Fargo, N.D. – Several faculty members and students from NDSU’s College of Human Development and Education received awards, published research-related articles or gave presentations at conferences. Several students also received awards.

Yeong Rhee, associate professor of health, nutrition and exercise sciences at NDSU, will receive the Outstanding Dietetic Educator in a Coordinated Program Award for the Nutrition and Dietetic Educators and Preceptors Area 2. The award, which annually recognizes a dietetics educator with exceptional achievements in dietetics education, will be presented at the NDEP’s Area 2 and Area 5 spring meeting in Indianapolis in mid-April.

Rhee also received the 2012 North Dakota Dietetic Association’s Outstanding Educator Award.

The BBC recently interviewed Kevin Miller, associate professor of health, nutrition and exercise sciences, for an article on the myth that increasing one’s salt intake can prevent cramping. The article references several of Miller’s research studies The BBC site receives more than 60 million unique users each month.

Anita Welch, Claudette Peterson and Chris Ray, assistant professors of education, and their Turkish colleague Mustafa Cakir conducted a study, titled “A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Technology-Rich Outcomes-Focused Learning Environment Inventory in Turkey and the USA,” that will be published in the journal, Research in Science and Technological Education.

Welch presented “Creativity, Communication, Collaboration and Critical Thinking: Building the Four Cs by Building Robots” at the National Science Teachers Association’s 2012 National Conference on Science Education in Indianapolis March 29-April 1. She also was named to the editorial board for The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.

Brandy Randall, associate professor of human development and family science at NDSU, attended the Society for Research on Adolescence conference in early March where she presented research on two different studies. The first presentation was titled “An Under-Represented Group? Prevalence of Research on Rural Adolescents in Empirical Literature.” The second presentation was titled “Teaching About Adolescence: Similarities and Differences Across Disciplines and Audiences.” Randall also presented “Personal Problems Reported by a Sample of Rural Youth and Their Relation to Psychosocial Well-Being” at the Society for Research in Human Development biennial conference in late March.

Randall is slated to present “Factor Structure of the Brief Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol Sale in Adolescents” at the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in San Francisco in late June.

Taylor Heck, a junior in the coordinated dietetics program and a McNair scholar, is one of 56 students selected to take part in a 10-week summer internship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. Heck also received offers from the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus.

Jared Tucker, assistant professor of health, nutrition and exercise sciences, co-wrote an article, titled “Insulin Resistance Projects Against Gains in Body Fat in Non-Diabetic Women: A Prospective Study,” that was accepted for publication in the journal, Obesity.

Students from Kellie Hamre’s large-scale contract design course competed at the Interior Design Educators Council’s Midwest Regional Student Design Competition. Cassandra Gullickson and Stephanie Hulet, seniors majoring in interior design, received an honorable mention award for their project. Twenty-five entries from 10 programs were judged.

Justin Wageman and Stacy Duffield, associate professors of education, presented their paper, “Examining How Professional Development Impacted Teachers and Students of U.S. History Courses,” at the Association for Teacher Educators’ annual conference in mid-February.

Kim Overton, assistant professor of education at NDSU, and Lisa Staiger, assistant director of field experiences at Minnesota State University Moorhead, presented “Improving Field Experiences Through Collaboration” at the conference.

Duffield and Al Olson, associate professor at Valley City State University, presented a paper, titled “Crossing Borders, Breaking Boundaries: Collaboration Among Higher Education Institutions,” at the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education conference in mid-February. The presentation described the collaboration efforts on teacher effectiveness initiative work between NDSU, VCSU and MSUM. The collaboration was sponsored by a Bush Foundation grant.

Duffield and Overton presented “Getting to the Heart of the Matter: A Holistic Approach to Teacher Preparation” at the national Professional Development Conference in March. The presentation featured recent initiatives in teacher education, including co-teaching, the Support and Remediation Committee and candidate dispositions.

NDSU is a top-ranked research institution that combines teaching and research in a rich learning environment.