Celebrating Faculty Excellence 2023
Learn more about newly appointed and reappointed Regents’ Professors and Distinguished Professors, faculty award winners, and faculty who were recognized for promotion and/or tenure.
Group photos by college, school or institute are located in a photo gallery at the bottom of this page.
Please note: Photos for some faculty award winners are not available; some faculty winners were unable to attend the evening’s celebration on Sept. 28, 2023.
Regents’ Professors
Guantao Chen
College of Arts and Sciences
Guantao Chen
Dr. Guantao Chen is being reappointed as a permanent Regent’s Professor. Dr. Chen joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at GSU in 1995 as Assistant Professor and became an Associate Professor in 1999, Full Professor in 2004, Distinguished University Professor in 2013, and Regents’ Professor in 2017. He served as Department Chair from 2009-2021.
His research lies in graph theory. He has published over 160 papers in leading journals and solved over a dozen outstanding conjectures, including the famous Goldberg-Seymour conjecture. He delivered a four-hour distinguished lecture at the Carges Workshop on Combinatorial Optimization in 2022 about his proof of this conjecture. He has received 12 research grants and 14 conference grants and has organized or co-organized more than 30 research conferences. Additionally, he served as the Coordinator of the Discrete Mathematics Active Group for the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (2014-2016) and a managing editor for Graphs and Combinatorics since 2011.
Geert J. de Vries
College of Arts and Sciences
Geert J. de Vries
Dr. Geert J. de Vries is Professor and Chair of Biology. Earlier, he served as Associate VP for Research and as Director of the Neuroscience Institute. He joined GSU in 2012, coming from UMass, Amherst, where he directed an NIH-funded Training Program in Neuroendocrinology.
He is Past President of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. He served on several NIH and NSF grant review panels, on editorial boards of Endocrinology and Hormones and Behavior, and on the advisory boards of Canada’s Institute of Gender and Health and NIH’s Office of Women’s Health Research. His work has been cited over 19,000 times, and his h index is currently 75.
In 2022, he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “transformative contributions to the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology and the origin and functions of sex differences in brain and behavior.”
Stephen B. Dobranski
College of Arts and Sciences
Stephen B. Dobranski
Dr. Stephen Dobranski is the editor of the journal Milton Studies, and much of his research focuses on the poet John Milton, specifically the importance of materiality for Milton’s works.
He has published ten books on early modern literature and culture, but his scholarship spans widely, from Shakespeare to Ovid and from Dickens to contemporary disaster films. He received a Pforzheimer Fellowship from the Humanities Research Center and a Fellowship to the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies. His recent book, Reading John Milton: How to Persist in Troubled Times, looks beyond Milton’s academic standing, beyond his reputation as a dour and devout purist, to reveal the ongoing power of his works and the dauntless courage that he both wrote about and exemplified.
Timothy D. Lytton
College of Law
Timothy D. Lytton
Regents’ Professor Timothy D. Lytton currently serves as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the College of Law. His research focuses on civil litigation and the regulation of health and safety.
He is the author of several books, including Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Struggle for Food Safety , Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food, Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse, and the editor of Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts.
He shares his scholarship frequently across media platforms, including a recent appearance on the Netflix special “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food.” He is a go-to source highly sought after by news media, as he explains the issues and their complexities clearly. He has received grant funding to support his work from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. In recognition for his contributions to the study of civil justice, in 2018 Lytton was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.
Lars Mathiassen
J. Mack Robinson College of Business
Lars Mathiassen
Dr. Lars Mathiassen is the Co-Founder of the Center for Digital Innovation at Robinson College of Business. His research focuses on digital innovation, on health informatics, and on IT development & management.
He approaches innovation initiatives with a strong focus on people skills and collaboration while at the same time emphasizing adoption of state-of-the-art technologies and methods. He has published extensively in leading academic journals, and supervised more than 55 doctoral dissertations.
His research has for the most part been carried out in close collaboration with practicing professionals and their organizations. As such, his research is based on partnerships with professionals and organizations within a variety of industries, including hospitals, manufacturing, banking, pharmaceuticals, insurance, security, communications, information technology and software. He has served as visiting scholar at several international institutions, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in science at Copenhagen University, Denmark, and an honorary doctor in philosophy at Umeå University, Sweden.
Jennifer McCoy
College of Arts and Sciences
Jennifer McCoy
Dr. Jennifer McCoy is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. McCoy’s areas of expertise include democratic resilience, democratic erosion and partisan polarization; crisis prevention and conflict resolution; election processes and international election observation; and Latin American Politics.
Her current book project is Depolarizing Politics: Preventing and Overcoming Pernicious Polarization, with Turkish coauthor Murat Somer. Dr. McCoy’s long-term research program on Polarized Politics aims to identify the causes, consequences and solutions to polarized societies around the world, including the United States. She coined the term “pernicious polarization” to refer to the political polarization that divides societies into mutually distrustful “Us vs. Them” camps and threatens democratic governance.
She served as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program (1998-2015), leading projects on democratic strengthening, mediation and dialogue, and hemispheric cooperation. She has authored or edited six books and dozens of articles.
Richard Karl Plemper
Institute for Biomedical Sciences
Richard Karl Plemper
Dr. Richard Plemper is the founding Director of the Center for Translational Antiviral Research (CTAR) in the Georgia State University Institute for Biomedical Sciences. His research is directed at developing antiviral therapeutics against major respiratory RNA viruses such as influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2. He was also active in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A biochemist by training, Dr. Plemper received a Ph.D. degree with distinction from the University of Stuttgart, Germany in 1999, followed by postdoctoral training in molecular and translational virology at the Mayo Clinics and at Emory University. He launched his independent research group in the Emory Department of Pediatrics in 2006 and joined us at Georgia State in 2013.
The Plemper Lab has been continuously supported by the NIH and other biomedical partners. Since May 2022, Dr. Plemper has served as the Director of the Georgia State Emory Antiviral Countermeasures Discovery Center (AC/DC), an NIH-funded national antiviral drug discovery center founded to improve pandemic preparedness and serves as a frequent consultant for the pharmaceutical industry.
Distinguished University Professors
Rafal Angryk
College of Arts & Sciences
Rafal Angryk
Dr. Rafal Angryk is a professor of Computer Science and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Physics & astronomy, and in the Institute for Insight in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business. His academic expertise involves the analysis of massive scientific data coming from the Sun.
Dr. Angryk founded the GSU Data Mining Laboratory and played a pivotal role in establishing a cross-disciplinary space weather analytics cluster at GSU, which has been supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. He is the founding director of the Big Data and Machine Learning specialization within the university’s M.S. in Data Science and Analytics program. He is also actively contributing to the university’s pioneering Imaging Hub.
Dr. Angryk serves as a member of the Data Science Advisory Committee for the Board of Regents. His research is substantial – and influential. With more than 200 journal articles, book chapters, and peer-reviewed conference papers, he has been cited more than 3,200 times, and over his career, he has garnered more than $15 million in grants from the public and private sector.
Lanying Du
Institute for Biomedical Sciences
Lanying Du
Dr. Lanying Du has been focusing her research on designing safe and effective vaccines and therapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2-caused COVID-19 and other emerging viral diseases. She has pioneered the coronavirus studies and contributed extensively to these fields. Her current research projects are supported by 3 R01 and 1 U19 grants, on developing coronavirus vaccines and therapeutic antibodies. She has published more than 160 peer-reviewed papers and patents, with more than 19,000 citations.
She was listed among the Highly Cited Researchers in 2021 and 2022 by the Web of Science, and among the World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists in 2022 by Stanford University. In addition to her research, she serves externally as an Academic Editor or Reviewer for various professional journals and NIH grant study sections, and also contributes internally to teaching, supervision, and committees. She has supervised more than 40 postdoctoral research fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students, motivating their interest in biomedical sciences.
Leszek Ignatowicz
Institute for Biomedical Sciences
Leszek Ignatowicz
Dr. Leszek Ignatowicz received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Immunology in Poland, and in 1990 relocated to the United States to work as a postdoctoral fellow in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-supported laboratory at the National Jewish Center in Denver. In 1996 he became a Principal Investigator at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, where for twenty years, he directed the research laboratory investigating various aspects of lymphocyte development and immunological tolerance.
He has published over sixty peer-reviewed research reports, many in high-impact journals. Since he arrived at GSU in 2017 the research facilitated in his laboratory has been funded by five NIH grants. He teaches Advanced Immunology as a part of the Translational Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. program at IBMS and trains undergrad and graduate MS and Ph.D. students. He is also a GSU Senator and Director of the Flow Cytometry Core at IBMS.
