Academics

Terenzini receives Stecklein Award from AIR

Patrick T. Terenzini, distinguished professor emeritus and senior scientist emeritus in Penn State’s College of Education, has been named recipient of the 2012 John E. Stecklein Distinguished Membership Award, given by the Association for Institutional Research (AIR). Terenzini was honored at this year’s AIR Forum, held June 2-6 in New Orleans.

The Stecklein Award is presented to an AIR member who has made significant and substantial contributions to the field of institutional research.

Terenzini is the fifth AIR member in the association’s 50-year history to have won all three of AIR’s major awards. He won the organization’s Sydney Suslow Award in 1987 for significant, original contributions to research and scholarship in institutional research and administrative decision making, as well as AIR’s Outstanding Service Award in 1994.

In addition to his awards from AIR, Terenzini has received research awards from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the American College Personnel Association (ACPA), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), and the student affairs associations of the states of New York and Pennsylvania. He is a three-time winner of AIR’s Forum Best Paper Award and received the William Elgin Wickenden Award from the American Society for Engineering Education for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2001. More recently, Terenzini was named the first recipient of the Sphere of Influence Award, given jointly by ACPA and NASPA--an award to be given only once each decade.

Terenzini's research examines the effects of college on student learning and development, persistence, and educational attainment. He has led research teams that received grants totaling more than $13 million from such organizations as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Sloan Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. He is co-author (with Ernest T. Pascarella) of the two-volume "How College Affects Students" (Jossey-Bass, 1991 and 2005), an award-winning synthesis of 30 years of research on the impacts of the college experience on students.
 

Patrick T. Terenzini, distinguished professor emeritus and senior scientist emeritus in Penn State’s College of Education. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated January 9, 2015

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