Above: Mandy Savitz-Romer, Ph.D. ’04 (Higher Education), Associate Professor Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon, and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Ana M. Martínez Alemán co-authored Technology and Engagement: Making Technology Work for First Generation College Students (Rutgers University Press, 2018) 

Doctoral students Ella Anghel and Olivia Szendey (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment), Boisi Professor Henry Braun, Professor Larry Ludlow, and other Boston College faculty, received a Boston College Research Across Departments and Schools grant for the LAMP Measurement Project. They will study how to measure meaning and purpose and develop an instrument with the goal of helping institutions generate evidence regarding their students’ trajectories toward purposeful lives.

Roberta Malee Bassett, Ph.D. ’05 (Higher Education), was named the global lead of tertiary education at the World Bank.

Bethany Fishbein, Ph.D. ’18 (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment), and Ina V.S. Mullis and Michael O. Martin, executive directors of Boston College’s TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, co-authored “The TIMSS 2019 Item Equivalence Study: Examining Mode Effects for Computer-based Assessment and Implications for Measuring Trends” in Large-scale Assessments in Education. Fishbein is a senior research specialist at TIMSS & PIRLS.

Motivated by his own experience and inspired by PULSE, Boston College’s signature service- learning program, first-generation student Bryan Paula Gonzalez ’19 (Applied Psychology and Human Development) seeks to empower others through learning. Read more in BC News »

Yuka Hayashi ’22 (Applied Psychology and Human Development) reflects on her formative experience assisting a boy with autism spectrum disorder in an essay she wrote for The Japan News.

Yue Liu ’21 and Fanmei Xia ’19 (both Applied Psychology and Human Development) were part of a team that received the Social Impact Award at Harvard HackED, an educational hackathon run by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Their innovation is PACE, a mobile app to facilitate long-distance parent-child communication, especially in the Chinese migrant worker community.

Fr. James F. Murphy, CSB, M.A. ’16 (Educational Leadership), was named the principal of St. Thomas High School in Houston, Texas, in February.

Doctoral student Haerin Park (Curriculum and Instruction) received a Korean Honor Scholarship from the Republic of Korea in September 2018. The award is given annually to select Korean and Korean-American undergraduate and graduate students attending colleges or universities in the US and Canada.

Justin Perry, M.A. ’01, Ph.D. ’06 (Counseling Psychology), is the Dean and Kauffman Endowed Chair at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education.

Amir Reza, Ph.D. ’15 (Higher Education), was named dean of the Babson Academy for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurial Learning. The academy is housed at Babson College.

Mandy Savitz-Romer, Ph.D. ’04 (Higher Education), was named the Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Chair in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Savitz-Romer co-authored Technology and Engagement: Making Technology Work for First Generation College Students (Rutgers University Press, 2018) with Associate Professor Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Ana M. Martínez Alemán. The book received the 2018 Association for the Study of Higher Education Outstanding Book Award in November.

Mitchell Strzepek, M.A. ’20 (Higher Education), talks about his experience as a first-generation college student in a BC News article, which also includes Jennifer May-Trifiletti ’10 (Secondary Education), M.A. ’11 (Higher Education), and Associate Professor Karen Arnold, both of whom have studied first-generation students. May-Trifiletti is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia.

David Taranto ’16, M.Ed. ’17 (Curriculum and Instruction), was named The Sage Colleges’ Head Coach for men’s and women’s track and field and cross country.