Faculty members of the College of Education nominate students they believe display a superior level of scholarship within their departments and programs; offer their time and service to the college, campus, or community; and show promise as potential leaders in the education field. This award is given each year at the College of Education Convocation Ceremony, where recipients deliver a speech to their peers.

Introducing the 2024 Outstanding Student Medal winners:

Madison Sewell is this year's Doctoral degree Outstanding Student Medal recipient. Now a two-time College of Education at Illinois degree recipient, Madison recently successfully delivered her Ph.D. dissertation defense in Educational Psychology—specifically, in the Developmental Sciences Division.

Prior to graduate school here at Illinois, Madison worked in a variety of educational contexts including a gifted-and-talented summer program in Arkansas, a high school in the Czech Republic, and an urban elementary school in Dallas, Texas.

Through these experiences, she became interested in learning more about social, emotional, and behavioral skills and their relationship to positive youth development. Her research revolves around how these skills influence academic achievement and civic engagement behaviors like volunteering, activism, informal helping, and voting during adolescence and young adulthood.

Madison is also interested in the reverse: how civic engagement influences the development of social, emotional, and behavioral skills. Among many leadership and mentoring roles during her time at Illinois, she developed and led evaluation projects for We CU: the university’s campus-wide community engagement and service program.

In his nomination of Madison for this award, Chris Napolitano, associate professor of Educational Psychology, said, “The through line of Madison’s research, mentorship, teaching, and service is her leadership abilities. Students and faculty look to Madison as a leader, and have done so since her early days here at Illinois. She can lead a team of undergraduates in class as instructor, and she can lead a group of undergraduates on a shared research project as mentor. She has led our research team as first author towards high impact publications.”

Huong Thi Dieu Nguyen is the 2024 Master’s degree Outstanding Student Medal recipient, graduating with her M.S. in Curriculum & Instruction.

Huong’s home country is Vietnam, where her exceptional educational journey began. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Vietnam, she was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to further her studies. After becoming a high school teacher, Huong continued teaching free English classes to underserved rural students and orphans in Vietnam through a program that she founded.

In 2017 Huong co-founded the “Brave Girls” project, funded by the U. S. State Department and designed to empower a large number of women and girls through leadership development, critical thinking, and civic engagement. Huong’s community service projects and educational initiatives did not stop when she moved to the United States to pursue her master’s degree. For more than seven years Huong has coordinated the Viet-Skype Project that promotes conversational English practice for Vietnamese students, connecting students with native English speakers across the world to encourage the learning of English in authentic, real-world and multi-dialect settings.

Karla Möller, professor of Curriculum and Instruction, is Huong’s academic adviser and thesis research director and says Huong is a peer leader, offering support and mentorship to other graduate students. In her nomination for this award, Dr. Möller wrote, “Ms. Nguyen demonstrates more initiative, curiosity, and motivation than any student I have had in almost 22 years at the University of Illinois. She shares her life and culture, she teaches those who need it most, she opens herself to each educational opportunity that comes her way. She is truly that exceptional person and student that all academic advisors long to have and is the epitome of what our Outstanding Student Medal winner can represent.”

Yulissa Alcantar is the 2024 Bachelor's degree Outstanding Student Medal recipient. Yuli is graduating with her degree in Curriculum and Instruction, having completed the Elementary Education program with teaching certifications in ESL, World Language in Spanish, and Bilingual Education.

According to one of her nominators, Yuli's high quality research and coursework “demonstrated a depth of thought and a clear focus on her future students." Additionally, Yuli raised the level of discussion in her classes on many occasions, helping create an atmosphere that mixed joy with a serious understanding of the responsibility ahead—to teach other people’s children inclusively and well.

While balancing multiple endorsements and a minor in Spanish on top of her rigorous and demanding teacher preparation program, Yuli also invested time mentoring fellow students on campus and within the College. She served for more than three years as an I-Connect facilitator for the university, assisting incoming freshmen with facts about campus and advice about how to succeed. At the same time, Yuli served as an Education Leader in the College—helping plan events, hold talks for student recruits, assisting with College of Education tours, and more.

Yuli's faculty nominator said, "Yuli stands out in my mind as one of the most engaged and epistemologically curious undergraduate students I have taught across the 25 years I have been teaching undergraduates at three top-tier universities. She walks the walk of being a leader among her peers who finds helping others inspiring and who develops and shares knowledge generously and without condescension."

Congratulations to our 2024 Outstanding Student Medal recipients!