2024 Award Recipients
2024 School Psychologist of the Year
Wendy L. Price, PsyD, NCSP, LEP
School Psychologist, Whitman-Hanson Regional High School, Whitman, MA and Associate Lecturer, University of Massachusetts Boston
Wendy Price received her PsyD in School Psychology from William James College. Throughout her 23-year career, she has worked as a practitioner at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School. She also serves as an associate lecturer and has held many leadership roles at the local, state, and national levels, including NASP President.
Wendy is invaluable to those with whom she works. She excels at designing multitiered supports for students, building relationships with teams to ensure productive communication and collaboration, demonstrating empathy and genuine interest in understanding the needs of others, and adhering to the highest standards of professional conduct.
NASP 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Stephen E. Brock, PhD, NCSP, LEP
Professor and School Psychology Program Coordinator Doctorate in Educational Leadership California State University, Sacramento
Throughout his 41-year career, Dr. Steve Brock has worked as a school psychologist, lead psychologist, professor, and school psychology program coordinator at California State University, Sacramento. Among Dr. Brock's many contributions to the field, one of the most significant was the development of the PREPaRE School Crisis Prevention and Intervention Curriculum.
Steve has served in numerous state and national leadership positions. Within NASP, he served as an Interest Group Coordinator, California Delegate, Delegate Representative, Committee Chair, Secretary, and President. He has also served on the Editorial Board of the School Psychology Review and as a Contributing Editor for Communiqué.
2024 NASP-ERT Minority Scholarship Program Awards
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Ryan Acuna
Ryan Acuna is a second-year student pursuing his Education Specialist degree in New Mexico State University. He hopes to combine his experiences to be an empathetic school psychologist committed to the growth and well-being of emergent bilinguals. His goal is to advocate for the needs and success of a diverse population and to work with families to normalize mental health.
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Pa Dao Xiong
Pa Dao Xiong is a second-generation Hmong-American pursuing an Education Specialist degree at the University of Wisconsin River Falls. She aspires to support refugee and immigrant families in understanding their child’s educational abilities. Within her community, she hopes to destigmatize and demystify special education, educational disabilities, and mental health.
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Alexus McCoy
Alexus McCoy is pursuing her Education Specialist degree at the University of Dayton. Alexus hopes to blend her passions of becoming a change agent and fostering positive and healthy relationships to make transformative change. Alexus’s journey is fueled by her desire to help address critical concerns related to mental health, social justice, whole-body wellness, the educational landscape, and interprofessional collaborations.
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Jamila Najjar
Jamila Najjar is a Muslim, first generation Palestinian American, and second-year school psychology graduate student at Cleveland State University. She is passionate about issues of social justice and advocating for minority and marginalized students through systems change and multitiered systems of support. She hopes to dedicate her practice to empowering youth to achieve their full potential.
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Ellen Zhang
Ellen Zhang is pursuing her Specialist Degree at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. She hopes to bring a critical lens to her practice that incorporates community building by establishing capacity for change and self-sufficiency in marginalized communities. Her passion is in decolonization and working with global communities impacted by colonialism and imperialism that manifest in our education system.
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Victoria Pineiro
Victoria Pineiro is a Puerto Rican and Mexican American second-year school psychology graduate student at the University of Arizona at Chandler. With a background in counseling culturally and linguistically diverse populations, she is committed to using strength-based approaches that help students and families feel safe and connected to school environments.
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Faith Heath
Faith Heath is a dedicated school psychology graduate student with over 13 years of experience combating human trafficking. Her vision aims for systemic change in communities and schools implementing protocols on human trafficking, specialized services, and trauma-informed interventions for a compassionate, inclusive academic environment.
2024 Paul H. Henkin Memorial Scholarship Award
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Jhanelle Adams
Jhanelle Adams is a PhD student at Georgia State University. She is passionate about advocating for racially and ethnically minoritized students as well as programs and policies that promote student mental health, school climate, and equitable access to high-quality educational experiences. Her current research focuses on the school climate perceptions of Black girls. She serves as the student representative on the NASP Government and Professional Relations Committee, and a member of the Georgia Association of School Psychologists legislative committee. She is a past Strategic Data Project Fellow from Harvard’s Center of Education Policy and a current Southern Regional Educational Board Doctoral Fellow.
