Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo, postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, is co-principal investigator on a new $500,000 federal research grant funded by the National Science Foundation.

In recommending the “schoolwide-enrichment model,” SDAG was promoting an alternative method for teaching gifted students. The theory was developed by Joseph S. Renzulli and Sally Reis of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut. The theory has a “broadened conception of giftedness,” and “the centerpiece of the model is the development of differentiated learning experiences that take into consideration each student’s abilities, interests, learning styles, and preferred styles of expression,” Renzulli and Reis write. This enables the development of “talents in all children.”

Representatives from Connecticut school systems, state agencies, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations gathered at the University on Wednesday, Oct. 23, to develop collaborative plans to broaden school and community mental health services across the state and address issues surrounding childhood trauma.

In partnership with a consortium that includes six other universities across the nation, the Neag School’s special education doctoral program and Center for Behavioral Education and Research (CBER) will once again be part of a federal grant designated to support a total of nearly 30 future scholars in the field of special education.

“Colleges place significant weight on a student’s grade point average, class rank, and standardized test scores in the admissions process,” says Clewison Challenger. “For decades, these measures have informed how K-12 schools design curricula and counsel students on college readiness. Yet grades and SAT results alone are ineffective predictors of students’ college success.”

“As a researcher who has examined masculinity in college fraternities, I conclude that the reason these efforts have not succeeded is because they fail to deal with the fact that drinking alcohol – and other risky behaviors – are deeply embedded in society’s notions about what it means to be a man,” says Adam McCready.

Joseph Renzulli popped up prominently once again in NYC politics just before the start of this school year, with the release of a bombshell education report from a group set up by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The report advised swift action to desegregate schools, including the general elimination of gifted and talented screening as currently done.

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded $2.5 million in funding through its Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to special education faculty at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and UConn’s Neag School of Education for a project that will fully fund five doctoral students at each institution over the next five years.

“We saw the Nuremberg trials as a really interesting opportunity to explore the nature of justice and value of critical discernment, especially during a global rise in digital disinformation and anti-Semitism,” says Stephen Slota, Ph.D., an educational psychologist at the Neag School of Education.

“I think overall there is still inequity at the higher levels of education,” Laura Burton said, adding there are still “definitely a lot more men than women at the full professor level.”