Each year, the IARSLCE recognizes outstanding researchers in the fields of service learning and community engagement through the presentation of three awards given at the Annual IARSLCE Conference.

2010 Distinguished Research Award

Recognizes a researcher who has a strong record of publications and contributions to the field of service-learning and community engagement.

Recipient: Dr. Barbara E. Moely, Tulane University

Barbara E. Moely is Professor Emerita in Psychology and Research Affiliate of the Center for Public Service at Tulane University.  She has been involved in service learning for more than a dozen years, teaching courses, conducting projects, and serving as the founding Director of Tulane’s Office of Service Learning.  She served as Principal Investigator of a Learn and Serve consortium grant that supported the institutionalization of service-learning at higher education institutions. She is a co-editor of the 2009 and 2010 volumes of the Advances in Service-Learning Research series and serves as Senior Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning.

2010 Early Career Research Award

Recognizes outstanding early career contributions to scholarly endeavors addressing service-learning and community engagement.

Recipient: Dr. Timothy K. Eatman, Syracuse University

Professor Timothy K. Eatman – Syracuse University Assistant Professor of Higher Education serves also as Director of Research for Imagining America: Artist and Scholars in Public Life. An educational sociologist, Tim conducts research on policy and practice to support publicly engaged scholarship as well as a range of equity issues in higher education related to the access and success of traditionally underrepresented groups. Tim holds degrees from Pace University (B.S.), Howard University (M.Ed.) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Ph.D.). He serves on several boards including most recently the Syracuse-based Friends of the Central Library, which presides over the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series.

Early Career Research Award (Honorable Mention)

Recipient:  Dr. Kevin Kecskes, Portland State University

Kevin Kecskes serves as Associate Vice Provost for Engagement and Director for Community-University Partnerships at Portland State University.  From 1997-2002, Kevin was the Director of Service-Learning at Washington Campus Compact, and the Program Director of the Western Region Campus Compact Consortium. Kevin co-founded the Boston College International Volunteer Program and has spent a dozen years working, serving, and studying in the developing world, primarily in Latin America and Asia. Kevin edited Engaging Departments: Moving Faculty Culture from Private to Public, Individual to Collective Focus for the Common Good. He received his B.S. from Boston College, Ed.M. from Harvard University, and Ph.D. from Portland State University.

2010 Dissertation Research Award

Recognizes a dissertation that advances research on service-learning or community engagement through rigorous and innovative inquiry.

Co-Award Recipient:  Dr. Katrina Norvell, Portland State University

Katrina Norvell received her Ph.D. in Public Administration and Policy from the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University in May 2010.  Her dissertation, titled “Examining community-engaged scholarship in public administration programs,” is an exploration of a previously unstudied aspect of community-engaged scholarship and breaks new ground.  Katrina has taught in the School of Community Health, the Division of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and the Division of Public Administration at Portland State University.  She also served as Interim Administrative Director of the IARSLCE, and has extensive experience in non-profit management, consulting, and evaluation.

Co-Award Recipient: Dr. Elaine Ward

Elaine Ward is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) in Ireland.  Elaine is affiliated with DIT’s Center for Social and Educational Research in the Higher Education Policy Unit.  Elaine serves as the Irish researcher on a collaborative research project—with Center for Higher Educational Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education measuring the social and economic value of arts and humanities research.  Elaine’s dissertation “Women’s ways of engagement:  an exploration of the scholarship of engagement, gender, and institutional rewards policy and practice”, presents significant findings on gender in the academy and on faculty roles and rewards.