The Senate on Monday easily confirmed Miguel A. Cardona, a career educator who rose through Connecticut’s education system to become a leader in the effort to reopen pandemic-shuttered schools, as the next education secretary.

His nomination was approved in a vote of 64 to 33.

The Senate confirmed Miguel Cardona to serve as education secretary Monday, vaulting the little-known Connecticut educator into the center of the national debate over how to reopen schools for face-to-face classes.

Education secretaries may not run schools directly, but they can set a tone. Those who know the Biden administration’s pick for education chief, Miguel Cardona, expect his signature spirit of inclusivity to be a unifying force.

President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Neag School alumnus and Connecticut’s Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona ’01 MA, ’04 6th Year, ’11 Ed.D., ’12 ELP, was officially confirmed on March 1, 2021, by the U.S. Senate. He is the first UConn graduate in history to hold a Cabinet-level position in the White House.

Gov. Ned Lamont in July tapped Kelli-Marie Vallieres to lead a new state office dubbed the Connecticut Workforce Unit. Under Vallieres — formerly CEO of Sound Manufacturing and Monster Power Equipment in Old Saybrook — the group collaborates with the Department of Economic and Community Development and Department of Labor to advise the governor and other state officials on workforce strategies and initiatives.

The Neag School of Education, UConn’s Department of English, and the Connecticut Writing Project (CWP), co-sponsors of the 28th annual Letters About Literature contest, are proud to announce Connecticut’s winners for the 2020-21 academic year.

In 2013, Neag School alumnus and current doctoral student Amit Savkar, also a UConn associate professor in residence of mathematics, began looking into the reasons why so many students were dropping out of or failing math classes early in their college career.
Savkar realized the placement exams students took for those courses did not account for the individual differences in knowledge gaps. In response, he developed a platform that would analyze the response of students’ incorrect answers to questions and provide students with adaptive instruction through targeted videos in the areas the program identified as knowledge gaps.

As a teenager in her hometown of Paraty, Brazil, Pauline Batista ’16 MA was enrolled in a rigorous five-year teacher- training high school and held multiple paid internships. “It was very hectic because I would leave my house at 7 in the morning and come back at 10 at night,” Batista says. “Your average 15-year-old is not dealing with all that. But for me, that was normal.”

In 2013, Neag School alumnus and current educational psychology doctoral student Amit Savkar ’07 Ph.D., ’17 MA, also a UConn associate professor in residence of mathematics, began looking into the reasons why so many students were dropping out of or failing math classes early in their college career.

President Joe Biden tapped Miguel Cardona ’01 MA, ’04 6th Year, ’11 Ed.D., ’12 ELP to be the country’s top education official and, once fully confirmed, Cardona will become the first UConn alum to hold a Cabinet-level position in the White House.