Education Researchers Selected as Presidential Early Career Awardees
Education Researchers Selected as Presidential Early Career Awardees
 
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July 2019

On July 2, President Donald Trump announced the 2019 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). In total, there are 314 PECASE awards in 2019 across federal agencies and all fields of science. The awards are provided to federally funded researchers who have excelled in their work and shown great promise for assuring America’s preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions.

Education research was recognized with a sizeable number of awardees, given that this award spans all sciences. The 13 education researchers include seven early career scholars with funding support from the National Science Foundation and six early career scholars who have received grants from the Institute of Education Sciences. The seven NSF awardees made up nearly 9 percent of the 80 total NSF grantees who were recognized.

“This is just exceptional,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “We congratulate all of the award winners. That such a large number of promising early career scientists pursue education research is a great statement about our field and its future.”

The seven awardees with funding from NSF covered a diverse range of issues in their research, including broadening the participation of African-American men in STEM, advancing student understanding of linear algebra in physics, and creating equitable STEM environments for women. The six awardees with IES funding examined topics such as better understanding the variation in outcomes for English language learners, building effective interventions for young children at risk for academic difficulties, and developing an online tutor to accelerate high school vocabulary learning.

Eight of the 13 education research awardees are active AERA members, who are denoted in the lists below with asterisks (*).

National Science Foundation

  • Marie Coppola, University of Connecticut *
  • Christopher Jett, University of West Georgia *
  • Mary Murphy, Indiana University *
  • Marilyne Stains, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
  • Idalis Villanueva, Utah State University *
  • Megan Wawro, Virginia Tech
  • Christopher Wright, Drexel University *

Institute of Education Sciences

  • Suzanne Adlof, University of South Carolina
  • Benjamin Castleman, University of Virginia
  • Sarah Powell, University of Texas at Austin
  • Karen Thompson, Oregon State University *
  • Candace Walkington, Southern Methodist University *
  • Tricia Zucker, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston *