Prestigious awards shine a light on Penn GSE’s exceptional students and faculty
Jasmine Blanks Jones, right, has been awarded an anti-racism grant through Health Policy Research Scholars
There’s no shortage of good news when it comes to the Penn GSE community. Students, alumni, and faculty continue to impress the world around them, winning competitive fellowships, book awards, and even a hackathon award. Join us in congratulating these changemakers for their recent accomplishments.
Students
Bikalpa Baniya, a master’s student in the International Educational Development program and and 2019 Penn UNESCO Fellow, received an innovation/creativity prize and an audience award at the Hacking EdPlanning hackathon at UNESCO IIEP, where he is currently a data-science intern. The 48-hour event confronted six challenges in educational planning and put forth new digital prototypes.
Jasmine Blanks Jones, a Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program, has been awarded an anti-racism grant through Health Policy Research Scholars. Jones’s research and work with the B4 Youth Theatre will study racism by integrating theater-based methods in mental health.
Christiana Kallon Kelly, a Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program, was awarded the GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation, which will support her dissertation research on the socio-cultural implications of new education technologies on learning, well-being, and aspirations of students and teachers in Sierra Leone during crises.
Bethany Monea, a Ph.D. student in the Reading, Writing, and Literacy program, has received the Fall 2020 GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation. With this fellowship, Monea hopes to engage in collaborative analysis with her student participants more, as she studies the writing and media-making practices of first generation Latinx students.
Madison Wardlaw, a student in the Urban Teaching Apprenticeship program, was awarded Weiss WW Pennsylvania Teaching Fellowship for 2020–21. Each Fellow receives support from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and a merit-aid scholarship from Penn GSE, and commits to teach for three years in high-need Philadelphia schools, with ongoing mentoring.
Jeremy Wright-Kim, researcher and Ph.D. student in the Higher Education program, received a 2020 AERA-NSF Dissertation and Research Grant Award for the project “Enrollment and Revenue: An Exploration of the Community College Baccalaureate.”
Faculty
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education division, was awarded a World Fantasy 2020 Award in the professional category for her book The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. The award is considered one of the most prestigious prizes in the genre of fantasy and speculative fiction.
Sharon Ravitch, Professor of Practice in the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership division, received a Fulbright Fellowship, through the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Fulbright Specialist Roster, to work with Dr. BNM College in Mumbai, Maharashtra for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Krystal Strong, Assistant Professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education division, has been named a 2020-2021 Andrew W. Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow by the Penn Price Lab for the Digital Humanities, a lab that supports innovative uses of technology in the study of history, art, and culture.