Carol Winkler
College of Arts & Sciences
Carol Winkler
Dr. Carol Winkler studies multimodal communication strategies of U.S. adversaries, presidential responses to terrorism and conflict, and argumentation as a cause and solution to violence. She has authored 6 books, 30 refereed journal articles, and 31 book chapters. She has been PI or co-PI on 38 grants and contracts worth more than $19 million dollars from international, federal, local, and private sources. Her 2022 book with Oxford University Press served as the basis of a 2023 Director’s Grant Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
She won the Senior Scholar Award for lifetime achievement in Argumentation Studies, the top Political Communication book award, and the Excellence in Visual Communication Research award from the National Communication Association. Her funded debate programs for solving urban violence were named the signature school program for the White House’s Helping American Youth Initiative and received the President’s Award from the Atlanta Housing Authority.
Vince D. Calhoun
College of Arts & Sciences
Vince D. Calhoun
Dr. Vince D. Calhoun is founding director of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) where he holds faculty appointments at Georgia State, Georgia Tech and Emory and is a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar. He is the author of more than 1,000 peer reviewed journal articles. His work includes the development of flexible methods to analyze neuroimaging data including blind source separation, deep learning, multimodal fusion, genomics, and neuroinformatics.
Dr. Calhoun is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Institute of Biomedical and Medical Engineers, The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, The Organization for Human Brain Mapping and the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. He currently serves on the IEEE Bioimaging Technical Committee and is also a member of IEEE Data Science Initiative Steering Committee and the IEEE Brain Technical Committee.
Laura Salazar
School of Public Health
Laura Salazar
Dr. Laura Salazar is a Second Century Initiative Scholar in Health Equity in the School of Public Health. Dr. Salazar focuses her research efforts on understanding and improving significant inequalities in HIV experienced by racial, sexual and gender minority populations. She has also focused her efforts on the intersecting epidemic of violence against women.
Her research in this area has examined mediating mechanisms that explain the connection between violence and HIV outcomes, identifying the socio-ecological risk and protective factors related to sexual violence perpetration as well as determining the effectiveness of a range of intervention approaches in reducing intimate partner violence, teen dating violence and sexual violence.
Her web-based program (RealConsent) was found to be effective in preventing sexual violence perpetration among male college students and is listed on the Center’s for Disease Control and Prevention’s website as an evidence-based effective primary prevention program.
Leah Daigle
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Leah Daigle
Dr. Leah Daigle currently serves as Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. She is a victimologist who studies the correlates and consequences of victimization. Her most recent research focuses on repeat victimization and the victimization of diverse groups.
She has over 100 academic publications, including the book: Unsafe in the Ivory Tower: The Sexual Victimization of College Women, which was recognized with the Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. She was awarded the 2020 Division of Victimology of the American Society of Criminology Bonnie S. Fisher Career Award, to recognize her outstanding contributions to the field of Victimology and the Outstanding Mentor Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2022, which recognizes dedication to graduate student mentoring. She currently serves as Treasurer of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Lynée Gaillet
College of Arts & Sciences
Lynée Gaillet
Dr. Lynée Gaillet came to GSU in 1992. Her research interests focus on rhetorical history, composition pedagogy, publishing matters, mentoring, feminist activism, and archival research methodologies. Among her 13 books are Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influence, Stories of Mentoring, Scholarly Publication in a Changing Academic Landscape, Primary Research and Writing, and Remembering Differently: Re-figuring Women’s Rhetorical Work. She routinely publishes with her students, past and present, and her current book project investigates academic labor and gender issues, post 2020.
Dr. Gaillet has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Award and an International Society for the History of Rhetoric Fellowship. In 2023, her scholarship won the James Bennett Award for Literature and Peace, and she received the first Gaylon D. Morris Endowed Faculty Award. Dr. Gaillet has served as English Department Chair, President of the National Coalition of Feminist Scholars, and Executive Director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association.
Cynthia Puranik
College of Education & Human Development
Cynthia Puranik
Dr. Cynthia Puranik is a Professor of Communication Sciences & Disorders in the College of Education and Human Development.
Her research focuses on understanding emergent and early writing development- including assessment and instruction of writing skills. She has simultaneously explored both basic theoretical and highly applied research pathways to address questions pertaining to children’s emergent and early conventional writing. She has had a sustained and ongoing record of exemplary research and scholarly accomplishments. In 2015, she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Engineers and Scientists (PECASE) from President Obama.
