Read Review Newsletter Spring 2023
Read Center Wins Fulbright Program Grant
Amanda Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Gerald H. Read Center and Principal Investigator, was awarded a grant to host a four-week Fulbright Pre-Academic Program at Kent State this summer. Along with her co-PI, Debbie Rozner, director of the English Language Institute, and Abdoulaye Fall, graduate assistant in the Center and doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Administration program, she will lead a cohort of 40 Fulbright graduate students in seminars on American higher education, educational technology, leadership, and discipline-specific topics. The English Language Institute will provide advanced academic English coursework for the grantees. Kent State will be the first stop for many of these Fulbright graduate students before matriculating to their graduate programs across the United States. After the initial year review, Kent State is eligible to receive the grant for up to five years.
This is the second such grant she has been awarded at Kent State. She and her co-PI Marty Jencius, Ph.D., associate professor in Counselor Education and Supervision, were re-awarded the Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) grant for fall 2023. The Fulbright TEA program is a six-week program focused on general teaching pedagogy for international secondary teachers. Twenty three grantees will travel to Kent State in September to take customized seminars on K-12 education in the United States, science education and English language teaching and learning. They will also take part in an intensive field experience in local high schools. This is the fourth cohort the Center will implement since Fall 2020 under the Read Center director's leadership. To read more, check out the article Fulbright Award Will Make Kent State First Stop for International Graduate Students.
EHHS Faculty Spotlight
Gumiko Monobe, Ph.D.
Dr. Gumiko Monobe, associate professor in the School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies in EHHS, recently presented at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference in Washington, DC, with doctoral students Yu Li, Haoting Cui and Bee Viton. Other EHHS doctoral students included in the research are Noor Augustina and Wafa Farhat.
Their research, entitled "Exploring, sharing, reconstructing, and voicing: Transnational scholars/educators in a transnational reflective third space in higher education" was presented along with hundreds of graduate students and academics from all over the world. Find
Aggarwal-Blackburn Spotlight
Halis Sakiz, Ph.D.
Halis Sakiz, Ph.D., was recently published in the high impact journal Social Psychology of Education. His article, entitled "Self-advocacy experiences of students with specific learning disabilities," explores self-advocacy experiences of this specific population in vocational high schools. His paper is important because the research highlights how students with special needs can advocate for their rights and responsibilities in schools, which in turn helps them to participate in and benefit from education. Halis is a faculty member in the Department of Education Sciences at Martin Artuklu University in Turkey.
Read Center Funding of Activities
Dr. Linda Robertson Innovation Fund
The Dr. Linda Robertson Innovation Fund is dedicated to the work of Dr. Linda Robertson, former director of the Center for International and Intercultural Education.
Funding will go towards helping combat climate change and developing sustainability measures in international activities and initiatives, research, and education abroad as part of the vision of the Center.
Two awards of $500 each will be provided fall and spring semester. Applications for fall semester are due by September 15 and for spring semester, January 15.
The inaugural recipient of the award, Dr. Maureen Blankemeyer, associate professor of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences in the College of EHHS, will lead students on a nine-day education abroad experience to Ireland in May 2023. In addition to learning about family services in Ireland, students will learn about the country's sustainability efforts.
The group will meet with the Kinvara Tidy Towns organization, located in the village of Kinvara, County Galway. The class will learn about the organization's sustainability efforts and participate in a service activity with the organization. Dr. Blankemeyer will donate half of the award to the organization while using the other half to help offset the group's carbon footprint through a carbon offsetting program.
Download the PDF version of the Spring 2023 Read Review here.