Anne Foegen, assistant professor in curriculum and instruction at Iowa State, received the 1995 Bruce Balow Dissertation Award from the University of Minnesota.

The award was set up in honor of Balow, a founder of the school of psychology and the special education program at Minnesota and an international leader in special education.

Balow died at a young age and his friends and colleagues started a memorial fund that continues the award. It is given in recognition of outstanding special education dissertations.

This is the first year the award has been presented.

Susan Rose, an associate professor at Minnesota, said Foegen’s research was focused on secondary education and mass problem solving skills.

Foegen’s dissertation had a theoretical component and a strong applied component that teachers could use, Rose said, and it had a strong research design.

Foegen, who joined the ISU faculty in August, based her research on the measures and procedures that teachers could use to monitor the progress of students with disabilities in math. Her work was part of her doctoral degree program at Minnesota.

Foegen said she found that simple, frequent tests on a regular or weekly basis were more effective in gauging the progress of students than the conventional standardized tests.

These tests, she said, helped teachers adjust to the students’ needs more readily.

“I hope to continue in this area of research and develop these techniques so [teachers] can monitor the student effectively and enhance learning,” Foegen said. “I will be focusing on how technology can be applied in special education.”

Foegen is now teaching a 200-level course in special education at ISU and is supervising graduate and undergraduate student teachers in the department.

“I’m enjoying my work a great deal. This is a very supportive environment. The faculty within the department is very interested in preparing students well … to be good teachers,” Foegen said. “They are very interested in good teaching, and have been very helpful to me.”