Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education

Please join us in congratulating the 2012 PAGE Award Winners:

The 2012 Nicholas Green Distinguished Student Award:

Emily Laurore, 10, is a sixth grader at Coudersport Elementary School and has participated in Gifted and Talented programming since kindergarten.   She is already one-year full grade skipped but Emily and her family are exploring the school district’s recommendation for further academic acceleration for the 2012-13 school year.

Emily placed first in the school science fair, health division; after placing first in the school Spelling Bee, she competed in the Western Pennsylvania Spelling Bee for two consecutive years, finishing 6th in 2011 and 3rd in 2012; she consistently achieves highest or second highest point total in the Accelerated Reading Program for her entire school; she is a member of the Sixth Grade Choir and Show Choir and has organized school dances to benefit St. Jude Hospital, among other things.

Emily takes extra courses online through the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and studies French.  She is a pianist and competitive gymnast who placed third on the Floor Exercise at the USAG Pennsylvania Level 4 States competition.  She is on her church flag team and volunteers at a local nursing home assisting dementia patients.  Emily wants to become a neurosurgeon, and is eager to continue her accelerated studies so that she can “start saving lives sooner.”

The 2012 PAGE Service and Scholarship Award:

Calista Frederick-Jaskiewicz, 15, of Wexford, is the founder and CEO of Origami Salami, an original program which inspires learners to think outside the book about STEM subjects by studying folding (proteins, DNA, RNA, the brain, robotics, and computer applications), and its community service spin-off, Folding for Good, through which she and her affiliate chapters in Ohio and Texas engineer events highlighting the fun of STEM through origami. Calista wrote an engineering course for middle schoolers called Investigation: Paper Engineering, which was published in June 2011 by a national curriculum provider. Origami Salami has been recognized nationally, regionally, and locally; the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance has cited Calista as “…a pioneer and a leader in advocating for STEM education.”

Calista is a Davidson Institute Young Scholar Ambassador and 2011THINKer; a second year member of the NASA Online Learning Community; a 2012 National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Aspirations in Computer Science National Runner-Up; and a 2012 Kids are Heroes honoree. She has lobbied for gifted education in Harrisburg twice by paging for House Leader Mike Turzai and making staff visits. She is a pianist, violist with the Three Rivers Young Peoples’ Orchestra, and nine-time State Taekwondo Champion. Calista volunteers as a musician for various organizations; as a Junior Taekwondo Instructor; and at Animal Friends, a no-kill shelter in Pittsburgh, where she organizes groups to make safe toys for shelter cats out of recycled socks in a program called Operation Happy Sock.

Calista is a student at the PA Cyber Charter School and is a dual enrollee at Robert Morris University, School of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science.

Visit Calista on the web: 

www.origamisalami.com

www.facebook.com/origamisalami1

www.STEMplanet.org

2012 PAGE Distinguished Parent Award:

First and foremost, Kimm Ebersole is a wife and mother of two sons. She also founded the Radnor chapter of PAGE. She used her skills as a small business owner to draw interest in our chapter from the community and to organize meetings with RTSD administrators to discuss issues regarding gifted services. For about five years, she led Radnor PAGE over many hurdles as it became a voice for students and parents in Radnor. Her optimism and professionalism shaped the image of Radnor PAGE as a thoughtful group of parents with a desire to be part of the solution. Kimm’s early leadership as a parent advocate set the tone of cooperation and commitment that continues to this day.

2012 PAGE Outstanding Educator Award:

Dana Boyd, Marshall and Ingomar Middle Schools (North Allegheny School District), has been a teacher and administrator in the Gifted and Talented Programs for 23 of her 25 year professional teaching career.  Mrs. Boyd received her B.S. degree from the University of Kansas and also has a certificate in Gifted Education from Carlow College. 

Mrs. Boyd consistently creates innovative, customized Individualized Options (IO’s) for her students; designs or implements, and coordinates, large extracurricular enrichment events and programs, including Globe Quest, Word Smith, Write On!, Book Bonanza, and Back in Time; networks gifted programs, including Olympics of the Mind, to include gifted students of surrounding school districts; and continues to develop several student lunchtime learning adventures, notably Anagram Lunches.

For the past two years, Mrs. Boyd has served on the North Allegheny Gifted Review Committee; she chairs the Research Committee on Best Practices in Gifted Education. She assists in district staff development in the field of gifted education, and has taught Differentiated Instruction for Very Able Learner, a course she co-developed, in her district.

2012 Neuber-Pregler Award:

The 2012 Neuber-Pregler Award winner Dr. Mary Ann Swiatek personifies this year’s conference theme of Unwrapping Gifted Potential: every day, everywhere, every school. While earning her B.A. from Oberlin College and M.S. and Ph.D from Iowa State University, her professional activities included being a predoctoral Fellow for Educational Testing Service in New Jersey; a graduate research assistant for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) at Iowa State University; and a psychology intern at the Hutchings Psychiatric Center, Syracuse, New York.  Mary Ann then became a professor of psychology at SUNY, Fredonia, New York, and Lafayette College in Easton, PA.  From 2000-2004 she also worked as a research specialist for Carnegie Mellon Institute for Talented Elementary and Secondary Students (C-MITES), where she designed, conducted, wrote and published research studies on various aspects of giftedness in school-age children and provided workshops for teachers and parents.

A member of the National Association for Gifted Children and the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education, Mary Ann served as PAGE’s Higher Education Liaison from 2004-2007.  When other commitments prevented her from serving on the PAGE Board, she continued as a member of PAGE’s Speakers Bureau to travel around Eastern PA talking to the parents and teachers in local affiliates.  Her professional expertise, warm personality, and dedication to gifted children make her a popular speaker at workshops and conferences across the state and nation.  In addition to this and other PAGE conferences, Mary Ann has been a participant in the biennial Wallace National Research Symposium on Talent Development, Iowa City, IA; the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development Opportunities for the Future Parent Conference, Evanston, IL; National Association for Gifted Children conferences in Cincinnati, OH and Kansas City, MO; the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, MA; and the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.

Unbeknownst to many she is a wonderful, willing resource for the volunteers who answer the PAGE Helpline and for other PAGE Board members.  She was a key contributor of ideas and language that were incorporated into the most recent revision of Chapter 16 and has been a stakeholder in other meetings with the PA Department of Education.  A facilitator of online seminars for the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, Mary Ann has written articles for not only PAGE publications (UPDATE and Bulletin), but also for Gifted Child Quarterly; Journal of Educational Psychology;  Journal for the Education of the Gifted; Journal of Secondary Gifted Education; Journal for Research in Mathematics Education; Journal of Youth and Adolescence; and Roeper Review.  Other articles of hers have appeared in Encyclopedia of giftedness, creativity, and talent; Handbook for Counselors Serving Students with Gifts and Talent; and Gifted Child Today; as well as in materials used by the Oregon Association of Talented and Gifted; the New South Wales Association for Gifted and Talented Children in Australia, and the Tasmanian Association for the Gifted. She recently opened a private practice in Center Valley, PA, that includes evaluations and counseling for gifted children and adolescents.

It is with great pleasure that PAGE recognizes the professional and personal contributions Mary Ann Swiatek has made every day to gifted children, their parents, and educators in every school everywhere—across the region, state, the nation, and the world.