3 College of Education Students Named NSF Graduate Research Fellows

RALEIGH, North Carolina — Three graduate students in the NC State College of Education’s Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences won prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation.

The students’ names, area of study, and titles of the research proposals they submitted to NSF follow:

• Amanda Gosek, a Ph.D. student in elementary learning sciences for “Mentorship as a Remediation Strategy in Mathematics”
• Sarah Kessler, a Ph.D student in educational psychology for “Why Are Fractions So Hard: An Analysis of Error and Growth”
• Whitney McCoy, a Ph.D. student in educational psychology for “Culturally Relevant Components of Engineering Clubs for African American Girls”

The College of Education is one of only two schools in the nation to have at least three students receive fellowships in the field of STEM Education Research and Learning.

The NSF received over 13,000 applications for its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) from students pursuing research-based master’s or doctoral degrees in STEM disciplines. They awarded just 2,000 fellowships; of those, only 35 were awarded to students who submitted proposals in the STEM Education in Learning and Research category.

The fellows will receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000, a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, and additional opportunities for international research and professional development.

Past fellows include Google founder Sergey Brin, Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt, and former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics.

In addition to the three College of Education students who were awarded fellowships, Rachael Debnam-O’Dea received an honorable mention. She’s a doctoral student in Literacy and English Language Arts whose proposal was titled “Evaluating and Developing Secondary Teachers’ Ability to Support Science Literacy.”