Allison Cumming-McCann, PhD, chair and professor in the Department of Counseling at Springfield College, has been awarded a $3.29 million Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant by the U.S. Department of Education. The grant was written to enhance the training and number of racially and linguistically diverse school counselors in Springfield and Holyoke Public Schools and help address the increasing mental health needs among K-12 students.
Justine Dymond, MFA, PhD, professor of English, was awarded a $500 Belchertown (Mass.) Cultural Council grant to teach a five-session sequence of memoir writing classes in Belchertown in fall 2023 called “The Examined Life: A Memoir Writing Workshop.”
Brooke Hallowell, PhD, dean of the School of Health Sciences, won a $10,000 grant from Epstein Teicher Philanthropies in 2023 for her research on “Advancing aphasia awareness, education, and advocacy: Rebuilding of identity after stroke and brain injury.”
Samuel A.E. Headley, PhD, professor of Exercise Science and graduate program director for Exercise Physiology, and Jasmin Hutchinson, PhD, professor of Exercise Science and graduate program director for Sport and Exercise Psychology, received a sub-award through a National Institute on Aging R01 grant awarded to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. The five-year project, titled “Improving outcomes from cardiac rehabilitation among older adults through exercise testing and individualized exercise intensity prescriptions” is a consortium effort that also includes the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers University, and the Henry Ford Health System. Headley will assist in objectively assessing participants' physical activity levels (using actigraph monitors) at baseline, immediately following cardiac rehab, and six months later. Hutchinson will be overseeing the administration, analysis, and interpretation of all psychological and behavioral measures. The grant was awarded in July 2022 and will run until July 2027. The preliminary work for this grant was done by Meredith Shea, who earned her doctorate in Exercise Physiology in 2020. That work formed her dissertation.
Kathleen M. Neville, EdD, associate professor and program director for the PhD in Educational Leadership, will receive $6,000 from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship Program to attend the Finnish Lapland International Forum for Education in Rovaniemi, Finland, in January 2024. She will also remain in Finland for a short period of time to speak with faculty at the University of Lapland about their teacher preparation programs.
Anne Wheeler, PhD, chair of the Department of Literature, Writing, and Journalism, and associate professor of Composition and Rhetoric, was awarded an $8,000 grant in December 2022 from the William and Lynn Foggle Holocaust Studies Fund, administered by the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts. The grant would be used to help develop courses and programming (throughout the School of Arts and Sciences) around the theme of the Holocaust and war time studies.
Members of Springfield College, Springfield Public Schools, and Holyoke Public Schools gathered recently to acknowledge the $3.29 million Department of Education grant awarded to the Springfield College Department of Counseling.
Anne Wheeler