Government and Professional Relations Awards
Rani Bauer-Pugmire
Rani Bauer-Pugmire is a school psychologist with Kent School District where she has trained interns since 2016 and accepted an additional role as a school psychologist colead in 2018. In her role as lead, she has witnessed the difficulty of fully staffing and retaining school psychologists. This sparked Rani to bring awareness to the profession, as well as ways to make the career more desirable. Her advocacy has seen results in changes that create more desirable working conditions for school psychologists in her district. Rani plans to continue promoting this career and working with her district to reduce burnout and retain quality school psychologists.
Lynn Collins
Lynn Collins is a trained school psychologist and has been the Executive Director of the South Carolina Association of School Psychologists for over 10 years. Lynn succeeded in getting school psychologists added to the critical needs list in the state and helped rewrite the school psychology certification and reciprocity guidelines for the state department of education. She has testified before a variety of committees from state legislative committees to task force groups within the education department. She remains committed to improving overall school safety, increasing access to mental health services in schools, and promoting a comprehensive model of school psychological services.
Ellen Kahn
Ellen Kahn is the Vice President of Programs and Partnerships at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation. Since joining HRC in 2005, Ellen has provided vision and deep expertise in shaping public education and advocacy efforts on behalf of LGBTQ+ youth and families. She oversees a portfolio of highly successful programs and initiatives that advance LGBTQ+ inclusive policies and practices in key institutions of daily life; All Children—All Families; Welcoming Schools; the HBCU Program, Health and Aging, and Youth Well-Being, which includes HRC’s Time to Thrive summits and the Project THRIVE campaign. As Ellen was unable to make the 2024 convention she recorded a video with her acceptance of the award. (Click her name above to see full video.)
Antoinette Miranda
Antoinette Miranda is Professor of School Psychology and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University, and she has extensive experience working in urban areas to increase the academic achievement of students. Her research is focused on issues of diversity, such as developing effective interventions with at-risk children in urban settings, consultation services in urban settings, and the development of racial identity and its relationship to academic achievement. Dr. Miranda was elected to the Ohio State Board of Education in November 2016 (District #6) and was reelected in 2020. As such, she has become active in policy development and is actively working to disrupt harmful legislation.
2024 NASP Graduate Student Research Grants
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Ellen Anderson
Ellen Anderson is a doctoral student in the School Psychology Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is advised by Dr. Katie Eklund. Prior to joining UW–Madison, Ellen received her EdS degree in School Psychology from Indiana University and worked in public education for 8 years as a school psychologist, educational development specialist, and district-wide mental health consultant. Broadly, her research interests involve equitable school-based mental health promotion. Ellen’s dissertation research will use a mixed-methods approach to examine facilitators and barriers to the equitable delivery of mental health supports following threat assessment procedures.
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Jasric Bland
Jasric Bland is a doctoral student in the School Psychology Program at the University of Memphis. Jasric’s research focuses on advocacy for underheard and undervalued voices in the educational system to promote youth wellness through creating systemic change. Her dissertation will use qualitative methodology to amplify the voices of Black school psychologists and illuminate the development of resiliency in the face of adversity and professional inequities. Beyond this study, she is interested in engaging in practices that result in powerful impacts in the lives of children, families, and broader communities through advocacy and the promotion and modeling of nondiscriminatory practices.
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Mikaela Pulse
Mikaela Pulse is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the School Psychology Program at the University of California, Riverside School of Education. Prior to this, she was a special education mathematics teacher. Her previous experiences in the classroom have greatly influenced her research interests. Mikaela’s research includes improving academic outcomes for children with disabilities and increasing the classroom management skills of teachers. In addition to her studies and research, Mikaela also spends her time dedicated to NASP’s Social Justice Interest Group of which she is a cochair.