Doctoral students Hanna Chipman, Aaron Pevitz, and Ying Tong are the 2026 recipients of the Anna Neumann Supporting Student Research Award.
The Anna Neumann Supporting Student Research Award has been supported over the years by Professor Neumann's former students and other HPSE alumni and supporters. The award recognizes and seeks to advance promising dissertation research on faculty careers and college teaching and learning.
HANNA CHIPMAN
Hanna Chipman (she/her) is a third-year PhD student in the Higher and Postsecondary Education Program (HPSE) at TC. Her research interest centers on a foundational part of student learning and development: the process of students finding a sense of belonging. She is particularly drawn to the specific student identity of first-generation racial/ethnic minority students who attend small liberal arts schools.
As a 2026 recipient of the Anna Neumann Supporting Student Research Award, Hanna will attend the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) conference in San Juan in November where she will continue to network with higher education leaders, scholars, practitioners and attend workshops that align with her research interests. Though her research experience has been somewhat limited thus far, the combination of increased exposure at this conference, the deep knowledge and skills learned in her classes, and her dedication to these student identities and sense of belonging will enable her to fully commit to and focus on her future dissertation and research goals.
AARON PEVITZ
Aaron Pevitz, MSW (he/him/his), is a second-year doctoral student in the Higher and Postsecondary Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a graduate assistant in the Undergraduate Student Life office at Columbia University.
His research centers on how the 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment movement has reshaped the relationship between Jewish students and their university communities. He examines how students, faculty, and the surrounding community experience belonging, academic, and community engagement in the wake of these events, and how variation in responses moderates those experiences. He is especially interested in the roles of faculty, their pedagogical choices, and their responses to student activism in shaping the persistence of minoritized student populations.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Aaron received his Master of Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, and then contributed to large-scale higher education research at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and developed monitoring processes on a contract with the U.S. Department of Education at Synergy Enterprises, Inc.
As a 2026 recipient of the Dr. Anna Neumann Supporting Student Research Award, Aaron will attend the 51st Annual ASHE Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he will engage with scholarship on campus climate, faculty behavior, and student belonging, and begin to situate his emerging dissertation within broader conversations in the field.
YING TONG
I am Ying, a Ph.D. student in the Higher and Postsecondary Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. My research centers on faculty work, professional development, and the experiences of early-career scholars navigating entry into new disciplinary and institutional communities in U.S. higher education. I am particularly drawn to the interior, interpretive dimensions of that experience, not just what international faculty encounter, but how they make sense of it from within.
My dissertation focuses on early-career international faculty at R1 and R2 universities, examining how these scholars read and respond to the norms in their new environments, what they carry forward from their prior academic and cultural formation, and what emerges when the two meet.
Looking ahead, I hope to expand this inquiry across institutional types and further back into the doctoral pipeline, tracing how learning and socialization during graduate school shape how and who scholars become as faculty. Ultimately, I aim to produce work that informs more thoughtful policies and programs supporting international scholars' intellectual and professional growth in higher education.