UW–Madison alumna Erin Hastey, who graduated with a PhD from the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in 2023, has received the Dissertation of the Year Award from the Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC).
For over a decade, Hastey “has empowered organizational leaders to move from conflict to connected action,” notes her CSCC bio. She works as a consultant to board members and executives to develop highly effective governing boards.
Hastey’s research focuses on how board effectiveness aligns with organizational outcomes. Her dissertation, written with support from her mentor and adviser Xueli Wang, UW–Madison’s Barbara and Glenn Thompson Professor in Educational Leadership, focuses on board effectiveness in community college districts.
CSCC’s Dissertation of the Year award, issued annually, is given to recent doctoral graduates that “demonstrate excellence in scholarly inquiry, illustrate originality of thought, and include significant findings that make a substantial contribution to the extant literature on community colleges; that shed new light on how issues and challenges facing community colleges are researched, theorized, and interpreted; and/or that potentially could have an important effect on community college policy and/or practice.”
Hastey was honored during CSCC’s 65th annual conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, earlier this month.