Eight Women Educators Who Have Been Been Selected to Receive Notable Honors and Awards

Kristie A. Thomas, an associate professor of social work at Simmons University in Boston, received the 2019 Early Career Excellence in Teaching Award from SAGE/American Evaluation Association. Her research is focused on intimate partner violence.

Dr. Thomas is a graduate of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia where she double majored in sociology and psychology. She holds a master of social work degree and a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lisa Grabert, a visiting professor of research in the College of Nursing at Marquette University in Milwaukee and a research professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., received the Alliance for Health Policy’s Bipartisan Health Policy Leader Award. The award is given for “outstanding work in health care and tireless efforts to improve health care in a bipartisan and collaborative manner.”

Grabert is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a master of public health degree from Emory University in Atlanta.

Anne Edwards, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, Indiana, received the 2019 Felix Berardo Scholarship Award for Mentoring from the National Council on Family Relations. Dr. Edwards who joined the faculty at the university in 1997, also serves as co-director of the university’s Institute for Social and Policy Research.

Dr. Edwards is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where she majored in psychology. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Sabine Kastner, a professor of psychology at Princeton University in New Jersey, was selected to receive the Award for Education in Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience. The award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to neuroscience education and training.

Professor Kastner is a founding member of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. She earned her medical degree from the Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf in Germany. She holds a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Georg-August University, in Goettingen, Germany.

Fiona Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, has won the American Physical Society’s 2020 Hans A. Bethe Prize. The award recognizes “outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields.” Dr. Harrison was honored for “pioneering work in conceiving and executing the first focusing telescope in the high-energy X-ray regime.”

Dr. Harrison began her career at CalTech in 1993 as a research fellow. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she majored in physics. Dr. Harrison earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ellen J. Foster, associate professor of social studies education at the University of Mississippi, is the recipient of a 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award in Higher Education from the National Council of Geographic Education.

Dr. Foster holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics from Texas Tech University. She earned a master’s degree in teaching from Trinity University in San Antonio and a doctorate in geography-geographic education from Texas State University.

Susan Norton, director of the Office of Adult Learning at Wichita State University in Kansas, received the 2019 Presidential Award for Exceptional and Innovative Leadership in Adult Continuing Education from the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education.

Dr. Norton joined the staff at the university in 2008. She holds a Ph.D. in adult learning from Kansas State University.

Catty Dan Zhang, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has won the 2019 Emerging  Designers Competition held by the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Zhang’s project, “The Moving Air: A Cultural-environmental Paradigm,” will be a multimedia exhibition showcasing a series of projects about airflow that she has developed during the past few years.

Zhang holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Tsinghua University in China. She earned a master of architecture degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in design studies technology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.