Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies Award Recipients: Roma Angel, Alecia Jackson, & Kelly McCallister

Two Reich College of Education (RCOE) faculty members and one doctoral student were selected as Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies award recipients:

  • Roma Angel: Academy of Outstanding Mentors Award

  • Alecia Jackson: 100 Scholars Research Award

  • Kelly McCallister: Graduate Student Service Award

Award recipients were honored at the Graduate School Awards Ceremony on Tuesday April 16, 2019.

Roma Angel

Roma AngelDr. Roma Angel, a professor in the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies, was awarded the Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies 2018-2019 Academy of Outstanding Mentors Award. The Academy of Outstanding Graduate Mentors was established to recognize graduate faculty members for exemplary mentoring activities well beyond good classroom and laboratory instruction or research supervision of graduate students. Nominee selection was based on the recipient’s ability to impart knowledge and to inspire inquisitiveness and the desire for continued learning, concern for students' intellectual growth, concern for students' personal and professional development, and, as well, a history of significant mentoring over an extended period of time.

 “I felt particularly honored by being chosen for this award,” Angel said. “I feel that our future depends upon the success of leaders who can guide us in becoming educated persons wide-awake to the issues of our times and skilled in building coalitions focused on creating healthy solutions. In essence, we need to mentor one another in seeking solutions that address our common good.”

 Angel’s goal for her students is that they become confident leaders through knowledge of self, of leadership theory and practice, of organizational and change theory, and of the impact of complex systems on leadership. She guides students in identifying individual research interests through a series of questions focused on articulating leadership interests.

 Research interests for Angel include women in leadership, mentoring for leadership, and the inclusion of marginalized persons into all aspects of the educational process. She currently serves on six doctoral dissertation committees, three of which she chairs. She has served on 22 committees of completed doctoral dissertations, seven of which she chaired. She has published and presented with her students at national and international conferences.

 Angel was hired by the RCOE in 2002.  She received her Ed.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in educational foundations and leadership, her M.A. from Wake Forest University, and her B.A. from Meredith College. Having served in a number of leadership positions in the RCOE, Angel, in 2015, co-founded the successful Women in Educational Leadership Symposium (WIELS). The annual WIELS conference uniquely focuses on providing mentoring support for all facets of personal leadership growth. The organization has served participants from the U.S. and countries throughout the world. Its fourth annual conference will be held October 4-5, 2019. Currently, Angel serves WIELS as its associate director.

Alecia Jackson

Alecia JacksonDr. Alecia Jackson, a professor in the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies, has been awarded the Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies 2018-2019 100 Scholars Research Award for her book project titled “Thinking With Theory in Qualitative Research: 2nd Edition." The 100 Scholars Research Award was designed to recognize exemplary research or creative activities of a tenured faculty member. The recipient is a senior faculty member, performing well above the standard level of faculty research within the last five years. As recipient of the award, Jackson will receive up to $1,000 for research.

In 2011, Jackson co-authored a book published by Routledge Press: Thinking With Theory in Qualitative Research (with Lisa Mazzei). The research project that informed the book centered on a qualitative interview study of women professors in the academy who were first-generation college graduates. Drawing on six philosophers, Jackson and Mazzei analyzed the same data across multiple theories, and in doing so produced different knowledge about the phenomenon of first-generation academic women. The significance of the book is methodological by developing a new analytic framework of thinking with theory that involves applying macro theories (philosophy) to micro, grounded data (interviews). This methodology infuses the humanities with the social sciences and is thus multi-disciplinary, applying to a broad range of problems in various fields of inquiry. Since its publication, Thinking With Theory has quickly become one of the authoritative texts in the field of qualitative data analysis and is used in research courses across many disciplines outside of education. The book has been adopted at universities in the US, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Denmark, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Jackson plans to use funds from the 100 Scholars Research Award to produce a second edition, 10th anniversary of the book. Jackson said, "The impact of this second edition will bolster the already upward-trend of the book into the next generation of scholars. In the last few years, new theories and concepts have emerged in the humanities and gender studies. As well, the academic lives of first-generation women professors have a different landscape in the current era of gender revolution, the #MeToo movement, and transformative politics. The book needs to be updated and aligned with the force of these watershed cultural moments.”

After receiving her Ph.D. in Language Education from the University of Georgia in 2003, Jackson was hired by the RCOE in the same year. She is Professor of Research and teaches qualitative research and critical theories for many programs in the RCOE and across campus. She is also affiliated faculty in the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program. Jackson won the RCOE’s Outstanding Scholarship Award in 2008 and in 2016, and the Board of Governor’s Excellence in Teaching Award for the RCOE in 2010 and 2019.

Jackson's research interests bring feminist, poststructural, and posthuman theories of power/knowledge, language, materiality, and subjectivity to bear on a range of overlapping topics: deconstructions of voice and method; conceptual analyses of resistance, freedom, and agency in girls’ and women’s lives; and qualitative analysis in the “posts.” Her work seeks to animate philosophical frameworks in the production of the new, and her current projects are focused on the ontological turn, qualitative inquiry, and thought. She has publications in The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Qualitative Inquiry, The International Review of Qualitative Research, Qualitative Research, Gender and Education, and numerous book chapters, and has presented her methodological scholarship at U.S. university campuses as well as internationally (Australia, Norway, and the UK).

Kelly McCallister

Kelly McCallisterKelly McCallister, an assistant professor and information literacy librarian for non-traditional populations at the University Libraries at Appalachian State University as well as a current doctoral student in the Educational Leadership program in the RCOE, has been awarded the 2019 Outstanding Graduate Student Service Award. The Outstanding Graduate Student Service Award was established to recognize a graduate student who has performed exemplary service in the interest of graduate education at Appalachian State University.

McCallister received her master's degree in library and information science and master's in anthropology from the University of Southern Mississippi and her B.A. in anthropology from Mississippi State University. In her more than thirteen years as a practicing academic librarian and online instructor, her expected job responsibilities echoes the experiences of the online and non traditional students she serves, both past and present.

“Working with non traditional students either in distance education, transfers, student veterans, continuing education (online or face to face), I too, have experienced the very sense of isolation and frustration that is represented throughout the academic literature on these populations,” said McCallister. “My applied philosophy of teaching primarily reflects the desire to create virtual community for students, colleagues and myself. My experience in creating virtual community includes the more traditional for-credit courses, one-shot instruction requests, in collaboration with members of the specific departmental advisory boards, orientations, panel discussions, Q&A forums, virtual events and subject specific webinars. It is with great hope that this gaze into the online world communicates the importance of why providing community and value for student life experiences is so important.”

“I am deeply humbled and honored by this award and am grateful to my fellow cohort family and Dr. Tracy Goodson-Epsy and Dr. Roma Angel for the generous support and guidance” said McCallister.  

She plans to apply funds to her doctoral research, which is a continuation of her ongoing work with non-traditional student populations, in which she will be examining the validity of military friendly status of colleges and universities and how they serve their student veterans.


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Published: Apr 26, 2019 8:19pm

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