Five Women Scholars Who Have Been Honored With Notable Awards

Marilyn Cochran-Smith, the Cawthorne Professor of Teacher Education for Urban Schools at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, received the Division K Legacy Award from the American Educational Research Association. The award recognizes “significant and exemplary contributions through research, teaching, and professional service in teaching and teacher education.” Professor Cochran-Smith is the co-author of Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education (Teachers College Press, 2018).

Professor Cochran-Smith is graduate of the University Wooster in Ohio, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Cleveland State University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alexandra Finley, an assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University, has been selected to receive the 2018 Lerner-Scott Prize from the Organization of American Historians. The prize is awarded for the best doctoral dissertation on U.S. women’s history. Dr. Finley’s thesis was on women’s roles in the antebellum slave trade.

Dr. Finley is a graduate of Ohio State University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Esther Ngumbi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, has been selected to receive the 2018 President’s Medal from the Society for Experimental Biology. She will be honored at the society’s annual meeting in Florence, Italy, in July. Dr. Ngumbi’s research focuses on improving crop and range land productivity.

A native of Kenya, Dr. Ngumbi earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Kenyatta University. She holds a Ph.D. in entomology from Auburn University in Alabama.

Kathy Giacomini, a professor of bioengineering in the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, has been named the recipient of the 2018 Volwiler Research Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

Professor Giacomini is a graduate of the University of Houston. She holds a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York System.

Marie Davidian, the J. Stuart Hunter Distinguished Professor in Statistics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, received the Founders Award from the American Statistical Association. Dr. Davidian served as president of the association in 2013.

Dr. Davidian holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. in statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.