Provost Lara Luetkehans
Lara Luetkehans (right) and Michelle Petrucci
Curtis Scheib (right) and Lingyan Lang
Betsy Lauber (left) and Elise Glenn
Undergraduate students Taylor Serrano (third from left) and Avery Gretz (third from right) with WGS Scholarship Subcommittee members
Kalani Palmer (right) and Sarah Wheeler
Chauna Craig (left) and Lingyan Yang
The IUP Women’s and Gender Leadership Awards Reception was a wonderful success on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. Three administrators and two faculty members were honored with IUP Outstanding Leadership Awards for advancing women’s and gender academic inclusive excellence in 2025–26 AY.
Provost Lara Luetkehans spoke to offer strong institutional support for women’s and gender inclusive excellence, which had been part of IUP’s strategic plan. Meanwhile, she emphasized the importance of the Women’s and Gender Leadership Awards for recognizing outstanding IUP staff, administrators, and faculty who contributed to this important initiative.
Elise Glenn, chief diversity and inclusion officer from the Office of Social Equity and Title IX, and Dean Curtis Scheib from the College of Arts, Humanities, Media, and Public Affairs, also spoke to strongly support women’s and gender inclusive excellence. They appreciated the important roles that the Women’s and Gender Studies program played in advocating for this cause at IUP.
Lingyan Yang, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program, introduced to the audience that the IUP Women’s and Gender Leadership Awards were inaugurated or reinstated in spring 2025, out of productive collaborations between the IUP WGS Program, the Office of Social Equity and Title IX, and the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. The awards identify, recognize, and honor annually outstanding IUP staff, administrators, and faculty leaders, who have often finished many years or several decades of distinguished and exemplary leadership to advance women’s and gender academic inclusive excellence. Many of them are overdue for recognition. Such work is more urgent and vital in challenging times.
Three outstanding undergraduate and graduate students won the WGS and Office of Social Equity Scholarship and the WGS Scholarship, $1,000 for each student winner, in 2025–26 AY. Since being inaugurated in spring 2024, these two WGS scholarships have been offered to 10 IUP women students.
Generously sponsored by the Office of Social Equity, the WGS and Office of Social Equity Scholarship annually rewards IUP graduate and undergraduate students who finish outstanding graduate or undergraduate research, extracurricular work, volunteering work, or student leadership to advance women’s, gender, sexual, or cultural inclusive excellence at IUP or in the communities.
The WGS Scholarship integrates scholarship offering and student recruitment to reward annually one undergraduate student, who is a WGS minor or is interested in becoming one, who finishes outstanding undergraduate research, extracurricular work, volunteering work, or student leadership to advance women’s and gender inclusive excellence at IUP or in the communities. These two WGS scholarships reflect modest efforts to join the rest of the IUP campus to reward outstanding IUP students who are also in need of financial assistance for the merit of their WGS work.
Warm congratulations to the awardees of the IUP Women’s and Gender Leadership Awards, 2025–26 AY!
Outstanding Leadership Honorary Award for an Administrator, Who Advances Women’s and Gender Academic Inclusive Excellence
- Lara Luetkehans, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, IUP
- Curtis Scheib, Dean, College of Arts, Humanities, Media, and Public Affairs
Outstanding Leadership Award for an Administrator, Who Advances Women’s and Gender Academic Inclusive Excellence
- Betsy Lauber, Executive Director, IUP Foundation.
Maureen McHugh Outstanding Leadership Award for a Junior Faculty Member, Who Advances Women’s and Gender Academic Inclusive Excellence
- Kalani Palmer, Professor and Assistant Chair, Dept. of Professional Studies in Education
Jane Leonard Outstanding Leadership Award for a Senior Faculty Member, Who Advances Women’s and Gender Academic Inclusive Excellence
- Chauna Craig, Director, Cooks Honors College, Professor of English, Dept. of Language, Literature, and Writing
Warm congratulations to the student winners of two WGS scholarships!
WGS and Office of Social Equity Scholarship ($1000 each)
- Taylor Serrano, major in Computer Science, minor in Mathematics
- Ariana Futch, master’s student, Clinic Mental Health Counseling
WGS Scholarship ($1000)
- Avery Gretz, major in Anthropology
Profound gratitude goes to the following cosponsors of the event: Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Office of Social Equity and Title IX, Office of International Education and Global Engagement, College of Arts, Humanities, Media, and Public Affairs, Department of Language, Literature, and Writing, and the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.
We appreciate enormously the following colleagues, who served on the three Leadership Awards subcommittees and one WGS Scholarship subcommittee in spring 2026, for their time, dedication, and beautiful presentations of colleagues’ and students’ work: Elise Glenn, Michele Petrucci, Lingyan Yang, Leslie Coates, Sarah Wheeler, Joseph Mannard, Kristin Faust, Kristine Rowley, and Jennifer McCroskey.