December 1, 2014
Morales receives TRIO Achiever Award
Amanda R. Morales, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction and diversity coordinator, received the Mid-America Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel's 2014 TRIO Achiever Award for her outstanding personal and professional accomplishments.
Morales was a McNair Scholar from 1997-1998. The McNair Scholars Program is one of several national TRIO programs. She received the award on Nov. 11 at the association's annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
As an undergraduate, Morales was an outstanding student and was on the President's Honor Roll from 1996-1998. As a master's student at Texas Christian University she was the recipient of the Bearden Foundation Scholarship from 2002-2005. As a doctoral student, Morales was selected as the 2011 College of Education's Outstanding Graduate Student. Her dissertation was awarded the American Education Research Association Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2012 and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2013. As a faculty member at Kansas State, Morales has eight co-authored, refereed journal articles, six book chapters, and several funded grant proposals. She also has presented her research at regional and national conferences.
In addition to her very busy schedule, Morales finds the time to mentor McNair Scholars and serve as a panelist for McNair Scholar seminars on Graduate Education. She is a highly regarded speaker. In 2012, she was the keynote speaker at the McNair Scholars Banquet. In 2013, she was the keynote speaker at the McNair Scholars Heartland Conference in Kansas City, Missouri.