Ten Graduate Students Receive Fellowships to National Summer Data Policy Institute

by Joe Savrock (May 2010)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Dan Merson, Rodney Hughes, and Becky Ferguson, graduate students in the College of Education’s Higher Education program, are among ten Penn State students who have been named Fellows for the 2010 National Summer Data Policy Institute on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and National Science Foundation databases.

In addition, seven students who are enrolled in Penn State’s online Institutional Research Certification Program were named Fellows: Joanna Musial-Demurat, Jo Harmon, John Hofmann, Elizabeth Johnston-O'Connor, Dale Swartzentruber, Valerie Taylor, and Christine Yerkes.

These ten students comprise nearly one-sixth of the 61 Fellowships that were awarded nationally this year, extending a trend in recent years in which exceptionally large numbers of Penn State students have earned Fellowships to the Institute.

“We are now over the 50 mark as a multiyear total for this national Fellowship program, placing the Penn State program as the nation's leader—with double the number of Fellows from the second place source,” noted J. Fredericks Volkwein, professor emeritus of education.

These Fellowships, funded by NCES, support the winners during an intensive period of summer exposure to various national databases, thereby increasing the national level of expertise of institutional research officers and the data that they produce. The residential portion of the 2010 National Summer Data Policy Institute takes place June 20–26 in Washington, D.C.