Local Principal Receives Fellowship for Research that Supports Mental Health and School Safety 

The Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Center for the Promotion of Mental Health and School Safety at Russell Sage College is pleased to announce that the 2023 recipient of the Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Doctoral Fellowship is Carrie Phelan.  

Phelan, a candidate in Sage’s Educational Leadership doctoral program, is principal of Knickerbacker Middle School in the Lansingburgh Central School District in Troy, New York.  Prior to becoming principal, she was assistant principal at the middle school as well as a fourth grade teacher at Rensselaer Park Elementary School where she taught for 15 years.  

Her doctoral research is entitled “Superintendents’ Well-Being and their Actions to Support the Post Pandemic Academic Recovery of their Students.” Her research takes a careful look at the current well-being of superintendents and how that directly relates to the academic recovery actions that they provide to support their students three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began.  

The Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Doctoral Fellowship is a monetary award to honor advanced scholarly research in the areas of mental health and/or school safety. Students in the Educational Leadership doctoral program at Sage’s Esteves School of Education are eligible and may apply as an individual or a team.

The fellowship was established in 2021 in honor of the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, who was a member of Cohort 6 of Sage’s doctoral program in Educational Leadership. On December 14, 2012, she and 25 others were victims of one of the nation’s most tragic school shootings. 

The mission of the The Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Center for the Promotion of Mental Health and School Safety is to explore, develop and share solutions that promote the mental health of each child and safe learning environments for all children.