"Alumni Updates" highlights career achievements by College of Education alumni at Penn State.

• Dominiqua Griffin, a recent graduate of the Counselor Education doctoral program, was selected to receive the AERA (American Educational Research Association) Congressional Fellowship this year and will take a leave of absence from her academic position at California State University, Fresno, to act as an AERA Ambassador on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
• Bryan Mann, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Kansas, who received his doctorate from the Department of Education Policy Studies, is leading a data visualization project that demonstrates how different states are experiencing racial change in their population and in their schools.
• Justin Ortagus, assistant professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education and director of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Florida, who received his doctorate from the Penn State College of Education, is a co-author of a new InformEd States policy brief, “The landscape of state funding formulas for public colleges and universities.” The lead author is Mitchell Lingo, a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State.
• College of Education alumni Starlette Sharp, Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and National Science Foundation Fellow who received a doctorate in curriculum and instruction (science education) from Penn State in 2020; and William Therrien, Thomas G. Jewell Professor of Education at the University of Virginia who received a doctorate in special education from Penn State, are co-authors of a new article, “Using the Science Writing Heuristic to Improve Critical Thinking Skills for Fifth Grade Black Girls” in Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education. Jonte Taylor, associate professor of education (special education), is the lead author.

• Nate Turcotte, assistant professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and a doctoral graduate of the Learning, Design, and Technology program in the Penn State College of Education, is the lead author of an article, “The co-construction of data in-time: collaborative pedagogical encounters of golf instructors and students with data.” Ty Hollett, assistant professor of education (learning, design, and technology) is a co-author on the paper.

Did you get a new job, celebrate a career milestone, get a promotion or award, recently retire, or have other career-related news to share? If so, we want to hear from you. Email us at edrelations@psu.edu with your name, information about your achievement, and the degree(s) you earned and year(s) of graduation from the Penn State College of Education.