Faculty members Kroll, Schuhmann share International Achievement Award

Judith F. Kroll, distinguished professor of psychology, linguistics and women’s studies in the College of the Liberal Arts, and Richard Schuhmann, assistant professor of engineering and director of the Engineering Leadership Development Program in the College of Engineering, are co-recipients of the W. LaMarr Kopp International Achievement Award for faculty.

Established in 1995, the award recognizes faculty and staff members who have contributed significantly to the advancement of the international mission of the University. It is named for the late deputy vice president for international programs.

A renowned psycholinguist and worldwide leader in the field of bilingualism, Kroll has been active in promoting collaborative research and exchanges on the cognitive basis of bilingualism and second language learning. She is the founder and driving force of the Penn State Center for Language Science, which brings together scholars from two colleges and seven departments, and has had a major impact on Penn State’s leading role in the international community of research on bilingualism.

One of three founders of Women in Cognitive Science (WICS), an NSF-funded organization supporting the professional development of women in cognitive science and related fields, she has been central in extending these efforts internationally, organizing WICS activities at meetings of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology.

Kroll, who holds a doctoral degree in experimental psychology from Brandeis University and a bachelor's degree in psychology from New York University, was a visiting professor in The Netherlands at Leiden University in 2000 and the University of Nijmegen in 1999-2000.

Schuhmann’s teaching and research activities have formed sustainable relationships between students and faculty overseas and in the United States and have created programs that engage Penn State faculty and students with people in developing communities around the world. His engineering leadership development students work with Hungarian economics students on socially relevant projects in the developing world, and this semester are working with communities in Peru, Jamaica and Morocco.

His students are exposed to global cultures through projects such as building a schoolhouse in Cambodia and drilling a well in a small village in Morocco. Each spring break, he hosts a one-week water resources workshop, attended by his students and their Moroccan counterparts, at the Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs, the premiere engineering university in Rabat, Morocco. The course exposes the students to a critical resource challenge and helps to break down the walls of misunderstanding that can exist between people in the United States and the Arab world.

Schuhmann holds a doctoral degree in environmental engineering from Penn State, a master's degree in environmental engineering from the University of Houston and a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of New Hampshire.