2017 PhD Recognition Ceremony Celebrates Doctoral Student Accomplishments

UCI School of Education held the 2017 PhD Recognition Ceremony on May 23rd. This annual event celebrates the year's accomplishments, recognizes academic distinctions, and awards internal scholarships.

Dean Richard Arum initiated the ceremonies by welcoming students, faculty, staff, and guests. He then provided an overview of doctoral student accomplishments from 2016 to 2017.

Text of Dean Arum's Overview of Doctoral Student Accomplishments 

This has been a year of accomplishments and change. Our ranking moved up to # 15 in the U.S. among public universities and we are preparing to welcome the newly hired faculty and students who will be joining us at the beginning of the Fall quarter, 2017.
 
You doctoral students have continued your impressive range of accomplishments and honors, including graduations, publications in major journals, presentations throughout the U.S., and representing the School of Education in the best possible light.
 
At this event, we begin by recognizing the graduates who received their degree in the last calendar year. They generally are not in attendance because they are dispersed in their new academic positions throughout the U.S., but an additional fifteen names are being added to the PhD honor plaque for 2016, and copies of their dissertations are being ordered. Congratulations to Tara Barnhart, Wenliang He, Sabrina Kataoka, David Lee, Kenneth Lee, Joyce Lin, Jennifer Long, Elizabeth Miller, Youngmin Park, Marcela Reyes, Rahila Simzar, Cathy Tran, Jessica Tunney, Cathery Yeh, and Alma Zaragoza-Petty.
 
Six of our current candidates will receive your degree in June. NaYoung Hwang, Janet Garcia Mercado, Lynn Reimer, Jennifer Sun, Tyler Watts, and Sara Young.

Seven of you are planning to graduate by December 2017: Nicholas James Graham, Christa Renee Greenfader, Ksenia A. Korobkova, Viet Vu, Soo Bin Yim, and Neil Young.
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Student Progress and Presentations

In April, 74 of you completed your Annual Report of Student Progress, which detailed your activities from Spring 2016 into Winter 2017. 
 
During this period, you published a total of 35 articles, demonstrating both scholarship accomplishment and your progression along the path to future membership in the Academy.
 
Thirty-six (36) your articles are currently in press, accepted for publication, undergoing revise and resubmit, or under review, and nineteen (19) publications are waiting response.
 
You have reported 71 publications that are in preparation,
 
You presented your work at a total of 134 conferences this past year, and you collectively attended a total of 30 conferences for academic and professional benefit.

Students in Leadership Positions

During 2016-2017, you assumed leadership positions and volunteered your time.
 
School organizations and activities that benefited from your participation included ADSE, DECADE, and Student Rep responsibilities; recruitment weekend, PhD orientation, and UCI Writing Project events; professional development seminars, brown bag presentations, and guest speakers; faculty search committees, the PhD admissions committee; labs and research centers, and Project Crystal.
 
Within UCI you contributed to DECADE and AGS, the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Symposium, UCI’s Discover Science Initiative, the Pedagogical Fellows Program, UCI Homecoming, and UCI’s Data Mining Symposium.
 
And at local, state, and national levels, you were active in AERA, SRCD, and other national organizations; various Boys & Girls Clubs; the California Forum on Diversity; Orange County Head Start, Orange County Very Special Arts, and the Orange County Arts/Imagination Celebration.

Scholarship

Your scholarship has been recognized both within the university and by outside organizations including travel awards to attend and present at conferences and colloquia.
 
To name a few of awards donors that are supporting your studies:

• AERA Outstanding Paper Award
• Chancellor’s Club Dissertation Fellowship
• Various Fellowships like Eugene Cota Robles
• Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowships
• Graduate Opportunity Fellowships
• NSF Fellowships
• Pedagogical Fellows Program
• People’s Choice Award
• Phi Beta Kappa International Scholar Award
• Provost PhD Fellowship
• Public Impact Dissertation Fellowship
• SRCD Millennial Program Scholarship
• TESOL Emerging Scholars Recognition
• Presidents Dissertation Year Fellowship
• Faculty Mentor Program Fellowship
• UCI Fostering Literacy
• UCI Most Promising Future Faculty Member Award

 
Congratulations to all of you for your hard work and your success. You have excelled, and you have brought honor to UCI and to the School of Education.