Dr. Puranik has an impressive record of external funding. She has been continuously funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education since she began her career in 2008. She has over $6 million in current funding as PI.
Eric R. Wright
College of Arts & Sciences
Eric R. Wright
Dr. Eric R. Wright is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology and Public Health and Sociology Department Chair at Georgia State University. Holding a BA in sociology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, he earned his MA and PhD in sociology with a minor in human sexuality from Indiana University Bloomington. As a medical sociologist, his research centers on understanding individual, social network, and policy responses to mental well-being, substance use, and sexual health and behavior.
Currently, he is involved in research aimed to understand the social dynamics of health and well-being of homeless youth and LGBTQ+ people in the Southern U.S. He has extensive track record of partnering with community and government organizations and believes strongly in the value of involving students, stakeholders, and interdisciplinary collaborators in his research to broaden its impact and build stronger bridges between the academy and the community.
Jennifer Esposito Norris
College of Education & Human Development
Jennifer Esposito Norris
Dr. Jennifer Esposito Norris came to GSU in 2004 and has served as Professor of Research, Measurement, and Statistics in Educational Policy Studies in the College of Education and Human Development. She is now Department Chair. As a methodologist and interdisciplinary scholar, she takes an intersectional approach to qualitative research, centering race, and gender. Her textbooks on intersectional research have won the American Educational Studies Association’s 2021 Critics’ Choice Book Award, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry’s 2021 Book Award, and the Academic Authors Association’s 2022 Most Promising New Textbook Award.
She has also received awards from GSU including the inaugural JEDI award (2021), the George M. Sparks Award (2019), and the College of Education’s Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award (2015). One of her proudest accomplishments has been her mentoring of the almost 100 graduate students she has guided and for whom she has served on their dissertation and thesis committees.
Leslie E. Wolf
College of Law
Leslie E. Wolf
Distinguished University Professor of Law Leslie E. Wolf holds appointments in the College of Law and the School of Public Health. Wolf served as interim dean from 2019-2021 and as director of the Center for Law, Health & Society from 2014-2019.
Wolf is a leading national scholar in health law, public health and ethics, with a focus on research ethics. Her research has appeared in some of the most prestigious medical and public health journals in the country, as well as in law reviews, and is widely cited by scholars nationally and internationally. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Greenwall Foundation.
Georgia State Faculty Awards
Outstanding Non-Tenure Track Faculty Achievement Award
This award recognizes a non-tenure track (NTT) faculty member for outstanding achievements in their assigned areas of specialty (scholarship/creative works, teaching, and/or service). It is open to Georgia State faculty members who have been at the institution for at least four years at an NTT faculty rank.
Scott R. Weaver
School of Public Health
Scott R. Weaver
Dr. Scott R. Weaver is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. He is a leading international scholar in tobacco research, publishing over 90 peer-reviewed publications. His research has been featured in prominent media outlets and informs national policy.
Dr. Weaver is one of the top funded faculty members in the School of Public Health with more than $5.6 million in funding as Principal Investigator. He has also mentored numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and developed a new study abroad program with the University of Manchester.
Jennifer Sengin
School of Music
Jennifer Sengin
Dr. Jennifer Sengin led the Georgia State University Treble Choir to a first place win in The American Prize Choral Performance category. She also placed second in The American Prize for Choral Conducting and was invited to conduct the Texas All-State Treble Choir.
Outstanding Tenure Track Faculty Achievement Award
This award recognizes a tenure-track faculty member for outstanding achievements across all three areas of scholarship, teaching and service. It is open to Georgia State graduate faculty members at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank who have been at Georgia State University for at least four years.
Lakeyta Monique
Bonnette-Bailey
College of Arts & Sciences
Lakeyta Monique Bonnette-Bailey
Dr. Lakeyta Monique Bonnette-Bailey is a Professor in Africana Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences and Co-Director of the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). She wrote Pulse of the People: Political Rap and Black Politics, demonstrating how rap music advances political thought in urban Black communities. She also wrote multiple journal articles and book chapters and co-edited two additional books.
Dr. Bonnette-Bailey is a public scholar, extending the reach of her scholarship through a TEDx presentation, podcast, and an article in The Conversation that has been read over 20,000 times. She also received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is an outstanding teacher and mentor, with an excellent record in service as well, developing two academic conferences, serving as Director of Graduate Studies, and much more.
