Three from COE among UF's "Outstanding International Students"

Every April, UF honors some of its most impressive international and foreign-born students with its Outstanding International Student Awards. This year three graduate students from the College of Education made the list of award recipients.

Amrita Mukherjee, a student in the Unified Elementary Proteach Program, has excelled at coursework in special education. Mukherjee, who is from India, has shown a willingness to expand her expertise beyond the requirements of the program by examining issues related to cross-cultural aspects of gifted education.

Vasa Buraphadeja, a graduate student in Educational Technology, arrived at UF from Thailand with a strong background in the technical side of his field, but wanted to explore more of the scholarly side. In his first year at UF, he has already conducted an extensive literature review of models used to assess critical thinking skills in computer-mediated communication. In a study titled “Possible Sims, Possible Selves,” he looked at 66 narratives posted online by users of the online game “The Sims” to see if they reflected the structure and detail of “real life” narratives.

Fatma Aslan-Tutak, a graduate student in Mathematics Education, served as the lead research assistant on the Project TALL Math: Teachers as Learners Learning Mathematics. Aslan-Tutak, who is from Turkey, has also co-facilitated professional development sessions for teachers through Project TALL, and has used her insights from the program as the bases for a conference presentation and manuscripts that are currently under review for publication.