Today, Portland State University announced the recipients of the 2020 awards for excellence in research, graduate mentoring and research administration. The awards are among the university's highest honors. They recognize and incentivize the ongoing excellence of PSU faculty and staff through research, scholarship, artistry and dedication to PSU research activities and students.
Recipients of the awards are some of the most dynamic faculty and staff members at PSU. Colleagues make nominations, and a jury of peers selects awardees based on the significance and quality of their research or creative achievements and extraordinary commitment to creating an environment supportive of research and student success.
2020 Presidential Career Research Award
The 2020 Presidential Career Research Award recipient is Talya Bauer. Bauer is the Cameron Professor of Management at the School of Business. She researches human resources and relationships at work. More specifically, she works in research areas across the employee life cycle, including recruitment and selection, new employee onboarding, and coworker and leader relationships. This work has resulted in dozens of journal publications, book chapters and research grants from organizations, including the Oregon Department of Transportation, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Publications including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The Washington Post, Business Week, and USA Today have covered Bauer's research. Additionally, she serves or has served as an editor and associate editor of numerous journals and has co-authored multiple award-winning textbooks.
"Professor Bauer is a highly influential scholar and thought leader in the fields of organizational psychology and management," said Gilad Chen, the Robert H. Smith chair in Organizational Behavior at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. "She has been conducting top-notch and highly regarded research. Portland State is truly fortunate to have her on its faculty."
2020 Graduate Mentoring Excellence Award
This year's Graduate Mentoring Excellence Award recipient is Virginia Butler. Butler is a professor and chair of the anthropology department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State. Butler is an extraordinary mentor with a long record of successfully mentoring PSU graduate students. Since 1994, she has served as the thesis chair for 20 PSU MA/MS graduate students, many of whom have gone on to professional careers in archaeology. Through the process of developing research projects, Butler mentors students, closely supervising their analysis and providing considerable guidance in writing and presenting theses. Additionally, Butler and her students have made significant contributions to the field of zooarchaeology (the study of animal remains in archaeological sites), Northwest Coast archaeology, the study of archaeological site formation processes and community archaeology.
"As a mentor, Dr. Butler tirelessly devoted herself to the development of her students," said Daniel Gilmour, a former student, chief financial officer at Wynne Solutions, LLC. "She made herself available on nights, weekends, and summers to help us master the content of our discipline and hone our analytical and laboratory skills. With her guidance, I received two research grants to fund specialized analyses for my thesis."
2020 Early Career Research Award
Greg Townley, an associate professor in the psychology department and director of research for the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative at Portland State, is the 2020 Early Career Research Award recipient. Townley's research focuses on community psychology, with particular interests in community mental health, supportive housing, homelessness, peer-delivered services and mixed-methods research examining community inclusion and recovery of individuals with serious mental illness. He uses various social-environmental research methods, including Geographic Information Systems, neighborhood assessments and ethnographic approaches. His research has been funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research and published in numerous top tier journals, including the American Journal of Community Psychology and Social Science & Medicine.
"Dr. Townley is a 'rising star' in his field, committed to finding ways to use his research in service of society," said Ellen Skinner, professor and chair of the psychology department at Portland State. "He has achieved an impressive record of scholarly accomplishments, based on a theoretically sophisticated and methodologically innovative program of research organized around a set of important applied problems — how to promote community integration for individuals who have psychiatric disabilities or other marginalized identities."
2020 Non-tenure Track Faculty Research Award
The 2020 Non-tenure Track Faculty Research Award recipient is Jennifer Blakeslee. Blakeslee is an early-career researcher at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services in the School of Social Work at Portland State. Her primary research is the development and evaluation of youth programming to strengthen support networks and enhance self-determination through youth-led mentoring and developmental coaching. Her work also focuses on assessing system-involved young people's social network context to inform service delivery and improve outcomes during the transition to adulthood. Since Blakeslee's appointment in 2014, she has consistently published and presented her research and has led five federal grants and six sponsored projects totaling more than $2 million. Blakeslee also mentors undergraduate and graduate scholars, including them in emerging and independent research that supports the development of the mentees' research and applied skills.
"Dr. Blakeslee has shown significant productivity in sponsored projects and publications as an early-career researcher with a clear research agenda related to young people exiting foster care and similar systems," said Roberto Orellana, professor and associate dean for research and sponsored projects in the School of Social Work at Portland State. "She is dedicated to making a real-world impact through research-to-practice knowledge transfer that informs programming and services for system-involved youth."
2020 Research Administrator of the Year Award
The recipient of the inaugural Research Administrator of the Year Award is Corey Smitke. Smitke is a grants and agreements officer in Sponsored Projects Administration. She supports the research enterprise at PSU by helping investigators navigate across the funding lifecycle from proposal submission to award closeout. She has worked in higher education in Oregon for twelve years and has been with PSU since 2015. Previously, she worked for the University of Oregon in Portland, where she first encountered the field of research administration while writing and administering grants for a university art gallery and other public art initiatives.
"In tumultuous times, Corey has stepped up and kept things moving for our research program," said Jim Hook, professor and associate dean in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. "Corey closely collaborates with our team to support research by negotiating modifications to agreements with the NSF and subcontractors as well as other sponsors."
Jason Podrabsky, interim vice president for Research & Graduate Studies, said the recipients of the excellence awards exemplify the quality and caliber of research and student training at PSU.
"The recipients of these awards are the best in their fields," Podrabsky said. "The achievements and dedication to our students are a source of pride for the entire university."
In addition to the university-level awards, individual colleges and schools across campus were invited to name a researcher, scholar, or practitioner of the year. Recipients of these awards are:
- College of Education: Professor Ann Fullerton, Special Education
- College of Liberal Arts & Sciences: Assistant Professor Laura Robson, History
- College of the Arts: Assistant Professor Lisa Jarrett, Art + Design
- College of Urban & Public Affairs: Professor G.L.A. Harris, School of Government
- Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science: Assistant Professor Arash Khosravifar, Civil & Environmental Engineering
- OHSU-PSU School of Public Health: Assistant Professor Julia Goodman
- School of Social Work: Assistant Professor Susanne Klawetter
- School of Business: Professor Carlos Mena, Business Administration