Texas State Phi Kappa Phi breaks record with 5 doctoral students landing competitive awards

Student Experience

Jayme Blaschke | March 29, 2023

A record-setting five doctoral students in the Texas State University Phi Kappa Phi Chapter have won competitive awards for 2023.

Four doctoral students have won Phi Kappa Phi’s Dissertation Fellowship, and a fifth student has received a Graduate Research Grant.

In the history of Phi Kappa Phi’s Dissertation Fellowship program, no institution has ever had four Dissertation Fellowship recipients in a single year — nearly 30% of the 2023 awardee pool for the national award.

This competitive $10,000 fellowship is awarded annually to 15 active society members who are doctoral candidates and are completing dissertations. The award provides financial support during the dissertation writing process to candidates in all fields of study whose projects demonstrate a high degree of originality and significant potential for advancing knowledge in the candidates’ disciplines.

“It is exciting to see so many of our Phi Kappa Phi students recognized for their significant research accomplishments,” said Kambra Bolch, president of the Texas State Phi Kappa Phi chapter. “We are proud to have them represent our chapter and Texas State University so well at the national level.”  

The four fellows come from the fields of applied anthropology and geographic education, reflecting Texas State’s historic strengths in those disciplines.

Applied anthropology fellow Petra Banks’ dissertation examines the physical distributions, types and mechanisms of skeletal fractures caused by explosions, allowing medicolegal practitioners to better identify and understand skeletal trauma when faced with fractures from unknown contexts. She is advised by Nicholas Herrmann, a professor in the Department of Anthropology.

Applied anthropology fellow Justin Goldstein’s dissertation explores microscopic presentations of physiological stress across four, globally dispersed, modern skeletal populations to investigate whether variation in bone microstructure and geometry reflects the effects of physiological stressors. He is advised by Herrmann and Timothy Gocha, associate director of the Forensic Anthropology Center.

Geographic education fellow Sojung Huh’s dissertation focuses on education for sustainable development (ESD) pedagogies in geography classrooms, teacher education programs and inquiry-based fieldwork. The goal is to improve sustainable development education in advanced placement geography classrooms and integrate ESD in U.S. social studies curriculums. She is advised by Injeong Jo, an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies.

Applied anthropology fellow Emilie Wiedenmeyer’s dissertation examines underlying patterns in entheses (musculoskeletal attachment sites) from historic and contemporary human remains to explore how diverse lived experiences physically affect and alter musculoskeletal connections in the human body. She is advised by Michelle Hamilton, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology.

The four fellows represent a 100% success rate for the Texas State Phi Kappa Phi chapter applicants this year.

The fifth doctoral student, Elisabeth Cuerrier-Richer, studying applied anthropology, received a Graduate Research Grant from Phi Kappa Phi. Annually awarded to 20 applicants, the grant provides up to $1,500 to support graduate students who are conducting or presenting research.

Cuerrier-Richer’s doctoral research assesses the cranial variation of Latin Americans from skeletal collections in the United States and Mexico, as well as Central and South American countries. She will use the grant for travel within Central and South America to collect data from modern skeletal collections. Her research is supervised by Kate Spradley, a professor in the Department of Anthropology.

“These five Phi Kappa Phi awards provide external confirmation that Texas State cultivates and nurtures outstanding graduate students engaged in highly intellectual, significant and original research,” said Andrea Golato, dean of The Graduate College. “We hope that more students from all fields of study will engage with our extensive external fellowship application support.”

Four of the awardees worked directly with The Graduate College’s external funding coordinators to prepare their Phi Kappa Phi award application materials. The fifth awardee received external funding advising support for other competitive funding applications and deployed the strategies learned from the advising process to the Phi Kappa Phi Awards application.