The Rome Commons Ballroom at UConn’s Storrs campus was filled on Saturday evening with Neag School of Education Alumni Board members; Neag School faculty, staff, and administrators; friends of the University; and guests honoring seven distinguished Neag School alumni at the School’s annual Alumni Awards Celebration.

Congratulations to our Neag School alumni, faculty, staff, and students on their continued accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. If you have an accolade to share, we want to hear from you! Please send any news items and story ideas to neag-communications@uconn.edu.

Sandi Hastings ’89 MA, ’94 Ph.D. began to contemplate the kind of relationship she wanted to have with her graduate school alma mater after her son was involved in a serious car accident.

Ashley Robinson, a third-year doctoral student studying learning, leadership, and education policy in the Neag School, and Tashua Sotil ’17 (CAHNR), ’18 MA, a sixth-year graduate student in its educational psychology program, have been named the recipients of the Neag School of Education Alumni Board Scholarship for 2019.

Segregation in schools was abolished in 1954 in the Supreme Court’s historical decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But this decree from the court did not magically wipe segregation or racial prejudices and tensions away.

There are a variety of models schools around the country used to deal with student behavior problems, and while they have been successful in many cases, these models fail to account for specific issues caused by race-related behavioral problems.

In a collaborative grant from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities for the University of Connecticut and the University of Alabama, assistant professor of the school psychology program in the UConn Neag School of Education Tamika La Salle and Sara McDaniel, associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama will work to look at ways to address this gap.

Thanks to a newly announced investment of $240,000 from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, the Neag School will be able to support further efforts to diversify the teacher workforce of tomorrow.

Alumna Jessica Stargardter ’16 (ED), ’17 MA has been named by the Neag School of Education as the recipient of the 2019 Rogers Educational Innovation Fund award. Stargardter serves as a gifted and talented educator for Norwalk (Conn.) Public Schools.

The University of Connecticut has accepted an invitation to become part of the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network. The BOLD program seeks to equip young women at select universities nationwide to be innovative agents of change, both during their college careers and after they complete their studies.

Congratulations to our Neag School alumni, faculty, staff, and students on their continued accomplishments inside and outside the classroom.