Campus & Community

Graduate Dean’s Award Recipients Announced

Monday, March 21, 2022, By Ellen de Graffenreid

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Nine graduate students have been selected to receive the Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. Award recipients represent a broad array of disciplines and were selected based on students’ outstanding accomplishments in research and creative work, as well as the quality and impact of proposed presentations.

A total of 53 submissions were reviewed within broad disciplinary categories by a panel of faculty members serving on the Graduate Faculty Council. All winning entrants will receive $500 and an award certificate, and will briefly present their work at a the .

“Our 2022 recipients and honorable mentions are tremendous examples of talented and resilient scholars who have produced exceptional work. They are excellent representatives of the graduate student community as a whole and of their specific disciplines. We can’t wait to see what they will do next,” says Peter Vanable, dean of the Graduate School.

2022 Recipients

  • Oluseyi Agbelusi, “In Search of the Ancestors: British Anti-Slavery, Trade, and Nascent colonialism in coastal Sierra Leone,” anthropology
  • Nina Benway, “Speech Classification and AI-Guided Treatment for Residual Speech Sound Disorder,” speech-language pathology
  • Manya Gadhok,”Soulmates,” film
  • Jessica Powers, “Longitudinal Associations Between Pain and Use of Cigarettes and E-Cigarettes in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (Path) Study,” clinical psychology
  • Andrew Ridgeway, “Fostering Information Literacy Through Competitive Speech and Debate,” composition and cultural rhetoric
  • Phillandra Smith, “W(h)ite Out: An Analysis of Presentations of Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Inclusive Education Textbooks,” special education
  • Chenyan Wang,”Stem Cell-Derived Models with Spatial or Temporal Heterogeneity for Heart Disease Modeling,” bioengineering
  • Noah Wason, “How Do You Study a Black Box?,” composition and cultural rhetoric
  • Xiaoyan Zhang, “Loneliness and Depression Among American Older Adults: Can Resilience Resources be Buffers?,” human development and family science

2022 Honorable Mentions

  • Kent Jason Cheng, social science
  • Julia Giannini, physics
  • Derron Hilts, counseling and counselor education
  • Christopher “Seth” Knievel, communication and rhetorical studies
  • Yingya Li, information science and technology
  • Kelsey Olney-Wall, museum studies
  • Sweta Roy, bioengineering