In this new series, the Neag School will be catching up with students, alumni, faculty, and others throughout the year to give you a glimpse into their Neag School experience and their current career, research, or community activities. Incoming Ph.D. student Dakota Cintron will join the Neag School this fall as part of the second cohort of Dean’s Doctoral Scholars.

In this new series, the Neag School will be catching up with students, alumni, faculty, and others throughout the year to give you a glimpse into their Neag School experience and their current career, research, or community activities. Incoming Ph.D. student Alexandra Lamb will join the Neag School this fall as part of the second cohort of Dean’s Doctoral Scholars.

Athletes today are using their platforms as sports celebrities to bring attention to the violence that has erupted across the country. Dr. Joseph Cooper, assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, said any major social policy — civil rights movement, feminist movement, passage of Title IX — began with multiple conversations. But there must be action behind the words.

Neag School alum Sarah Hodge gives graduation address at her alma mater, Hartford’s Bulkeley High School.

In this new series, the Neag School will be catching up with students, alumni, faculty, and others throughout the year to give you a glimpse into their Neag School experience and their current career, research, or community activities. Here, Kelsey Karp ’16 (CAHNR) — an aspiring agriculture educator currently enrolled in in the Neag School’s Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates (TCPCG) — shares insights into her time at UConn, where she spent her last year as an undergraduate living and working at UConn’s Spring Valley Student Farm. Through TCPCG, an 11-month program designed for college graduates looking to earn teacher certification, Karp is getting one step closer to fulfilling her ambition to become an educator.

In this piece written for Players’ Tribune, former UConn football star Casey Cochran ’15 (CLAS) — currently a graduate student in the Neag School’s sport management master’s degree program — shares, in his own words, the story of enduring his 13th concussion, an injury that ultimately prompted him to end his ambition of playing professional football. Today, Cochran is working to advocate for greater awareness about head trauma and concussions in sports.

If you’ve passed through Wilton High School’s music program in the past 35 years, then chances are you have your own unforgettable Chip Gawle story.

After graduating, magna cum laude, with a bachelor’s degree in both History and Political Science from the University of Connecticut, Robert Stevenson felt driven to become a teacher. So he went and got his master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, also from UConn. And the teaching profession has taken him not just across the state of Connecticut but halfway across the globe to the country of Cyprus, where he taught history, social studies and computers at the American International School.

With awards ranging from the Alma Exley Scholarship to the state Minority Teacher Incentive Grant, Orlando Valentin completed the Neag School’s teacher preparation program this spring. The first in his immediate family to have earned a university degree, his goal is to land his first job — ideally, as a teacher in his hometown of Meriden. But don’t let Valentin’s plans to return home to teach fool you. During his time in the Neag School, he has sought out firsthand experience in school districts across Connecticut — as well as in classrooms abroad.

UConn’s Neag School of Education has been awarded a $20,700, four-month planning grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving to support a collaborative, research-based process to augment their UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) for aspiring school principals and intermediated managers.