University Distinguished Faculty Awards

The LSU School of Information Studies welcomes Dr. Kathleen Campana as the new Patsy H. Perritt Chair in Youth Services, a gift from the acclaimed YA author Richard Peck. With a focus on enhancing learning environments for children and families, Dr. Campana brings extensive research experience to this position. Discover her vision for improving library and information services for underserved communities in Louisiana.

As LSU celebrates the first anniversary of the Windgate Foundation’s $1.329 million investment in the Louisiana A+ Schools program, the transformative effects of this partnership are already being felt in classrooms across the state. In total, LAA+ has trained more than 30 schools statewide, most recently adding St. Martin Early Learning STEAM Academy and St. Martin STEAM Academy, both located in St. Martinville, La., along with The Dufrocq School, Progress Elementary School, and LSU Early Childhood Education Laboratory School in Baton Rouge, La.

Maggie Mac Neil, Olympic swimmer and LSU sports management alumna, announced her plans to retire from competitive swimming on September 26th, 2024. Mac Neil will be joining the inaugural advisory board for the LSU Women's Sport and Health Initiative in the College of Human Sciences and Education's School of Kinesiology.

Timothy Page, PhD, has authored a new book titled Psychosocial Theories of Human Behavior and Development: An Evolution of Big Ideas. He aims to educate students across the various helping professions with his latest publication.

Assisting a stroke survivor in regaining movement in their face. Teaching toddlers how to improve their fine motor skills to get them prepared for school. Helping our LSU football players off the field following a blow to the head.

LSU was selected as an Institute Partner for the 2024 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. The Fellows engaged with Louisianians to establish meaningful professional networks in the state. During their recent trip to New Orleans, Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, PhD, a professor at the School of Education, hosted them at her home for a fish fry.

The LSU Writing Project held its first place-based Invitational Summer Institute on Mallard Island in the Rainy Lake Watershed, north of International Falls, Minnesota. Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, PhD, director of the LSU Writing Project, submitted a proposal to the Ernest Oberholtzer Foundation to host the week-long writing institute.

Cynthia DiCarlo, PhD was awarded the 2024 National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE) Foundation Established Career Early Teacher Educator Research Grant Award Winner. Dr. DiCarlo was selected as the top-scoring application after the review by a team of NAECTE peer reviewers for her project "Child Sustained Attention in One-Year-Olds." This project is part of a research series that has focused on identifying which teaching conditions (child choice, adult choice, or adult presentation) that elicit increased levels of engagement based on child age. Previous research on four-year-olds, three-year-olds, and two-year-olds has noted distinct differences in child attention based on teaching conditions. The goal of this project is to help provide direction to practitioners on the best teaching conditions to use with children at different ages to increase children's attention and engagement with materials. DiCarlo will be recognized at the National NAECTE conference on November 6 in Anaheim, California.

Early Childhood Education Institute (ECEI) Researchers, Michelle Brunson, PhD and Cynthia DiCarlo, PhD, along with their colleagues Ashely Boudreaux, Debra Jo Hailey, and Katrina Jordan, recently shared strategies for involving families in early childhood education in their article, "Engaging Parents as Partners Using Traditional and Distance Learning Models" in the practitioner publication ChildCare Exchange.