News & Notes
Boldt, Rothwell recognized as distinguished professors
Kristine Altland
College welcomes recruitment director Kristine Altland joined the College of Education as director of recruitment and student engagement in January. She came to the college from the Penn State Undergraduate Admissions Office, where she was an outof-state recruiter. In her role in the college, Altland works to recruit and retain prospective undergraduate students through a combination of virtual and in-person programming. With the help of the College of Education Student Council and active alumni volunteers, she welcomes prospective families, connects them to Penn State and helps them to learn more about the student experience in the college. Altland earned a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs from the College of Education, and a bachelor’s degree in English literature and writing from University of Redlands in California. As a graduate assistant in the Higher Education Program, Altland worked with the Parents Program in Student Affairs and with the Presidential Leadership Academy. 2 Penn State Education
Gail Boldt and William Rothwell have been awarded the title of distinguished professor in the College of Education at Penn State. Gail Boldt The distinguished professor title, awarded by Penn State’s Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. This special academic title is bestowed upon a limited number of outstanding professors for whom endowed chairs or professorships are otherwise unavailable.
“Drs. Boldt and Rothwell have reached this pinnacle through their dedication to their respective areas of expertise and the deep care they have shown their students and colleagues,” said Dean Kimberly Lawless. “I am thrilled their careers here at Penn State have been recognized by their peers and the University. I can’t wait to continue to partner with them on the next chapter of their academic journeys.” Boldt, professor of education (language and literacy education) and women’s studies, joined the faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) in 2007 as associate professor. She was promoted to professor in 2014. “This recognition is the highlight of my 15 years at Penn State,” said Boldt. “My teaching, research and service are all shaped through my commitment to addressing how experiences of success and failure are constituted in school through expectations for normative forms of participation. My goal is to increase our understanding of children’s lives through counter-narratives and pedagogic alternatives
that challenge traditional approaches that pathologize and marginalize children.” Boldt defines herself as a curriculum theorist William Rothwell with interests in literacies, elementary and early childhood education, identity and postidentity, childhood studies, cultural studies and disability studies. She works primarily with narrative research, drawing analytic lenses from Deleuzo-Guattarian, poststructural and psychoanalytic theories. Rothwell, professor of education (workforce education) in the Department of Learning and Performance Systems (LPS), joined the College of Education in 1993 as a tenured associate professor of human resource development. He was promoted to professor in 1997. “It is an honor to be named a distinguished professor in the College of Education at Penn State. However, I was even more humbled when I learned that over 100 of my past students advocated for this nomination,” Rothwell said. “Developing future scholars and leaders has been, and continues to be, one of my primary passions.” Rothwell has been professor-incharge of the Workforce Education and Development Program, and with the help of alumnus and current faculty member Wes Donahue, worked to create the Master of Professional Studies in Organization Development and Change. Since it launched in 2014, it has become a feeder program for the doctoral program. Read more on Penn State News at https://bit.ly/3oSuKoS online.