Feng Yang
College of Education &
Human Development
Feng Yang
Dr. Feng Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health in the College of Education & Human Development. He has an exceptionally strong record of obtaining research funding for his work on fall prevention and motor rehabilitation among older adults and individuals with neurological dysfunctions, with almost $6 million in grant funding to date. He has an impressive number of highly cited publications in high-impact journals.
Dr. Yang has been invited to serve on prestigious grant application review panels and assumed high-profile editorships. He is an award-winning mentor and outstanding instructor and has served the university on multiple high-impact committees and his discipline as a reviewer for over 60 scientific journals.
Exceptional Service Award
This award recognizes faculty members for exceptional, sustained and impactful accomplishments in service. This award competition is open to all Georgia State full-time faculty members who have at least four years of faculty employment at the university.
Shelby Frost
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Shelby Frost
Dr. Shelby Frost is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. She has a long track-record of making sustained and positive changes at the university. In her department, she has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and a myriad of other leadership roles. Dr. Frost has served as a Senator for nearly two decades, serving on critical committees and in leadership roles, including election to the Executive Committee.
She has worked with the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, & Online Education (CETLOE) since its inception, serving as a collaborator and pedagogical leader, and she is a Faculty Fellow for the College to Career initiative. Dr. Frost is an award winning instructor who has also served her discipline in various leadership roles such as Director of the Center for Business and Economic Education for the State of Georgia where she has helped high school economics teachers integrate effective online instruction.
Regena Spratling
Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing & Health Professions
Regena Spratling
Dr. Regena Spratling is a Professor of Nursing in the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions. She has cultivated a decades-long record of service to her profession as a leader in many professional organizations, including serving as President-Elect of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. In recognition of her work, she was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nurses and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.
A nominator from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) described her work there with doctoral students as “the epitome of selfless mentorship.” In addition to her external service, she has served the university system, university, her college, and her school in roles such as Faculty Affiliate for multiple centers and Faculty Senator. She led the School of Nursing as Associate Dean and Chief Academic Officer and serves on the University System of Georgia’s Academic Advisory Committee on Nursing.
Instructional Innovation Award
This award recognizes innovative teaching practices designed to improve student learning in online, blended, or face-to-face courses. Innovations may include any novel teaching strategy or tool designed to enhance student learning. All full-time Georgia State faculty are eligible to apply.
The MACIE Program –
Early Childhood &
Elementary Education
College of Education &
Human Development
The Master of Arts in Creative and Innovative Education Program in Early Childhood & Elementary Education (MACIE)
Laura Meyers, Stacey French-Lee, Natalie Davis, and Ryan Ziols
The MACIE program provides graduate study for individuals who want to cultivate the creative lives of children. The Master of Arts in Creative and Innovative Education program is being recognized for the ways it meets the ever-changing needs of future educators through innovative programming in the professional learning seminar.
Dr. Ryan Ziols, a contributor to this great work, passed away earlier this year. Georgia State recognizes and honors his dedication to teaching and learning, and hopes that this award serves as a fitting tribute to his work in higher education.
Mentoring Excellence Award
This award recognizes a faculty member who has shown an outstanding dedication to the mentoring of other faculty members. As identified by the Collaborative on Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) faculty satisfaction survey and action plan, the award helps to fulfill the need to increase mentorship at Georgia State and to recognize excellence in this pursuit.
The winner of this award demonstrates a commitment to fostering the intellectual, creative, scholarly, and professional growth; shown a sustained commitment to a mentoring relationship resulting in career growth; and an overall history of service and mentorship to faculty. This award acknowledges the time and dedication faculty mentors devote to foster the career development and academic success of other faculty at the university.
At Celebrating Faculty Excellence ’23, Provost Parsons-Pollard announced the naming of the award as the Kavita K. Pandit Mentoring Excellence Award in honor of Dr. Kavita Pandit, Professor Emerita and former Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs. An advocate for mentoring, Dr. Pandit served as an executive coach for university leadership for several years.
Shannon Self-Brown
School of Public Health
Shannon Self-Brown
Dr. Shannon Self-Brown is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy & Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health. Her exceptional mentorship spans every area of professional development. Of particular note is the time and intentionality she invests in graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career faculty in the area of research.
