The UNC School of Education honored three faculty members at a Celebration of Scholarly Excellence, with one named to an endowed professorship and two named as faculty scholars, during an Oct. 28 event at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.
With faculty, staff, alumni, and more in attendance, Nianbo Dong, Ph.D., was announced as the Guy B. Phillips Professor. Dong was unable to attend but will be invested at a future event. Faculty members Matthew Bernacki, Ph.D., and Marisa Marraccini, Ph.D., were invested as the Kinnard White Faculty Scholar in Education and the Donald and Justeen Tarbet Faculty Scholar, respectively.
Malbert Smith III (’77 M.Ed., ’80 Ph.D.), alumnus and MetaMetrics co-founder who made possible the Kinnard White Faculty Scholar in Education honor, and Kin White, Ph.D., professor emeritus, were also in attendance for the event.
“Nianbo, Matt, and Marisa are outstanding scholars in their respective fields of research,” said Jill Hamm, Ph.D., interim dean of the School. “Their forward-thinking and collaborative work is creating lasting and meaningful impact in the lives of learners and educators – which certainly makes them deserving of these honors.
“Malbert Smith’s support of our scholars through recognitions including the Kinnard White Faculty Scholar is invaluable,” Hamm said. “To have Malbert and Kin White in the room is a reminder of the School’s legacy of research with impact. We are proudly carrying on that work to change the world for the better through research.”
Read more about the recognized faculty members and the namesakes of their titles:
Nianbo Dong, Ph.D.
Guy B. Phillips Professor
Nianbo Dong is a quantitative methodologist whose work addresses statistical issues that arise in experimental studies that involve nested data structures – specifically, children and teachers in classrooms and schools, receiving treatment or not, over time. In essence, the innovative research he does enables other researchers to do their work even better and more rigorously. Within his research, he has focused primarily on two areas: power analysis and propensity score analysis. He is also an active collaborator with research teams across the United States that study critical substantive educational issues in early childhood education, social-emotional learning, and teacher professional development programs.
He has published over 40 articles in leading methodological journals. A unique feature of Dong’s scholarship is that he is lead developer on multiple published, publicly available, and widely used software packages, including PowerUp!, PowerUp!-Moderator, and PowerUp!-Mediator, which involve calculating power and minimal detectable effect size differences for experimental and quasi-experimental design studies, and for mediator and moderator effects in cluster randomized controlled trials. Again, for researchers who do this kind of work, his software packages are invaluable.
Currently, Dong is PI or Co-PI of three methodology grants and has been PI or co-PI on nine completed grants from the Institute for Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation. He is also a recipient of a prestigious NSF CAREER award. In total, he has led or contributed to more than $19 million in external funding.
The Guy B. Phillips Professorship honors Guy B. Phillips, a distinguished figure in North Carolina’s education landscape who served as a teacher, principal, and superintendent before becoming a prominent faculty member in education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1936-1961. Phillips served as dean of the UNC School of Education from 1948-1954. At Carolina, in addition to training the state’s future education leaders and administrators, Phillips revitalized the University’s work with North Carolina’s public school system to benefit educators and students.
Matthew Bernacki, Ph.D.
Kinnard White Faculty Scholar in Education
Matthew Bernacki is a leading scholar in education psychology, learning sciences, and learning analytics – a field that has derived insights from artificial intelligence long before ChatGPT landed on the front page of the newspaper. His research focuses on the roles that motivations and metacognitive processes play when learners use technologies like intelligent tutoring systems and learning management systems. His scholarly work also includes the development of interventions and software to promote effective learning strategies and motivation to learn, and the development of learning materials and environments that personalize learning to students’ interests.
Bernacki earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Temple University and then served as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University’s LearnLab from 2010-2013. He then joined the faculty at the University of Nevada Las Vegas College of Education, where he was an assistant professor from 2013-2018. Bernacki joined the UNC School of Education faculty in 2018 as an assistant professor. From 2021-2024, he was one of the School’s Donald and Justeen Tarbet Faculty Scholars.
At UNLV and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bernacki’s research has been marked by collaboration. At Carolina he has worked with partners in the College of Arts and Sciences and colleagues within the School of Education to help Carolina students in STEM courses improve their learning and succeed academically in challenging introductory courses. Using digital data – the data produced by students as they engage with course technologies such as the learning management system – Bernacki and his team have been able to accurately predict which students would need support to pass the class and then provide personalized materials to help them get back on track. And he can make these accurate predictions in the very first few weeks of class, helping students avoid getting so far behind it becomes too difficult to catch up. Bernacki and his collaborators’ work holds great promise for learners at nearly every level.
Bernacki has a strong record of external funding, serving as PI and as a Co-PI on National Science Foundation and Institute of Educational Sciences-funded studies totaling more than $15 million. Most recently, it was announced that Bernacki would serve as Co-PI on a $1 million IES grant that will study an intervention aimed at curbing procrastination among college students. The project will leverage CLICKSTREAM, a learning analytics platform developed by Dr. Bernacki’s team that aggregates, understands, and then utilizes student-generated data in learning management systems and other digital systems to more accurately and descriptively understand how students learn.
Bernacki’s body of work includes more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, with 14 as lead author. His articles have appeared in some of the most prominent journals of educational psychology and related fields. He has edited or co-edited 11 book and handbook chapters and has either led or been part of a research team that has presented nearly 150 conference presentations or reports.
The Kinnard White Faculty Scholar in Education honors Kin White, professor emeritus of educational psychology, who retired in 1998 after 31 years at Carolina. At the School of Education, White taught measurement and evaluation to graduate and undergraduate students, directed extensive student research, and won several graduate teaching awards. He also helped to launch the School’s middle school program.
Marisa Marraccini, Ph.D.
Donald and Justeen Tarbet Faculty Scholar
Marisa Marraccini is a leading school psychology scholar whose research and practice agenda seeks to prevent suicide among adolescents, one of the leading causes of death among school-aged youth in the U.S. Our faculty, our students, and the state of North Carolina are truly and deeply fortunate to benefit from her groundbreaking and vital work.
Marraccini earned a Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Rhode Island in 2015 and then served as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University before joined the UNC School of Education as an assistant professor in fall 2017. She was tenured as an associate professor in 2023.
In her work, Marraccini has studied the reintegration of adolescents into school environments following psychiatric hospitalization — a period during which they are at extremely high risk for making a suicide attempt. She has also studied the practices of high schools across the country to help youth reintegrate into school and has developed guidance for making those transitions successful.
But Marraccini’s research does not stop at understanding these challenges; she works to implement novel solutions. With a K23 award, created by the National Institute of Mental Health to support promising early-career scientists, Marraccini developed a virtual reality program to help adolescents hospitalized for suicidal thoughts and behaviors to develop the skills they need to return to school. With a C. Felix Harvey Award, earned here at UNC-Chapel Hill, she is co-designing with area young people a social media campaign to promote mental health.
Marraccini’s scholarly output includes more than 50 refereed journal articles in field-leading publications, three co-authored book chapters, and more than 60 refereed conference presentations.
Marraccini is either principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants totaling $2.2 million from federal and private entities that include the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, MQ Mental Health, and more.
She is currently working with fellow faculty members Dana Griffin, Ph.D., and Constance Lindsay, Ph.D., on research that aims to prevent suicide among Black youth.
The Donald and Justeen Tarbet Faculty Scholar in Education honors the memory of Donald Tarbet, a longtime UNC School of Education faculty member and former dean of the UNC Summer School, and his wife, Justeen. Through their estate, the Tarbets provided the School of Education with $3 million in endowed funding to support faculty members in their development of innovative educational interventions and programs.