Category: Faculty


Read stories related to faculty experts at UConn’s Neag School of Education.



Income, Race Big Factors in Rates of Gifted Students Across U.S.

March 29, 2018

According to research over the years, gifted identification is closely tied to income and race. Students from low-income families and students who are black or Latino are much less likely to be identified as gifted than more-affluent students and white or Asian students. “The key factor is poverty, to be honest,” said Del Siegle, a University of Connecticut professor in gifted education and director of the National Center for Research on Gifted Education. The groups that are likewise underrepresented in schools’ gifted programs — minorities and English language learners — often share the issues of poverty.


A More Accessible ACT and SAT

March 28, 2018

In addition, according to a study by Joshua Hyman, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, the test also uncovered low-income students who might have otherwise not applied to college: about 480 for every 1,000 who had taken the test before 2007 and had scored well.


Seven Neag School Alumni Award Recipients for 2018

Neag School Honors Seven Outstanding Alumni at Annual Celebration

March 27, 2018

This past Saint Patrick’s Day, members of the Neag School of Education Alumni Board; Neag School faculty, staff, and administrators; friends of the University; and families gathered around tables draped in purple in the Rome Ballroom of the University of Connecticut’s Storrs campus to celebrate the achievements of seven Neag School alumni during the 20th annual Neag School of Education Alumni Awards Celebration. 


Clewiston Challenger

10 Questions With Counseling Professor Clewiston D. Challenger

March 27, 2018

A former UConn student-athlete, Clewiston Challenger ’03 (CLAS), ’08 MA now serves as assistant professor of counseling in the Neag School. This latest installment of “10 Questions” connects with Challenger on his experiences as a UConn undergrad, his current research, and his aspirations for the students he now teaches in the counseling program.



Study Findings Aim to Improve Teacher Preparedness Strategies

March 23, 2018

“Teacher preparedness has been the focus of a great deal of (at times) impassioned debate in the last thirty years,” says Dr. Suzanne Wilson, Neag Endowed Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Connecticut and Chair of Curriculum and Instruction in the Neag School. “The teacher workforce is the largest profession in the U.S.; preparing close to four million teachers to be high quality is challenging.”



More Evidence That Poverty Obscures Schools’ Recognition of Giftedness

March 22, 2018

The underrepresentation of high-poverty and minority populations in gifted programs has troubled education analysts and reformers for decades. One finding in this winter’s Fordham report on gifted programming gaps was that although high-poverty schools are as likely as low-poverty schools to have gifted programs, students there are less than half as likely to participate in them. This is complemented by a recent University of Connecticut finding that school poverty has a negative relationship with the percentage of students identified as gifted.