Campus News

Institute of Higher Education doctoral candidate receives two national honors

Denisa Gandara, a doctoral candidate inUGA’s Institute of Higher Education, is one of 33 students nationally awarded a 2015 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. She is also one of nine students receiving support from a minority dissertation fellowship program of the American Educational Research Association.

The Ford Foundation fellowship provides one year of support to individuals working toward completing their dissertations. The fellowships are awarded through a national competition ­administered by the National Research Council of the National Academies on behalf of the Ford Foundation.

The AERA award provides funding for travel expenses to attend the 2016 AERA annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where recipients will present their research in an invited dissertation poster ­session, along with awardees from other prestigious fellowship programs.

Gandara’s dissertation is entitled “A Seat at the Table: How Performance Funding Policies for Higher Education are Designed.”