2020 International Education Award Winners
The International Education Awards recognize outstanding faculty, staff and students for their commitment to international education. Awards are given at the annual International Honorary Reception during International Education Week in November.
Selection committees composed of individuals from across the university reviewed the nominations and decided award winners. Each recipient’s record of outstanding international contributions and accomplishments was recognized as worthy of distinction and inspiring to the students, staff and faculty of Georgia State.
Dr. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
Regents Professor of Economics & Director, Public Finance Research Cluster
Dr. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez is a Regents Professor of Economics at Georgia State University and Director of the Public Finance Research Cluster at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He has published over 25 books and numerous articles in academic journals. He has advised federal and state agencies in fiscal policy in the US and over 90 countries including China, Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Mexico, and directed numerous fiscal reform projects, including the GSU $20 million USAID Fiscal Reform Project in Russia (1997-2000). He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, and he has directed or participated in more than 100 doctoral dissertations.
Learn more about Dr. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
Learn more about the Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement
Learn more about The Sheth Family Foundation’s endowment at Georgia State University
Dr. Eunice Heredia-Ortiz
Economics (Ph.D. ’06)
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Home Country: Bolivia
Dr. Eunice Heredia-Ortiz is a fiscal advisor and public finance economist with 20+ years of experience advising ministries of finance, tax administrations and international development agencies on fiscal (tax and expenditure) policy, tax administration, macro-fiscal analysis and planning, budgeting and public financial management (PFM), fiscal decentralization, public procurement modernization, transparency and anti-corruption, and gender mainstreaming in PFM, with a special focus on the health and education sectors. Her experience spans across continents including countries in Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East, providing technical thought leadership in program design and implementation, program evaluation, capacity building, and information technology (IT) transformations for PFM. Dr. Heredia-Ortiz has been recognized for her ability to think and work politically, fostering reform commitment and institutionalizing change, identifying innovative approaches, promoting adaptive management, developing tools and technologies to provide effective assistance while inculcating a performance driven culture in government planning and program implementation. Recently, she served as Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Guatemala Fiscal and Procurement Reform Project (FPRP) supporting Guatemala’s Ministry of Finance and Tax Administration to achieve more efficient tax revenue collection and improve public procurement processes by eliminating duplication, increasing automation, integrating risk management approaches, and promoting taxation and gender equality.
Learn more about Dr. Eunice Heredia-Ortiz
Learn more about the Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement
Learn more about The Sheth Family Foundation’s endowment at Georgia State University
Dr. Şeyda Özçalışkan
Associate Professor of Psychology
College of Arts & Sciences
Dr. Şeyda Özçalışkan received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and worked first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a research associate at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at Georgia State University. Her work focuses on the process of developmental change and how gesture serves as part of the mechanism of change in this process across different learners and different learning environments. As part of her research program on different learning environments, Dr. Özçalışkan has been actively involved in cross-cultural/cross-linguistic research for more than 20 years, with multiple collaborations both within and outside the US, across a variety of languages, such as Chinese, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, etc. Her global projects have received both intramural and extramural support. The findings that stemmed from these projects were published in in top-tier journals in the field of psychology, with considerable international media attention. Dr. Özçalışkan also made significant contributions to Georgia State’s global engagement activities. She mentored the work of several international postdoctoral scholars and visiting scholars, all funded with awards from prestigious international organizations, including Marie Curie Awards, Swiss National Science Foundation, Turkish National Science Foundation. She has given given keynote talks at international conferences, workshops and meetings across the globe (e.g., Spain, Norway, Germany). She has served as an invited member on international dissertation and master’s thesis committees and scientific advisory boards for international conferences.
