Gail Boldt and William Rothwell have been awarded the title of distinguished professor in the College of Education at Penn State.
The distinguished professor title, awarded by Penn State's Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. This special academic title is bestowed upon a limited number of outstanding professors for whom endowed chairs or professorships are otherwise unavailable.
“Drs. Boldt and Rothwell have reached this pinnacle through their dedication to their respective areas of expertise and the deep care they have shown their students and colleagues,” said Dean Kimberly Lawless. “I am thrilled their careers here at Penn State have been recognized by their peers and the University. I can't wait to continue to partner with them on the next chapter of their academic journeys.”
Boldt, professor of education (language and literacy education) and women’s studies, joined the faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) in 2007 as associate professor. She was promoted to professor in 2014.
“This recognition is the highlight of my 15 years at Penn State,” said Boldt. “My teaching, research and service are all shaped through my commitment to addressing how experiences of success and failure are constituted in school through expectations for normative forms of participation. My goal is to increase our understanding of children’s lives through counter-narratives and pedagogic alternatives that challenge traditional approaches that pathologize and marginalize children.”
Boldt defines herself as a curriculum theorist with interests in literacies, elementary and early childhood education, identity (including gender, sexuality, class and race) and post-identity, childhood studies, cultural studies and disability studies. She works primarily with narrative research, drawing analytic lenses from Deleuzo-Guattarian, post-structural and psychoanalytic theories.
She teaches graduate seminars in theory and philosophy as they relate to contemporary issues in education. At the undergraduate level, she works in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Program, teaching literacy methods classes for pre-K to fourth grade pre-service teachers. She is an affiliated faculty member in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts.
Boldt is editor-in-chief of the Occasional Paper Series (OPS), an open-access journal hosted by Bank Street College of Education. Current circulation includes 5,135 institutions representing every country in the world.
She also is a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist working with children and adolescents at a public community mental-health clinic.
Boldt holds a doctorate from the University of Hawai’i in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies. Prior to her doctorate, she was an elementary school teacher in Honolulu. She has her teaching certification from Mills College in Oakland, California, as well as a master of theological studies from the Divinity School at Harvard University and a master of education in counseling from Penn State.
Carla Zembal-Saul, Kahn Professor of STEM Education and head of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, nominated Boldt for her transformative work locally, nationally and internationally.
“I use [transformative] purposefully to capture the nature of Dr. Boldt’s scholarship and its meaningful and lasting impact,” Zembal-Saul said. “She is a prolific author, and she is inspiring the field to surface and critically examine longstanding, taken-for-granted assumptions. Closer to home, Dr. Boldt productively challenges our discourse and practices in ways that make us better as a department community, and she is deeply involved in childcare reform at Penn State. In reviewing the materials for these awards, I was impressed by how explicitly nominators and presenters acknowledged Dr. Boldt’s generous and compassionate approach to mentoring early career colleagues and graduate students.”
Zembal-Saul said positioning Boldt within a field is complex, given the intersectionality of her scholarship.
“She is a critical theorist who is also a trained psychotherapist; her expertise spans literacies, early childhood and elementary education, and disability studies. In all aspects of her scholarship, the strands of inclusion and equity, as well as asset-based perspectives of learners, are evident,” Zembal-Saul said.
Boldt has received numerous awards and recognitions, including 2021 Senior Researcher Award, 2012 Outstanding Teaching Award, 2010 Climate Enhancement Award and 2009 Teaching and Learning with Technology Award within the College of Education.
She has been recognized nationally with the P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award from the Literacy Research Association; and earned international recognition with the Bloch Distinguished Career Award, the highest award of the International Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference.
Rothwell, professor of education (workforce education) in the Department of Learning and Performance Systems (LPS), joined the College of Education in 1993 as a tenured associate professor of human resource development. Author or editor of more than 128 books in his field, he was promoted to professor in 1997. His research interests revolve around the competencies of workplace learning and performance professionals, succession planning and talent management.
“It is an honor to be named a distinguished professor in the College of Education at Penn State. However, I was even more humbled when I learned that over 100 of my past students advocated for this nomination,” Rothwell said. “Developing future scholars and leaders has been, and continues to be, one of my primary passions.”
Rothwell estimates he has helped at least 100 people – doctoral students and alumni – write books or book chapters; he said a major source of satisfaction he gets is from what his students have accomplished in their careers.
Rothwell has been professor-in-charge of the Workforce Education and Development Program, and with the help of alumnus and current faculty member Wes Donahue, worked to create the Master of Professional Studies in Organization Development and Change. More than 200 students have graduated from the program since it launched in 2014, and it has become a feeder program for the doctoral program.
Rothwell also is president of an independent consulting firm that focuses on critical issues in human resource development and management. That sets an example for his students, some of whom enter consulting as an occupational choice.
He holds a doctorate in education/human resource development from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; a master of arts in business administration with a concentration in human resource management from Sangamon State University (now University of Illinois at Springfield); a master’s in English from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and a bachelor’s degree in English from Illinois State University.
“Dr. Rothwell has demonstrated excellence in all he does across the span of a long career at Penn State,” said Susan Land, department head in LPS. “His record shows a level of distinction that this honor warrants. His excellence and recognition attract hundreds of students to come to Penn State and work with him. He has incredible vision and a combination of qualities that allows him to produce powerful ideas, while leading and inspiring others in the process.”
Land said Rothwell is renowned for his scholarship and is a sought-after speaker who has given hundreds of talks around the world, many of which are invited keynotes for universities and professional associations.
“I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Rothwell in different capacities for almost 25 years and have been impressed not only by his noteworthy scholarly record but by his outstanding leadership and service to the department and profession,” Land said.
She also cited his excellence as a teacher, which goes beyond the classroom.
“To date, he has chaired approximately 106 dissertations and served on countless more dissertation committees,” Land said. “He works hard to provide our students with as many tools and means of support as possible to enable their success. He exemplifies a community-focused approach to teaching, making strong connections to practice, and setting expectations high.”
Rothwell earned the Outstanding Researcher Award from the College of Education; the Graduate Faculty Teaching Award from Penn State; and was recognized nationally as the 2011 Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award. This award, given by the American Society for Training and Development (now the Association for Talent Development), recognizes sustained impact on the field.
Other distinguished professors in the College of Education are M. Kathleen Heid (C&I), Greg Kelly (C&I) and P. Karen Murphy (Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education). Emeriti distinguished professors in the college are Eunice Askov (LPS), Roger Geiger (Education Policy Studies), Michael Grahame Moore (LPS), David Passmore (LPS), Patrick Shannon (C&I), Hoi Suen (EPCSE) and Patrick Terenzini (EPS).