Joy Gaston Gayles, head of the NC State College of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development and an Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of higher education, has been selected as the recipient of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group (SIG) Distinguished Senior Scholar Award.
The Distinguished Scholar Award honors an exceptional body of work from a senior scholar that has significantly impacted research in education and sports. Gayles’ research focus areas include intercollegiate athletics in higher education.
“When I received the notice that I was nominated and selected for the Distinguished Senior Scholar Award for the AERA Research Focus on Education and Sport SIG, it honestly made my week. The notification sent me down memory lane to a time when it felt like I was one of the few higher education scholars studying college sports and the student-athlete experience,” Gayles said.
Gayles reflects that, at the start of her career, the study of student athletes was not considered a “serious” area of scholarship. Not only did she feel isolated in her work, but she had to struggle against the odds and navigate a narrow research environment to have her work published.
As part of her dissertation work, she created and validated an instrument called the Student Athlete Motivation towards Athletics and Academics Questionnaire (SAMSAQ). It has since become one of the most downloaded articles in the Journal of College Student Development, has been cited more than 200 times, and has been translated and used in other countries. Another of Gayles’ articles, which examines academic and athletic motivation in college athletes at a Division I institution, has been cited more than 400 times.
More than 20 years after those publications, Gayles notes that there is a significant group of scholar leaders actively engaged in research related to intercollegiate athletics, including Joseph Cooper, Ezinne Ofoegbu ’21PHD1, Kirsten Hextrum, Wayne Black, Siduri Haslerig and Cherese Fine.
“Receiving this award is a reminder to me, and I hope it’s encouragement to emerging scholars, to stay committed to what you’re passionate about and to know your ‘why,’” Gayles said. “Do not let others and/or hard circumstances minimize and/or get in the way of what you’re passionate about pursuing and studying. I hope I’ve modeled that through my work in ways that continue to benefit our field and permit others to do the same.”