Today, we join the world in marking International Human Rights Day. Throughout this year, communities near and far have faced some of the most significant human rights challenges since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Jesse Mala is an assistant visiting professor in the UConn Department of Educational Leadership sports management program. He studies how sport can be used to promote positive development among Black and Latinx youth in poverty. Mala himself grew up in poverty, in the housing projects in New Britain, Connecticut but still had access to some sports through the Police Athletic League in his neighborhood. There he learned crucial life skills and lessons that he feels contributed to his overall development and eventual academic success.

As a part of the Provost’s Distinguished Speaker Series, Professor Sandra M. Chafouleas gave a talk titled “Well-Being in School, Child, and Community: Advancing the Whole, Not the Sum of Its Parts” on Thursday afternoon. The Provost’s Distinguished Speaker Series is an annual series where distinguished professors are invited to discuss their research and scholarship with the greater community.

The Neag School 2019-20 By the Numbers Report gives a high-level overview of the School’s highlights, points of pride, and accomplishments over the course of the 2019-20 academic year.

The Provost’s Distinguished Speaker Series, now in its third year, fosters intellectual, professional, and personal growth and collegiality among the UConn community. This series provides an opportunity for the most recently inducted Board of Trustees Distinguished Professors and Endowed Chairs to share advances in their expertise and engage in thought-provoking discussions. Neag School’s Sandra Chafouleas presents on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, on the following topic “Well-Being in School, Child, and Community: Advancing the Whole, Not the Sum of Its Parts.”

A group of researchers from the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and UConn School of Medicine have received a $1 million grant from the Office of Special Education Programs to develop training for master’s students to address this problem. Professors Lisa Sanetti, Sandra Chafouleas, and Mary Beth Bruder have developed Interdisciplinary Preparation in Integrated and Intensive Practices (I3-PREP). The project is a multidisciplinary effort supported by UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), the Neag School of Education, the UConn School of Medicine.

Professors Lisa Sanetti, Sandra Chafouleas, and Mary Beth Bruder have developed Interdisciplinary Preparation in Integrated and Intensive Practices (I3-PREP). The project is a multidisciplinary effort supported by UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), the Neag School of Education, the UConn School of Medicine.

More recently, research in academia this year led the authors to conclude that “we contend that women’s friendships allow women to thrive by meeting core psychological needs that are threatened in a marginalized work environment.” The role of a female academic’s female friendships are crucial in helping them counter and navigate the masculine culture of academia.

UConn researchers, including Neag School’s Devin Kearns, collaborate with schools across the country to help identify kids at risk of dyslexia. The AppRise project uses a free, game-like app to help teachers assess kids as young as five and get them the help they need to learn to read.

Donald Trump and white men over 40 without a college degree share a common belief: Something is wrong in America, and others are to blame. As a professor and psychologist specializing in the psychology of men and masculinity, I believe there are several critical psychological dynamics that the public needs to know that explain why these white men see Trump as their savior, their masculine hero and ideal, and their only choice in this election.