Her mentoring of early career faculty resulted in approximately $2 million dollars in external funding in 2021 alone. In addition, 62% of her publications include mentees. She also advises early career faculty on how to develop their own leadership path and in the area of instructional excellence.
Alumni Distinguished Professor Award
Georgia State views the “teacher-scholar” as the ideal for university faculty. This award recognizes a high-achieving tenured professor who embodies this balance.
Kathryn A. Kozaitis
College of Arts & Sciences
Kathryn A. Kozaitis
Dr. Kathryn A. Kozaitis is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology in the college of Arts & Sciences. Her recent book, “Indebted: Despair and Resilience in Greece’s Second City,” supported by a Fulbright Scholars Award, examines the economic and political factors that led to the Greek debt crisis and explicitly engages with anthropological pedagogy.
Her lauded co-authored text, “On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in North America,” is in its fourth edition. Dr. Kozaitis developed the Participatory Instructional Model, which utilizes pedagogical strategies to maximize the educational experiences of diverse learners.
Teaching For Social Justice and Democracy Award
The purpose of this award is to recognize and reward instructors who integrate current issues into their courses to better engage Georgia State students in order to help them to develop their social, emotional and expressive capacities. This award recognizes instructional strategies that have been used to successfully incorporate particular themes into various disciplines and result in positive student outcomes.
Jacob Hackett
College of Education & Human Development
Jacob Hackett
Dr. Jacob Hackett is a Clinical Associate Professor and serves as program coordinator for the B.S. in Middle Level Education in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).
He was recently recognized as the recipient of the Distinguished Partner Award from M.L.K. Middle School of Atlanta Public Schools. Building on his research in critical pedagogy, he creates learning opportunities for students to engage with some of the most pressing issues in education today.
Cyntoria Johnson
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Cyntoria Johnson
Clinical Associate Professor Cyntoria Johnson serves as the undergraduate coordinator in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
As a Georgia State alumna herself, she is deeply committed to supporting an increasingly diverse student body as an underrepresented faculty member of color. Her legal track classes, perspectives courses, and honors seminars are taught with a social justice lens and incorporate opportunities for students to examine the criminal justice system.
She makes course content personal and accessible by using engaging teaching methods such as storytelling and creative expression. She invites experts from different fields to serve as guest speakers, and she leads study abroad and global learning courses that encourage students to think about issues beyond U.S. borders.
The JEDI Awards
The JEDI award recognizes those who embody these ideals and work to make Georgia State and our surrounding community a place where all can thrive, feel welcome and belong.
Carla Friend Huggins
Byrdine F. Lewis College
of Nursing & Health Professions
Carla Friend Huggins
Dr. Carla Friend Huggins is a clinical associate professor and director of clinical education for physical therapy, within the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions.
In the Department of Physical Therapy, she established a group for DPT students and faculty in 2016 that provides a space for discussions on fair and equitable treatment of colleagues from different backgrounds and provides recommendations on how DPT students can lead in championing inclusion.
The group has also provided faculty with knowledge on how to be culturally competent and listen to students from different backgrounds who may have personal challenges. She has also mentored Doctor of Physical Therapy students, especially DPT students from underrepresented minority backgrounds, since 2013 at GSU and other DPT programs in Georgia.
Ernest L. Duncan, Jr.
University Library
Ernest L. Duncan, Jr. is an administrative officer in the University Library. For the past four years, he has engaged in activities related to belonging and inclusion. He has worked on the library’s initial task force related to this important field, in addition to accessibility. He served one term as the staff representative for the library on Staff Council and is now serving as a Staff Senator.
Working on the Staff Council’s committee as chairperson of the Staff Development and Recognition, he developed the “Unsung Heroes” program. The “Unsung Heroes” program recognized staff members who are making contributions to a unit’s success. Nominees were recognized in the Staff Council’s monthly newsletter.
He has served as chair or co-chair of committees at the University Library and of the University Senate which consider issues, ideas and opportunities in belonging and inclusion.
María Elena Bermúdez
College of Arts & Sciences
María Elena Bermúdez
Dr. María Elena Bermúdez is a Principal Senior Lecturer in the Department of World Languages and Cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences. She has consistently worked to expand belonging and inclusion at the university and has focused her service on addressing the concerns of Latinx faculty, staff, and students.
