The city of Mansfield held a ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 13, to unveil the new MLK mural in front of the community center. The unveiling was accompanied by a host of other festivities, including music by Joaquan Kinsey from UConn’s Voices of Freedom Gospel Choir and UConn’s Jazz Quartet. About 130 people attended according to Margaret Chatey, who is the Mansfield communications specialist and runs the Town of Mansfield Facebook page. She also said that there were multiple speakers including the master of ceremonies professor Glenn Mitoma, Mayor Toni Moran, Matt Conway, Mural Artist Emida Roller, professor Carlita Cotton and superintendent Kelly Lyman.

The challenges created by this fall’s contentious school board elections also offer superintendents and their teams a chance to bridge some political divides, says Casey D. Cobb, a professor of education policy a the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education.

Initially going the coaching route, Chloe Pavlech was a graduate assistant at UConn under legendary coach Geno Auriemma, earning her master’s in sport management in 2018. She started with the Huskies in August 2016, eight months after playing against them in the Maggie Dixon Classic at Madison Square Garden. “I’ll never forget my first day there, I sat down for breakfast check, and Kia Nurse walks in and says, ‘What are you doing here?”’ Pavlech said. “She was so confused, and I was kind of taken aback, too. I felt like a traitor.”

A group of education law scholars, including Neag School’s Preston Green, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Carson v. Makin, a U.S. Supreme Court case about public funds for religious schools.

UConn’s Kaitlynn Styles was recently elected to Wolcott’s Town Council. Styles is a fifth-semester history major with minors in political science and American studies, and is also in secondary education with a history concentration in the Neag School of Education.

Combrie and Yeon both discussed CFJ’s impact in the “Nourishing Youth Activism” session, part of the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education’s secondary English education program, “(Re) Imagining a More Just English Education.” A small group of secondary English education majors gathered around a table in the Gentry Building to hear the speakers discuss the program.

The Neag School of Education received a $400,000 gift from the Neag Foundation to establish the Neag Foundation Scholarship for the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s (IB/M) Program at UConn’s Neag School of Education. The scholarship will support fifth-year IB/M students with demonstrated financial need.

Accessibility to job opportunities has long been a challenge for individuals with disabilities. In 2020, people with disabilities had a much higher unemployment rate (12.6%) than those without a disability (7.9%). To raise awareness about disability employment issues and celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities, National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) is held every October. The 2021 theme for NDEAM is “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion,” which underscores the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have access to employment as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

Rachael Gabriel is associate professor of literacy education at UConn’s Neag School of Education. When large numbers of people showed up at legislative hearings in Connecticut, she became interested in their unusual engagement and strangely similar comments. Gabriel used critical discursive psychology, positioning theory, and narrative policy analysis to analyze the dyslexia law advocacy.

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is pleased to announce Dr. Del Siegle will receive the 2021 NAGC Ann F. Isaacs Founder’s Memorial Award for his distinguished service to NAGC and gifted education.