Year: 2021


A Higher Purpose

November 21, 2021

Initially going the coaching route, Chloe Pavlech was a graduate assistant at UConn under legendary coach Geno Auriemma, earning her master’s in sport management in 2018. She started with the Huskies in August 2016, eight months after playing against them in the Maggie Dixon Classic at Madison Square Garden. “I’ll never forget my first day there, I sat down for breakfast check, and Kia Nurse walks in and says, ‘What are you doing here?”’ Pavlech said. “She was so confused, and I was kind of taken aback, too. I felt like a traitor.”





Book cover Follow Me to Distance Learning

Alumna Publishes Children’s Book on Socio-Emotional Learning

November 16, 2021

Agnieszka Petlik ‘16 6th Year, a kindergarten teacher in Simsbury, Connecticut, and graduate of the Neag School’s UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP), knows this transition all too well. “When COVID hit, I had to make some choices because my parents live downstairs, and they’re [immuno] compromised,” says Petlik. “I was very nervous, just like the rest of the world, as to what is going on and what we are going to do.”


Mark Shibles

In Memoriam: Dean Emeritus Mark Shibles

November 16, 2021

Mark R. Shibles of Wilton, Maine, a former dean and professor emeritus of the Neag School of Education, was a highly respected scholar and leader in educational leadership and policy. With his passing on Aug. 24, 2021, at 83, the Neag School honors Shibles’ impact and his legacy.




Women sitting at coffee shop discussing a book.

Using Book Clubs as a Professional Learning Tool

November 12, 2021

In a newly published journal article, Neag School Professor and adult learning expert Robin Grenier examines, with colleagues including Neag School alumna Kristi Kaeppel ’20 Ph.D., the use of book clubs and literature as a tool for enhancing the professional learning of employees across various organizations — from the military to nonprofits to health care. Voluntary, fiction-based book clubs, the researchers say, offer employees a nonformal setting for learning while critically raising consciousness within an organization.


UConn Junior Elected to Wolcott Town Council

November 12, 2021

UConn’s Kaitlynn Styles was recently elected to Wolcott’s Town Council. Styles is a fifth-semester history major with minors in political science and American studies, and is also in secondary education with a history concentration in the Neag School of Education.