READING, Pa. — Mahsa Kazempour, associate professor of science education at Penn State Berks, has received the 2025 President’s Award for Engagement with Students.
The award is given to a faculty member who goes beyond his or her responsibilities to engage and encourage students in learning. The honorees have made themselves available to interact with students outside class, link students to opportunities and help them build their confidence as learners and potential contributors to society.
Nominators said Kazempour engages students in and out of the classroom. She teaches students science, sustainability and science education pedagogy in a way that nominators said is “relevant, transformative, collaborative, interdisciplinary, experiential and action-oriented.”
Kazempour created several efforts at Penn State designed to engage her students and the nearby community. Those efforts include the Environmental Awareness and Community Action Project (EACAP), the Environmental News Discussion Forum, the Home Inquiry Project and multiple student and community engagement events that she organizes to showcase student projects and provide opportunities for campus/community connections.
In EACAP, students conduct environmental research while participating in community service projects, such as tree planting, water testing, or creating educational material. Each year, hundreds of students further their education while engaging with several community organizations and benefiting the community through more than a thousand hours of service projects collectively.
As a culminating component of that project, Kazempour organizes student and community engagement events such as the Student and Community Engagement Symposium or the Sustainability Expo for students to showcase their community-based projects and regional university and community members to connect, share experiences and explore approaches to student and community engagement.
For the Home Inquiry Project, early childhood and elementary education students learn about scientific inquiry by creating and conducting a semester-long outdoor science project. Students are tasked with making observations, posing questions, researching the topic gathering and sharing evidence. Nominators said this engaged scholarship culminates with a field trip to Seven Generations Charter School, where students visit classrooms, take part in activities, and tour service-learning projects Grades K-8 students engage in.
“Beneficial outcomes of such meaningful learning experiences include: deeper understanding of issues; increased interactions with peers and others; development of core skills of communication, collaboration, creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking; increased likelihood of reflection and adoption of new behaviors; increased sense of self-empowerment, engagement, and belonging to a larger community; and recognition of their impact on the world around them,” a nominator said.