Category: Community Engagement


Read stories related to faculty, students, and alumni involved in public engagement initiatives.

Engineering’s April JEDI Hour to Feature Talk on Inclusion of Neurodiverse Learners

March 28, 2023

The College of Engineering Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’s April JEDI Hour will feature Connie Syharat, project manager and research assistant in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut, on the topic “Transferring Engineering Education: Promoting Inclusion of Neurodiverse Learners.”


UConn’s Bold Program Turns Women Students into Leaders

March 24, 2023

“We look for students who are passionate about wanting to be leaders and wanting to act on ideas,” explains Sally Reis, a faculty leader with the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network and UConn Board of Trustees Distringuished Professor in the Neag School of Education. “Some are very outgoing, some are quiet. But it’s that focused, intense drive to succeed, do good work, and change the world in a good way that we hope to find.”



Neag Awards Their Alumni

March 22, 2023

This month, the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education awarded alumni for their work in the field.

For the past 25 years, Neag has given out eight awards, with the recipients being chosen by the school’s alumni board. Categories which the awards fall under include outstanding school educator, outstanding school administrator, outstanding diversity equity and inclusion professional and more.


Florida’s Stop WOKE Act marshals students past our racial history

March 16, 2023

For the past six years, I have taught a college course on sports and social justice, starting at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and then at Yale University and currently, at the University of Connecticut. Inspired by topics that were targeted by the “stick to sports” mantra, the class was an opportunity to engage the next generation on the intersection of sport and society. It has been shaped by and vetted through years of academic research, current events, personal experience, and student feedback.


How Puppets Can Help Kids Express Emotions

March 10, 2023

Puppets are wonderful teaching tools—they are appealing and accessible, and they can be proxies on sensitive topics, expressing feelings and acting out scenarios the humans around them sometimes can’t. At the University of Connecticut, educators, researchers, and puppeteers made a video series called Feel Your Best Self to teach simple evidence-backed strategies that help elementary school students with self-regulation and emotional intelligence—through puppets.


Increasing Female Representation in School Leadership

March 3, 2023

In March 2022, coinciding with Sheryl Sandberg’s announcement she was leaving as Facebook’s COO, The New York Times did a retrospective of the legacy of her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. While acknowledging that the book provided inspiration to many, it also highlighted the more problematic part of the book’s message—that, in the end, the only real thing holding women back is themselves.



UConn Professor Receives $10M Federal Grant to Create Early Childhood Intervention Center

February 22, 2023

A University of Connecticut professor has received a $10 million federal grant to improve the equity of programs administered to children with disabilities and their families through the school’s new Early Childhood Intervention Personnel Development Equity Center. Mary Beth Bruder, a professor at the UConn School of Medicine and the UConn Neag School of Education, will establish the center, which will work to create more equity in early childhood intervention access, especially those who have traditionally been underserved.


The Power of Puppets: New Toolkit Helps Kids Process ‘Heavy Feelings’

February 16, 2023

Emily Wicks with UConn’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry noticed the pandemic-era disruptions to kids’ social-emotional learning and development, and reached out to Sandy Chafouleas at the university’s Neag School of Education. Together they developed Feel Your Best Self, a puppet-centered program aimed at helping “strengthen the emotional well-being of elementary-aged children.”