Learn more about Dr. Şeyda Özçalışkan
Learn more about the Faculty Award for Global Engagement – Research & Scholarship
Dr. Douglas S. Gardenhire
Chair and Clinical Professor of Respiratory Therapy
Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions
Dr. Douglas S. Gardenhire is chair of the Department of Respiratory Therapy and currently serves the Lewis College as the liaison to the Office of International Initiatives. Previously, he served as the director of clinical education. In the last 20 years, he has developed courses to meet the needs of healthcare practitioners, creating the first fully online course for all university majors in 2002. He created the first study abroad course for respiratory therapy and has several educational grant programs with Taipei Medical University, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Dar Al ULoom University. Dr. Gardenhire teaches and writes about respiratory health and education. An expert in pulmonary pharmacology and aerosolized medicine, he frequently is invited to speak on these topics around the world. He is the author of Rau’s Respiratory Care Pharmacology, chapter author on Airway Pharmacology for Egan’s Fundamentals of Respiratory Care, as well as chapter author on Airway Pharmacology and Delivery of Aerosol Drug Therapy in Respiratory Care Clinical Lab Competency Manual. Dr. Gardenhire has practiced respiratory therapy since 1991. He has cared for many patients around the world, from newborns weighing less than a pound to adults suffering from emphysema as an International/Domestic Flight Therapist for the University of Alabama Hospitals and Critical Care Respiratory Therapist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Learn more about Dr. Douglas Gardenhire
Learn more about the Faculty Award for Global Engagement – Teaching, Service, & Outreach
Dr. Theo ten Brummelaar
Director of Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Theo ten Brummelaar was born and bred in Sydney, Australia and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Sydney working on the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer (SUSI). Once he completed his Ph.D., he came to Georgia State University in early 1993 as a post-doctoral fellow working with the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) then led by Dr. Harold McAlister. The work was on the design of a new interferometer being built by Georgia State called the CHARA Array, a new interferometer with more and larger telescopes than SUSI. The CHARA Array has the most telescopes and largest baseline of any device of its kind in the world . In 1996 the CHARA Array was funded by Georgia State and the National Science Foundation and Dr. Theo ten Brummelaar has been working on the Array since that time under various job titles. He is now the Director of the CHARA Array, and while he still gets to do some astronomy every now and then, most of his time these days is spent running the observatory and helping to raise the funds necessary to keep it operational and to expand its capabilities. The CHARA Array at Georgia State is a world leader in imaging stars and other high angular resolution astronomy and has active collaborations with many groups including the Universities of Paris and Nice in France, Sydney University and the Australian National University in Australia, The University of Exeter in the UK, Kyoto University in Japan, and the University of Michigan here in the US. The Array is open to anyone who wishes to apply for time to observe. It has always been a major strength of the CHARA team to encourage these national and international collaborations and many students from Georgia State and the other institutions have worked at the array and on science and engineering projects located on all campuses. It’s been nearly thirty years since Dr. Theo ten Brummelaar started this project at Georgia State and he is very proud of what the project has achieved over the years.
Learn more about the Staff Award for Global Engagement
Issiah Terry
Major : Film
School: College of the Arts
Issiah Terry is an undergraduate film student at Georgia State University. Terry has always had an interest in the arts, and discovered his passion for videography and photography while in school. His participation in the study abroad program “Filmmaking in the Steps of Beckett: Dublin, Ireland” sparked his interest in photography. He was assigned the job of director of photography during the program, and took ownership of the position while being open to learning from his more experienced peers. Terry hopes to travel the world taking pictures and filming different people and places.
Learn more about the Study Abroad Student of the Year Award
Udagamage Kushan Chathuranga Wijewardena
Major: Physics
College of Arts & Sciences
Home Country: Sri Lanka
Udagamage Kushan Wijewardena is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. He received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka, and MS in computational physics from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received MS in condensed matter physics from Georgia State University in Spring 2019 and currently continuing his work as a graduate research assistant with Dr. Ramesh Mani. His research focused on fabricating graphene-based nanodevices and studying magnetotransport in 2D electron systems such as GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures at cryogenic temperatures and high magnetic fields.As the president of the Sri Lankan Student Association(SLaSA) at Georgia State University, Mr. Wijewardena was able to bring the Sri Lankan cultural values to the spotlight with the support of fellow members. SLaSA won the ISAC organization of the year award for the fabulous work performed as an international student organization, and Mr. Wijewardena received the ISAC leader of the year award in spring 2020. He has also served in the Physics Graduate Student Association committee in several positions throughout the years and continuing his work to support the Georgia State student community.
Learn more about the International Graduate Student of the Year Award
The 2020 International Honorary reception was a virtual event. Thank you to all attendees who joined the Office of International Initiatives in recognizing the award recipients.
Watch the winners accept their awards below.
