News
John D. Holst, Associate Professor of Lifelong Education and Adult Education, was recently appointed to the team of International Researchers at the Youth and Adult Education (EPJA-Spanish acronym) Observatory at the University of Playa Ancha. The Observatory is a new research center at the University of Playa Ancha in Chile.
Erica Frankenberg, professor of education and demography at Penn State, has been recognized in the 2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The annual list highlights the top 200 university-based U.S. scholars who significantly influenced educational practice and policy throughout the previous year. Frankenberg's inclusion follows her recent op-ed, "70 years after Brown v. Board of Ed., public schools still segregated," published in The Conversation.
José Cossa, an associate professor specializing in lifelong learning, adult education, comparative and international education, and African studies, has been selected as one of five new fellows at the UNESCO IBE Documentation Center. This center plays a pivotal role in promoting interdisciplinary research, scholarly inquiry, and intellectual dialogue, utilizing its vast resources to facilitate connections among scholars, educators, and the wider public.
Cossa's appointment underscores his significant contributions to the field, supported by his role as a consortium affiliate and his expertise in fostering global educational initiatives.
Noel Habashy, Assistant Teaching Professor at the College of Agricultural Sciences and a consortium affiliate, received a grant to present "Exploding Silos: Fostering Integrative Thinking through Co-Curricular Global Learning" at the AAC&U Conference on Global Learning as part of the 2023-24 Schreyer Institute Teaching & Learning Scholarship grants.
Wilson Okello, assistant professor of education and research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), will be presented with the Early Career Award by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) at its 48th Annual Conference Nov. 17 in Minneapolis. Okello was recognized for his “focused research agenda on centering Blackness in student/early adult development, has yielded publications that are advancing the field, coupled with translating his research to practitioners.”
Gary Adler Jr., an associate professor of sociology at Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts and a consortium affiliate, has been honored with a Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2023-24 academic year. Adler will use his Fulbright to travel to Croatia in March 2024. There, he will collaborate with Siniša Zrinščak, a sociologist at the University of Zagreb, on a project modeled on Adler’s current National Science Foundation-funded research study exploring how local government entities throughout the United States handle religious matters.
Over a three-month period, Adler and Zrinščak will travel throughout Croatia, conducting about three dozen interviews with local government officials. They will then collaborate on an article comparing the two countries’ respective approaches to church-state matters.
