Josie Bryan, a Boise State Master of Public Health alum, continues to be a star student and future educator all the way across the country. A Ph.D. student and graduate research assistant in Family, Youth and Community Sciences at the University of Florida, Bryan recently received a 2025 Graduate Student Teaching Award.
“This means the world to me,” Bryan said. “I have been incredibly lucky to have many amazing mentors who have inspired my teaching practices both at Boise State and the University of Florida and my undergraduate cohorts have been gracious in their support of my development as an educator.
Each year, the University of Florida’s graduate school recognizes the most “industrious and innovative” graduate teaching students — and Bryan’s innovative and human-centered approach to teaching landed her on this year’s list.
In her fourth and final year in her doctoral program, Bryan has studied intensely to specialize in prevention and developmental sciences. Bryan’s research focuses on the spillover of digital media and technology on perceptions of mattering and mental health outcomes in adolescence. She is currently collecting data to understand how 13 to 15-year-olds perceived mattering influences their motivations to engage in digital media (personal smartphones), and how those motivations influence or thwart depression and suicidal ideation.
Bryan credits her academic success to both hard work and finding the right mentors early in her graduate studies.
“When looking for programs, search for the mentor first, interview them and apply to the program for them,” Bryan said. “The program choice is important, but that mentor connection makes a good program a great program.”
Outside of her classes and research, Bryan is also making an impact in her own classroom. In the last school year, Bryan implemented a new class project called Living Stories, which helps her students bond with their classmates by creating an environment in which they are seen as not only a student but a whole person through sharing their life stories of who they are outside four classroom walls.
“I’ve enjoyed showing my students that taking a class is so much more than a grade on a transcript,” Bryan said.
Following the success of this new initiative, Bryan will present it to other faculty as a means to create “Human-Centered classrooms in a world of AI.”
“A Ph.D. is not for the faint of heart,” Bryan says. “This has been one of the most challenging chapters of my life, but I have loved every moment of it.”