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2023 Homer L. Dodge Distinguished Service Citation to be Awarded to Glenda Denicolo

2023 Homer L. Dodge Distinguished Service Citation to be Awarded to Glenda Denicolo

Glenda Denicolo2023 Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT to be Awarded to Glenda Denicolo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

College Park, MD, August 22, 2022—AAPT has announced that Glenda Denicolo will receive the association's Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT, during their 2023 Winter Meeting. Denicolo, Associate Professor at Suffolk County Community College is honored for exemplary service contributions to the mission of the American Association of Physics Teachers through exceptional leadership and motivation to the TYC community, AAPT's Committee on Physics in Two-Year Colleges, and to individual members.

Regarding her selection to receive this citation, Denicolo said, “AAPT has provided me with an invaluable sense of community, and I feel deeply honored to receive this award.”

Denicolo earned her B.S in Physics at Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil. Her M.S. in Astronomy, was from National Observatory, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. She did Postdoctoral research in Spectroscopy of globular clusters, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA.

A member of AAPT since 2008, Denicolo became a member of the Committee on Physics in Two-Year Colleges in 2015 and served as Vice Chair in 2018 and as Chair in 2020. She has provided exceptional leadership and motivation to the TYC community, AAPT's Committee on Physics in Two-Year Colleges, and to individual members personally.

Her efforts resulted in significantly reducing the isolation felt by Two-Year College Physics faculty across the nation at the beginning and through the pandemic. In her work on the Committee, she has been a consistent leader and motivator. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers across the country found themselves strangely isolated from their home institutions, many for the first time. Denicolo initiated a series of virtual committee meetings via Zoom that not only served to reunite them literally from coast to coast but to allow them to commiserate and share ideas for how to make it through what would be almost two years of unprecedented activity. She even established a YouTube channel so TYC faculty could make use of the sharing from these meetings.

In addition, Denicolo acted as the driving force behind the movement to build on previous successful professional development efforts for Two-Year College faculty in a more permanent and sustainable way. Her efforts in motivating colleagues and tirelessly working on an NSF white paper have led to the successful funding of The Organization for Physics at Two Year Colleges (OPTYCs) NSF grant that will positively affect the future of the AAPT TYC Physics community for years to come.

About the Award


Established in 1953 and renamed in recognition of AAPT founder Homer L. Dodge in 2012, the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT is presented to members in recognition of their exceptional contributions to the association at the national, sectional, or local level.

About AAPT


AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists—with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage teaching practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.