Outstanding Political Science Graduate Students
May 2008
Four POLS graduate students were honored at NIU’s 2008 Outstanding Graduate Student Recognition Ceremony on April 28th in the Duke Ellington Ballroom in the Holmes Student Center. Shannon Silver (pictured above with Graduate School Associate Dean Bradley Bond and Political Science Professor Barbara Burrell), undergraduate advisor, was honored as the outstanding POLS MA student. Sharon Terkel was honored as the outstanding MPA student in the Division of Public Administration. The outstanding POLS doctoral student for 2008 is Nico Harjanto, who could not attend the ceremony because he was still in Indonesia collecting data and writing his dissertation. Also, Mazen Nagi received NIU’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year Award.
In addition to the outstanding graduate student nominees, the Graduate School also recognized students who were awarded the highly competitive Dissertation Completion Fellowships. Among those honored was POLS doctoral candidate Casey LaFrance. Casey’s dissertation is investigating decisionmaking by county sheriffs and municipal police chiefs. He has also been awarded $5000 from the National Association of Counties to support his dissertation work.
