Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, Ph.D., brings proven leadership and extensive experience working with educators in culturally and linguistically complex school systems to her new role as executive director of Teacher Education at UConn’s Neag School of Education.

Among her priorities will be to ensure that graduates of Neag’s rigorous and innovative undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs continue to be the most well prepared in the nation. She comes to UConn from Michigan State University, where she directed its Chicago-based urban teacher preparation program.

“How to best prepare teachers to work with the diverse students in Connecticut’s urban school districts, and elsewhere, has become an area of focus for Neag, and an area we expect Dr. Anagnostopoulos is really going to help us move forward with,” said Neag School of Education Associate Dean Marijke Kehrhahn, Ph.D.

Kehrhahn also believes Anagnostopoulos’ experience working to best meet the educational needs of English Language Learners and others with cultural barriers will only strengthen UConn’s relationship with partner schools, which provide Neag students with challenging, high-quality clinical student teaching experiences.

“Her tremendous experience will help the Neag School of Education expand its expertise. Her background means she really understands the challenges of leading a high-profile program like ours,” Kehrhahn said, adding that one of the many things that attracted the hiring committee to Anagnostopoulos was the similarity between her personal educational philosophies and the Neag of School of Education mission, which recognizes teacher education as a “moral imperative” and views its commitment to improving education for children and adults as a way to “improve and enhance the quality of life in our ever-changing society.”

“Dr. Anagnostopoulos is a well-known scholar on school reform, as well as well-versed on the effects of the latest federal and state mandates, so her knowledge of the challenges schools, teachers and students are facing is vast,” Kehrhahn continued. “If one of our jobs is to best-prepare teachers to face emerging problems, Dr. Anagnostopoulos is going to help make sure we do.”

Ranked as the No. 1 public graduate school of education in the Northeast and the 17th best in the nation, the Neag School of Education’s broad range of teacher preparation programs include a five-year integrated bachelor-master program taught at its Storrs campus and a master’s with certification program taught at regional campuses in West Hartford, Waterbury and Avery Point.

Widely published, Anagnostopoulos holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University and a master’s and doctorate in Education from the University of Chicago.

“Dr. Anagnostopoulos is a wonderful listener and asks great questions that make people think,” Kehrhahn said. “Between her, our faculty and our partners, there was an instantaneous click.”