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Two members of the Lycoming College faculty were recognized at the annual Lycoming College Honors Convocation on Sunday, April 13, for their excellence in teaching.
Plankenhorn Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence
The 2025 Plankenhorn Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence was presented to Betty McCall, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology. McCall joined the faculty at Lycoming College in 2004 and teaches courses on race and ethnicity, aging, health and illness, program evaluation, and grant writing. Her primary interests are applied research and community engagement.
McCall’s work includes partnering with the community action group on the Communities Empowering Youth Program to enhance capacity building with local agencies, evaluation of county AmeriCorps programs, and collaboration with Pennsylvania College of Technology construction students and Lycoming students in the grant writing class to assist the Lycoming County Coroner in building a facility for the storage of unclaimed cremains. She has also examined connections of the response to changing racial demographics within a rural community to racialization, colorblindness, and white privilege. Currently, she is working with local emergency management agencies to resolve the overutilization and high costs of medical lifts due to the increased incidence of falls.
McCall earned a bachelor’s degree from Lamar University and a master’s degree from Baylor University, as well as both a master’s and a doctoral degree from Vanderbilt University.
Junior Faculty Teaching Award
Kimberly Kohler, Ph.D., assistant professor of education, was awarded the 2025 Junior Faculty Teaching Award. She teaches special education coursework, advises students seeking certification in special education, including dual certifications, art, music, and modern languages.
In addition, Kohler, who joined Lycoming in Fall 2020, serves as faculty advisor for Lycoming’s chapter of international education honor society Kappa Delta Pi and the Student Pennsylvania State Education Association. She is also a member of the Council for Exceptional Children (Teacher Education Division), PA CEC, and the Pennsylvania Association of College and Teacher Educators.
Kohler’s research explores ways to cultivate greater well-being and resilience of educators through professional development opportunities and mentoring experiences. More specifically, she is interested in ways to increase teacher retention, effectiveness, and resilience by fostering greater physiological and psychological well-being, emotion regulation, stress management, and compassion through mindfulness, yoga, and other contemplative practices.
She earned her doctoral degree in special education, a professional certification in interdisciplinary education sciences, a master’s degree in special education, and a bachelor’s degree in French with a minor in psychology, all from The Pennsylvania State University. Prior to her return to graduate school, Kim was a learning support teacher for more than 13 years at Park Forest Middle School in State College, Pa.