YOUNGSTOWN — Jeffrey Coldren, chairman of Youngstown State University’s Department of Psychological Sciences and Counseling, has become the third recipient of the James P. Tressel Endowed Chair in Leadership Award.

Coldren, who began his YSU career in 1994 and became department chair in 2014, was awarded for implementing key changes in the department aimed at enhancing the quality and sustainability of its programs.

Specifically, he introduced a First Day Ready program to reduce costs for students in psychology. In the counseling program, Coldren was instrumental in increasing efficiency and reducing costs yet maintaining enrollment, according to a YSU news release.

In addition, Coldren is working with the school psychology faculty, in collaboration with the Rich Center for the Study and Treatment of Autism on the YSU campus, to develop a program to test young children for autism.

In 2004, he was named as a Rich Center faculty fellow. More recently, the longtime professor was the recipient of the Distinguished Professorship Teaching Award for 2021-22.

Coldren’s work also includes having built research capacity for department faculty via investing in software that includes creating online systems for conducting surveys, running labs and virtual experiments and collecting data.

“Under his leadership, the department has enjoyed a strong record of productivity, despite reorganization of the college,” Charles Howell, dean of the Beeghly College of Liberal Arts, Social Sciences and Education, said in his nomination letter.

Coldren earned a master’s degree in human development as well as a doctorate degree in child development and developmental psychology from the University of Kansas. Before that, he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Albright College in Reading, Pa.

In addition, Coldren completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toledo.

The endowed chair award, created in 2021 through a $1.6 million YSU Foundation gift, is bestowed yearly on a university department chair with a record of outstanding leadership, and who exemplifies former YSU President Tressel’s leadership at the university and across the region.

The other two award recipients were Nancy Wagner, who’s retiring as chairwoman of YSU’s Centofanti School of Nursing; and Nancy Landgraff, chairwoman of the Department of Physical Therapy.

Wagner and Landgraff received the award in 2021 and 2022, respectively.