Abbas Abbasov has been awarded the Education Policy Dissertation Research Fellowship, Amlata Persaud has received a Doctoral Dissertation Grant, and Erina Iwasaki was awarded the Martindale Endowed Fellowship.
Three students also received recognition for their completed integrative projects and doctoral dissertations. In the Three Minute Masters Thesis competition, Yijin Du took out 1st place and Nadia Ford claimed 2nd. In the Five Minute Doctoral Dissertation competition Brittany Kenyon achieved 3rd place. Congratulations!
Finally, masters student Lyndsay Gehring and Doctoral Fellow Chris Henderson both received the Teachers College Provost Grant for Conference Presentation. This grant allowed Lyndsay to present "Comparative International Imagination and the Teaching and Learning of Environmental and Sustainability Education" at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Conference in Minneapolis. It also allowed Chris Henderson to attend CIES, where he presented research on "Socio-cultural Constructions of Play for Teacher Professional Development in Contexts of Forced Displacement."
I&CE students have also received a number of external awards, too. At CIES master's student Obi Eneh received the Language Issues Special Interest Group (SIG) award for best student presentation, titled "Moroccan teacher perspectives on potential outcomes for Tamazight language in education in response to Framework Law 51.17." Doctoral student Erika Kessler was also recognized, receiving the Outstanding Early Career Paper Award from the New Scholars SIG for "Networked Education Systems and the Flow of PISA-Induced References."
Doctoral Fellow Arnela Colic has been awarded the Harriman Institute PepsiCo Research Travel Fellowship, which will allow her to pursue pilot research on the ways in which domestic and international actors in Kosovo and Bosnia understand the role of education in state building in multi-ethnic and post-conflict contexts.
Finally, doctoral fellow Chris Henderson and masters students Vandita Churiwal and Ye Huang have also been awarded Advanced Consortium for Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4 ) Fellowships from Columbia University's Earth Institute. Chris will be conducting a pilot study on refugee host-community teachers' work and mental well-being in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Vandita will be investigating the extent to which education s in Beirut, Lebanon, brings a sense of normalcy for Syrian refugee students. Ye will be looking at the structural and interpersonal power dynamics between youth and adults in the global climate movement.
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.