This fall, the Neag School of Education welcomes its incoming faculty and staff hires and congratulates existing staff members on new appointments. Dean’s Office Katie Gelsomini, Assistant to the Dean Katie Gelsomini joins the Dean’s Office this month as the assistant to Dean Jason G. Irizarry. She most recently served as an educational program coordinator for […]

The Neag School of Education, UConn’s Department of English, and the Connecticut Writing Project (CWP), co-sponsors of the 31st annual Letters About Literature contest, are proud to announce Connecticut’s winners for the 2022-23 academic year.

“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.”

Throughout the academic year, the Neag School is proud to share the latest achievements of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Explore their most recent promotions, awards, retirements, publications, and more.

re charter schools public or private? A case speeding towards the Supreme Court is likely to settle this age-old dispute once and for all by declaring charters as “non-state actors.” Peltier vs. Charter Day School Inc. is nominally about dress codes, chivalry and “fragile vessels.” But as special guests Bruce Baker and Preston Green explain, the real question here is whether students attending charter schools have the same civil rights and Constitutional protections as their public school peers.

The “Right to Read” bill that I sponsored went through a democratic process that began in the Joint Committee on Education in 2021. It was then the subject of a public hearing, during which members of the committee heard testimony from constituents across the state — who, by and large, were enthusiastically supportive. Among them were the dean of the UConn Neag School of Education, the president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, urban superintendents, district-level curriculum professionals, classroom teachers, parents, literacy experts and researchers.

Del Siegle, the committee’s chairman and the Lynn and Ray Neag Endowed Chair for Talent Development in the Neag School of Education, said the University Senate is excited to continue working with D’Alleva and Maric to advance the institution’s vision.

“Dr. Anne D’Alleva has been an outstanding interim provost and is an excellent permanent appointment for provost. She is a thoughtful leader with a strong commitment to student success and has a comprehensive knowledge of the UConn community,” Siegle said.

Finding Gifted Learners Through Language Barriers – Through Project EAGLE, UConn researchers are working to identify gifted math students among English Language learners.

And if the countless issues and complaints brought up by disabled students weren’t enough to demonstrate the importance of remote learning, Nicholas Gelbar, an Associate Research Professor at the Neag School of Education, conducted a study to consolidate it even further. Gelbar’s study, published in the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, surveyed students regarding the abrupt transition to online education in the spring semester of 2020. After tabulating the data collected from 340 student survey responses on personal experiences with remote learning, Gelbar concluded that “[disabled students] were able to change how they took notes, because they were able to watch an online lecture and then watch it over again.”

A team of Neag School of Education researchers is developing a new initiative designed to help educators overcome language barriers to identify gifted students among English learners. Project EAGLE (Eliciting Advanced Gifted Learning Evidence) is one of several gifted education grants at UConn, including the National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE), that address inequity in schools.