UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Health and Human Development announced recipients of its 2018 Faculty and Staff Awards. A reception honoring the awardees was held Nov. 14 in the Bennett Pierce Living Center in Henderson Building at Penn State University Park.
Carol Clark Ford Staff Achievement Award
Dawn Nelson, administrative support coordinator, Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Nelson began her career at Penn State in 1990 and has been with the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) for the past two years as an administrative support coordinator. Her primary responsibilities are to serve as the administrative assistant to the head of the department, the HDFS human resources and office manager, and the senior HDFS departmental assistant.
In her role, she assists with the compilation and dissemination of departmental reports, coordinates department head activities to ensure that college and University deadlines are met, closely monitors the promotion and tenure process, maintains department and faculty webpages, and coordinates peer teaching evaluations and SRTE ratings of courses. Nelson also supervises and evaluates all staff assistants and meets with them to monitor their activities and morale.
Courtney Wozetek, academic adviser and social media coordinator, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Wozetek has been with Penn State since 2000 serving in various academic, career advising, and communications and marketing roles. She has been in her current role with the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) for just over one year. In this short time, she has provided excellent academic advising to both CSD and exploratory HHD students and greatly impacted the effectiveness of the outreach, marketing and internal communications of the department.
Wozetek has been instrumental in streamlining internal communications within the department. She launched the weekly “CSD Happenings,” a digest of news and events distributed via email, Twitter and Facebook. She has also updated the process for students registering for independent study credits from a paper form to an online form, creating a much more streamlined process.
Evelyn R. Saubel Faculty Award
Brian Soulé, assistant teaching professor and assistant director for internships and career placement, Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management
Soulé is an assistant teaching professor and assistant director for internships and career placement in the PGA Professional Golf Management (PGM) program in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management (RPTM), joining the department in 2009.
Soulé has teaching responsibilities in both the core RPTM curriculum as well as the PGM option of the RPTM major. Brian has served as lead instructor for several study abroad courses taking place in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Scotland.
In his role as assistant director for internships and career placement for the PGM program, Soule annually places approximately 100 students at nearly 80 different internship sites throughout the United States and internationally. In 2011, he helped establish the annual PGA Golf Management Intern Conference, and in 2014 he created the Penn State Professional Golf Management Alumni Mentor Program.
Shannon Corkery, assistant teaching professor and director of World Campus programs, Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Corkery is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) and has been director of the HDFS World Campus programs since 2013. In her role as director of World Campus programs, she engages in a number of outreach and networking activities with faculty, administrators and students.
Corkery has devoted energy, time and thought into developing and teaching multiple courses for the HDFS World Campus programs, in addition to overseeing them as a whole. She actively collaborates with HDFS World Campus instructors, the College of Health and Human Development Outreach Office, Penn State’s World Campus, and other department and college administrators.
Along with HDFS World Campus colleagues, she has worked to create and provide online students with "HDFS World Campus Student Resources" housed within the online learning management system, Canvas. This space provides students with academic planning, career exploration and other resources, and is used to maintain communications and connection with HDFS World Campus students via general announcements about upcoming courses, important deadlines, livestreams events from campus, and information about scholarships.
Leadership in Outreach Scholarship Award
Krista Wilkinson, professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Wilkinson has been a faculty member in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) since 2008. In 2012, she founded the "For Good Musical Performance Troupe" of the Centre County Down Syndrome Society, a performance group comprised of individuals with Down syndrome and near-age peers from the local musical theatre community.
Due to this group's success, Wilkinson formed “For Good Beginnings,” a performance group for younger children and those new to stage experiences. Based on that success, Wilkinson alsodesigned a course, Supporting Communication through Performance, which was offered in 2017 as an independent study. This course is a collaboration with Medora Ebersole, education and community programs manager for the Center for Performing Arts at Penn State, and Michele Dunleavy, associate professor of dance at Penn State.
Martha “Marty” Adams Undergraduate Advising Award - 2017
Devon Thomas, former academic adviser, Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Thomas served in advising roles at Penn State from 2010 to 2018, where she was the lead adviser in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) from 2013 to 2018. Prior to joining HDFS, she worked in the Smeal College of Business as one of the academic advisers and the adviser to the Smeal Student Mentors.
Her primary responsibilities in HDFS included advising more than 300 major and minor students in the two options of the major, the HDFS minor, and the gerontology minor. Thomas worked closely with students and the adviser in the honors program, and contributed significantly to the planning and implementation of the department’s recruiting and marketing initiatives.
Thomas was appointed to several leadership roles during her tenure with Human Development and Family Studies, such as the LionPATH's Training the Trainer Program. She also led a multi-person team in the department to review more than 1,000 student records when data was migrated to LionPATH. In 2018, Thomas was actively involved with the Women's Leadership Initiative as the appointed academic adviser to the committee. In 2017, Thomas was awarded the Penn State Excellence in Advising Award and the College of Health and Human Development Staff Appreciation Award for her service to students, faculty and staff.
Martha “Marty” Adams Undergraduate Advising Award - 2018
David M. Rachau, academic adviser, School of Hospitality Management
Rachau has been an academic adviser and an instructor in the College of Health and Human Development since 1995, first working in the college's Student Services Center.
Since 2008 Rachau has been an adviser in the School of Hospitality Management, where he currently advises about 500 students. In addition, he serves on numerous committees and represents the School of Hospitality Management at recruiting events. He has also served as a mentor for a colleague in the Health and Human Development Center for Student Advising and Engagement.
Diversity Achievement Award
John Dattilo, professor, Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management
Dattilo joined the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management (RPTM) in 2004, where he is currently a professor. Formerly head of the department, he has dedicated his professional career to advocating for any individual who has been marginalized and experiences oppression.
Datillo has worked on various diversity initiatives and served on diversity committees in the department and in the College of Health and Human Development, making him a role model for faculty and administrators in working toward a more diverse Penn State. He has served on the RPTM diversity committee since its inception, having chaired it for several years and leading the effort to develop the RPTM Diversity Plan and infuse actions to address diversity in the RPTM Strategic Plan. He has also served as the department’s liaison to the college’s diversity committee.
Datillo has dedicated his research to addressing the needs of a variety of diverse individuals who have experienced barriers and constraints to their leisure and with colleagues and graduate students has published over 150 refereed articles.
College of Health and Human Development Excellence in Teaching Award
Alison Gernand, assistant professor of nutritional sciences and Ann Atherton Hertzler Early Career Professor in Global Health, Department of Nutritional Sciences
Gernand has been an associate professor of nutritional sciences since 2013, and since 2016 is the Ann Atherton Hertzler Early Career Professor in Global Health. Since coming to Penn State, she has been the primary instructor for two upper-level nutrition courses, Community Nutrition and Nutrition Throughout the Lifecycle.
Gernand has also worked to make significant course improvements to provide a world-class and experiential education for nutritional sciences students. In the Community Nutrition course, she designed a major project for her students to complete: She has them examine the quality of food in the YMCA Backpack Program. This program provides weekend food for children in the Centre Region. Students assess the nutritional quality of the food and provide realistic recommendations for new foods to better meet nutritional needs of growing children.
In Nutrition Throughout the Life Cycle, she invites visitors to the classroom who are in the midst of many of the life stages, providing students with the opportunity to interact with people in a certain life stage to reinforce the classroom learning.
Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award
Thomas J. Gould, Jean Phillips Shibley Professor and Head, Department of Biobehavioral Health
Gould is currently head of Department of Biobehavioral Health (BBH) and Jean Phillips Shibley Professor of Biobehavioral Health.
Gould’s integrative research uses genetic, pharmacological, behavioral and molecular biological techniques to study the neurobiology of learning and memory and the effects of addiction on them. His current research focuses on identifying the cellular, molecular and epigenetic events that underlie the effects of nicotine on learning and memory, with a specific emphasis on how those effects change as drug administration transitions from acute to chronic drug use and how adolescence may change sensitivity to these effects of nicotine. He has authored over 150 publications and has had continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health for the last 15 years.
In addition to receiving the Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award from the College of Health and Human Development, he received the 2017 Pavlovian Research Award from the Pavlovian Society. In 2012, he received the Temple University Eberman Faculty Research Award, and in 2010 he received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, also at Temple.
Gould is a fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Sciences. He was elected president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2014 and served as the chair of the grant review panel for Neurobiology of Motivated Behavior, National Institutes of Health/Center for Scientific Review for two years. He is also a section editor for the journal Neuropharmacology.
Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Research Career Award
Anna S. Mattila, Marriott Professor of Lodging Management and professor-in-charge of the graduate program, School of Hospitality Management
Mattila is Marriott Professor of Lodging Management and professor-in-charge of the graduate program in the School of Hospitality Management, where for 20 years she has been a world-class researcher and mentor to graduate students and junior faculty members in the school.
Since 2008, she has developed four new streams of research in the areas of corporate social responsibility, pricing of intangible services, and social media and sensory marketing. She is currently collaborating with leadership at Mount Nittany Medical Center to spur research to improve patient and guest visits at the hospital, intersecting health care and hospitality industries.
Mattila is the recipient of many awards, including the Founder’s Award at the Annual Graduate Education & Graduate Students’ Research Conference, the University of Delaware Olson Lifetime Research Award, and the John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Award of the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education Convention.