Amber Gallup, who earned her Ph.D. from The University of New Mexico in 2024, has been named the recipient of the 2025 Tom L. Popejoy Dissertation Prize. The award will be presented during the UNM graduate commencement ceremony at University Arena on December 11.
The Popejoy Dissertation Prize is given to recognize academic excellence in the social sciences and education fields. This year’s eligibility covered dissertations completed between spring 2022 and fall 2024. It is regarded as one of the university’s top honors for graduate students, focusing on original and influential doctoral research.
Gallup completed her doctorate in Organization, Information and Learning Sciences with a dissertation titled “The Development of Identity, Self-Efficacy, and Persistence Intentions Among Frontline Healthcare Apprentices.” The committee noted that her work on registered apprenticeship programs in healthcare gained national attention and influenced workforce policy and program design. As a result, she was appointed to several state and national boards.
Currently serving as the state director of adult education at the New Mexico Department of Higher Education, Gallup described her research as an exploration into how registered apprenticeship programs can be structured to promote learning, identity development, agency, and successful completion among workers in high-demand healthcare roles.
She reflected on her path to this field: “Throughout my career in adult education, I have worked frequently within registered apprenticeship programs in construction fields and in healthcare,” she said. “I started over 20 years ago as a night instructor, teaching English for Ironworkers to a group of apprentices from Guatemala.”
Gallup continued working over the years as a teacher, trainer, instructional designer, and program administrator within various apprenticeship initiatives. She observed: “I was always impressed by the hard work and care that the apprentices put into their difficult, important jobs and also by how perfect a well-designed apprenticeship model could be for them, in that it offered paid, hands-on learning under the direction of an experienced mentor.”
Through her experience she identified opportunities for improvement: “I wanted to focus on this topic so that I could perhaps help sponsors and designers of registered apprenticeship programs know how best to support the worker-learners within them,” Gallup said.
Receiving the prize carries both professional validation and personal significance for Gallup: “For me, the recognition reinforces my conviction that my dissertation research was practical and useful in the world, which was very important to me,” she said. “The recognition emphasizes that registered apprenticeship, and the people who participate in the model, are important for our state and our nation during a time of shocking income inequality and widening social divisions based on education and access to basic necessities.”
She added: “I worked on this dissertation through 7 years of my daughter’s childhood and during a global pandemic, so I am particularly grateful for the sense that those sometimes-challenging years produced work that merits recognition.”
The Popejoy Dissertation Prize was created as a lasting tribute to Tom L. Popejoy, who served as president of UNM from 1948 to 1968. The honor rotates among academic units every three years; recipients receive a $2,500 stipend at commencement.
More information about eligibility criteria or nomination procedures is available online or via grad@unm.edu.