She currently serves as chair for the LACCHI Faculty Affinity group. She has been active in building community across the university, including organizing a panel in 2021 on recruitment, retention, and support of Latinx faculty For 10 years, She served as advisor for the Latinx Freshmen Learning community of Goizueta Scholars. She has served as the faculty advisor for Sigma Lambda Upsilon/Señoritas Latinas Unidas one of the first Latina sororities at Georgia State. She is a past recipient of the College of Arts & Sciences Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award, recognizing of her outstanding achievement in support of diverse student populations.
PROMOTION AND TENURE
The following individuals were recognized for achieving promotion, tenure, or promotion and tenure, during the 2023 Celebrating Faculty Excellence event. Faculty are listed in order by college, then in alphabetical order by last name
Lorenzo Almada
Callie Burt
Can Chen
Renanda Wood Dear
Ann DiGirolamo
Garth Heutel
Benedict S. Jimenez
Vjollca Sadiraj
Angela Snyder
Todd Swarthout
Dawn Aycock
Emily Buchman
Laura E. DeMars
Rafaela G. Feresin
Sujay Galen
Anne K. Lorio
Anita Nucci
Traci Sims
Kate Wiley
Ralph Zimmerman
Mary Emily Deal
Jill Frank
Meta Gary
Kathryn Hartgrove
Wesley Harvey
Stephanie Kolpy
Neill Prewitt
Jennifer Siegler
Ruth Stanford
Daniel Altman
Louis-Alexandre Berg
Lakeyta Monique
Bonnette-Bailey
Anu Bourgeois
Jennie E. Burnet
Sierra Carter
Sharon Cavusgil
Yanyi Chen
Robin Conner
Viviana Cortes
Jianmei Cui
Gennady Cymbalyuk
Tracy Ediger
Michael Fix
Timothy Flemming
Desmond Goss
Samer Gozem
Stephanie Gutzler
Paulo Hidalgo-Odio
Jonathan Shihao Ji
Chad Keller
Stephanie D. Kerce
Hakyoon Lee
Raúl Llorente
Jeremy Maune
Ben McGimsey
Andrea Mezencevova
Richard Milligan
Suazette Reid Mooring
Jennifer Craft Morgan
Joseph Normandin
Samantha Parks
Aras Petrulis
LeeAnne M. Richardson
Sean Richey
Thomas Robilotto
Kelvin Rozier
Jacob Selwood
Megan Sexton
Cynthia Stappenbeck
Daniel Takabi
Christy Visaggi
Megan Wilson
Yubao Wu
Hae Sung Yang
Senmei Yao
Ying Zhu
Omer Ari
Kristina Brezicha
Sarah Elizabeth Carlson
Don Davis
Cirleen DeBlaere
Claire Donehower
Rhina Fernandes Williams
Jacob Hackett
Jacqueline Laures-Gore
Hongli Li
Erin Mason
Laura May
Ewa McGrail
Windsor Adams
Courtney Anderson
Margaret Butler
Jeong-Joong Yoon
Loren Vern Buysman
Mark A. Chen
Yichen Cheng
Deepa Goradia
Geoffrey Graybeal
Lixin Huang
Lynn Comer-Jones
Songqi Liu
Curtis Mullis
Alex Tawse
Joseph Bagley
Sylvester Burton
Lyndsay Bytof
Sarah Callaghan
Owen Cantrell
Julianne Caton-Williams
Fasil Cherenet
Amy Coleman
Amos Darrisaw
Mary Beth Davison
Vicente Della Tonia, Jr.
Sharon Derby
Kathleen Dolan
Hong Du
Bettina Durant
Antara Dutta
Rhiannon Evangelista
Jane Hercules
John D. King
Maria LePage
Jeffrey Mahr
Deborah Manson
Clarence Massie, Jr.
Jon McGlone
Eric Morton
Somaya Muiny
Laurie O’Connor
Nikita Patterson
Cynthia Payne
Fernando Rochaix
Andrew Rogers
Saralyn Summer
Scott Tichenor
Claudette Tolson
Juan Valenzuela
Dana Wiggins
Nancy Williams
Kevin Yeomans
Jacque-Corey Cormier
Roby Greenwald
Adrienne King
Ruiyan Luo
Erin Vinoski Thomas
Barbara Yankey
Skye Hardesty
Lisa Vallen
Celebrating Faculty Excellence Photo Gallery
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