President's Award

2025 President’s Award Nominee

Dr. Brent W. Ambrose is the 2025 recipient of The President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Brent W. Ambrose is the Jason and Julie Borrelli Faculty Chair in Real Estate and Professor, Director of the Borrelli Institute for Real Estate Studies, and Director of the Smeal College Ph.D. Program at the Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business. Prior to joining Penn State, he held faculty appointments at the University of Kentucky, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was a Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business from 1997 to 1998, and a Visiting Economist with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1991.

In 2010, Dr. Ambrose was elected President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA). In 2016, he received AREUEA’s George Bloom Award for outstanding contributions to the field of real estate academics. He is the Dean and Fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics at the Hoyt Institute, a Fellow of the Real Estate Research Institute, and in 2006 was appointed a Fellow of the FDIC Center for Financial Research. Dr. Ambrose is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and was co-editor of Real Estate Economics from 2015 to 2020. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Real Estate Research Institute.

He has published over 85 refereed articles in the fields of real estate and finance. His work appears in The Journal of Finance, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Money Credit and Banking, The Journal of Financial Intermediation, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Financial Management, Financial Analysts Journal, Real Estate Economics, Review of Finance, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, and Journal of Housing Economics. He also co-edited Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages, published by Palgrave/MacMillian. According to Google Scholar, his work has generated over 6,000 citations.

Dr. Ambrose specializes in real estate finance, corporate finance, and fixed income security analysis. His research interests include issues related to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), loss mitigation programs associated with mortgage default and foreclosure, Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), fixed-income securities, and consumer credit contracts. He has consulted with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the Congressional Budget Office on several occasions regarding issues concerning FHA mortgage default and foreclosure, economically targeted assets, privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the GSEs’ affordable housing goals. He holds a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Georgia and a B.S. in Business from Wake Forest University.

2024 President’s Award Nominee

Dr. Kenan Ünlü is the 2024 recipient of The President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Dr. Ünlü is a professor of nuclear engineering the Director of Radiation Science and Engineering Center (RSEC). His expertise lies in the development and applications of neutron irradiation and neutron beam techniques for advancement of scientific knowledge and technological innovation. With over thirty years of experience in research reactor administration, Dr. Ünlü has consistently demonstrated exemplary leadership in advancing scientific and technological frontiers. He conducted many research projects at university research reactors with awards of research funds for development and utilizations of these reactors while fulfilling all the safety and security requirements for Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed research reactor facilities.

Dr. Ünlü transformed RSEC into a world-class facility for both teaching, research, and service. He initiated and led for the development of nuclear security and radiochemistry education and research programs at Penn State. Both programs are crucial for educating the next generation of both national and international technical experts in these fields. He is strongly engaged in research and outreach activities with public and private entities. He garnered significant national and international recognition and funds. More than twenty industrial and government entities utilize RSEC facilities for radiation services, research, and development for every year. He earned several national and international awards and honors, including 2020 Radiation Science and Technology award from the American Nuclear Society, Isotopes and Radiation Division. He is currently in the process of installing a small angle neutron scattering (SANS) facility at RSEC. The RSEC will be the only university research reactor facility to have SANS capability in the USA.

2023 President’s Award Nominee

Christina Grozinger has received the 2023 President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Christina Grozinger, Department of Entomology, College of Agricultural Sciences has received the 2023 President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Christina Grozinger is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology, and the Director for the Center for Pollinator Research and Insect Biodiversity Center at Penn State University. Her research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying behavior and health in bees and developing strategies to manage and conserve bee populations. Her program is interdisciplinary, and fosters collaborations among scientists and educators from multiple Colleges, Centers and Institutes within Penn State and beyond. Grozinger uses her research program as a platform for teaching, outreach, extension, and for training the next generation of scientists to tackle emerging challenges in agriculture and conservation.

Grozinger uses an integrative approach – from genomics to ecology – to study social behavior and health in bees. With the Beescape Team, Grozinger is developing decision support tools to predict bee health at local scales, to help individuals better assess and mitigate the stressors that bees experience. With a team of entomologists, computer scientists, and engineers, Grozinger is helping develop tools for automated insect monitoring in the field. Grozinger has published more than 140 research articles, 6 book chapters, and 7 extension articles, which have received more than 16,000 citations.

2022 President’s Award Nominee

Dermot Groome has received the 2022 President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Dermot Groome is the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Groome is a former national and international prosecutor who teaches criminal law, human rights and international criminal law. Groome is the author of the Handbook of Human Rights Investigation (2nd ed. 2011, foreword by Richard J. Goldstone). The Humanitarian Law Center considers it a “cornerstone text” in human rights and Amnesty International calls it “an invaluable tool for those committed to documenting human rights abuses.” In 2017, HHRI was translated into Arabic for distribution to human rights advocates in Iraq and Syria.

Groome, who led several significant war crimes prosecutions before joining Penn State, uses his life experiences to reshape and improve the curriculum at Penn State. Among them was the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 people in Srebrenica in 1995. Learn more.

2021 President’s Award Nominee

Dr. Kristin Buss has received the 2021 President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Dr. Kristin Buss is the Tracy Winfree and Ted H. McCourtney Professor in Children, Work, and Families, and Professor of Psychology & Human Development and Family Studies; and head of the Department of Psychology in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts. Dr. Buss is a developmental scientist whose research focuses on behavioral, biological and environmental factors associated with the development of childhood and teen anxiety symptoms. Her work spans multiple areas of research in the realm of social development, psychobiology and neuroscience. Her interest lies in the mechanisms of emotional development as they relate to temperament and anxiety development. Dr. Buss’ work is routinely funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and has resulted in the research group Parents and Children Together (PACT), which she founded and led until 2019. PACT is an interdisciplinary group of researchers who work with the greater Harrisburg community to focus on mutually beneficial research endeavors.

2020 President’s Award Nominee

Dr. Laura Guertin is a Professor of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State Brandywine, with an undergraduate degree in geology and Ph.D. in marine geology & geophysics from the University of Miami. Guertin’s primary research focus is the effective integration of innovative technologies to improve student learning in introductory-level geoscience courses, and the use of technology to advance scientific and information literacy in students. In addition to receiving campus and university-wide teaching awards, she has been recognized at the national level with the Geological Society of America’s Biggs Earth Science Teaching Award, elected as a Geological Society of America Fellow, and recognized as one of INSIGHT Into Diversity’s Top 100 Women in STEM. In 2008, she was awarded a U.S. Congressional Citation for her work in civic and community engagement. She blogs on geoscience education, educational technology and science communication for the American Geophysical Union (GeoEd Trek).

2019 President’s Award Nominee

Dr. Michael Berkmanis the 2019 recipient of The President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.

Berkman is a professor of Political Science, director of The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, and co-host of the Democracy Works podcast. His research on U.S. state politics and public policy has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. He has written three books, including with Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle for Control of America’s Classrooms (with Eric Plutzer). That work won the Don K. Price Award from the American Political Science Association, which annually recognizes the best book on science, technology, and environmental politics.

Berkman also has received the Raymond Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social or Life Sciences Award, which recognizes a tenured faculty member in the College of the Liberal Arts who has demonstrated excellence in research and scholarship in the social or life sciences. Berkman directs the Political Science honors program and has long served as an honors adviser. The College has honored Berkman for his service with the Outstanding Faculty Advising Award and Susan Welch Alumni Relations Award.

The President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration