“It was very soon after I started, but it was really exciting,” Roth-Saks says. “I had such a wonderful and warm welcoming from our community and our volunteers and the board. It was so terrific to be able to start this leadership position with that type of excitement and energy.”

“All it takes is one black teacher to influence a student,” says Joshua Hyman.

“My experience in my teacher prep program included four clinic experiences, in urban and suburban placements, over 10 lesson observations completed and evaluated by teachers, principals and instructional coaches and more than 90 credits of education-focused courses,” says Olivia Singer. “From my perspective, these hands-on learning experiences with students, educators and renowned faculty at the University of Connecticut were of much more value to me than any multiple choice test I could have taken.”

“Although I retired in 2014 as a teacher and coach in Connecticut public schools, I continued to work pretty much full time until 2016, but in those two years I reflected often on where I’d retire and what that retirement would look like,” says Peter Leeds.

Engagement is the bedrock of all meaningful connection. It is the foundation of how you build a relationship, (i.e., think about when you get “engaged” to the person you want to commit the rest of your life to), and yet we don’t have a common definition that guides us regarding what engagement actually means.

The two researchers will be studying the experience of African-American male students in the context of three different types of institutions: Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black university; University of Connecticut, which is a primarily White institution and UH, which is a Hispanic-serving institution.

In 2016, the Wallace Foundation announced a four-year initiative to overhaul the way university preparation programs trained principals to meet school districts’ needs and reflect what research says is needed for effective school leadership.

Carl Johnson, an assistant principal at Plainville High School since July 2016, is now principal of the town’s sole high school.

“I was actually nervous before my first practice,” Pieper says. “I was scared. You know, the girls had high expectations, and they were all looking at me, when I was touching the ball, and I was like, ‘You know, I’m also just a hockey player just like you are. I’m not going to do anything different from you.’ I don’t know if that’s how it was, but that’s how it felt for me coming here. Once I started playing, I was just excited to see how the games were going to be.”

The University of Connecticut is serving as one of the lead institutions on a $32.6 million U.S. Department of Education grant supporting schools and districts throughout the nation to implement empirically based practices to increase student success.

This major federal investment represents five additional years of funding for the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which just celebrated its 20th year.