UConn’s Office of First Year Programs and Learning Communities has tapped internationally recognized creativity expert and Neag School educational psychology professor Ronald Beghetto as the faculty director of UConn’s Innovation House.

Since 2001, the Fulbright Specialist Program has been pairing a selection of top U.S. faculty experts and other professionals from a variety of disciplines with foreign host institutions for anywhere between two and six weeks to serve as consultants — sharing their knowledge and skills, and taking part in activities that support the host institution’s priorities and goals — while being immersed in other cultures.

Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology Scott Brown, who is certified as a Fulbright Specialist, accepted an assignment that sent him this past month to Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Pontifical Xavierian University) in Cali, Colombia.

A growing awareness of the prevalence of childhood exposure to trauma and an increased understanding of its corrosive, potentially lifelong impacts on health and behavior together are fueling a national movement to create trauma-informed schools, says InCHIP Principal Investigator (PI) Sandra Chafouleas.

Through a generous $300,000 award from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, high school seniors enrolled in the foundation’s Young Scholars Program will be able to pursue areas of interest and advanced learning for a three-week residential program housed on the University of Connecticut’s Storrs campus in the summer of 2018.

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving has awarded funding for a project focused on leadership training through the UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP), a school leadership program based at the Neag School that prepares highly qualified school administrators in Connecticut.

Neag School of Education alumni, faculty, and administrators, along with educators from across the state, gathered at the Hartford Public Library’s Center for Contemporary Culture earlier this month for an evening of networking and insights from two dynamic Neag School alumni.

Miguel Cardona’00 MA, ’04 6th Year, ’11 Ed.D, ’12 ELP, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for Meriden (Conn.) Public Schools, and Bridget Heston Carnemolla ’13 Ed.D, ’14 ELP, superintendent for Watertown (Conn.) Public Schools, each shared insights into their experiences in the Neag School’s educational leadership program and personal revelations on leadership as the featured speakers for the Neag School’s third annual Educational Leadership Alumni Forum.

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

As 2017 nears its close, work on the University Principal Preparation Initiative — an initiative led at UConn by the Neag School’s University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) — is getting ready to celebrate its first birthday. This past year, UConn was one of seven universities selected to take part in the Wallace Foundation-funded initiative, which launched officially in January and is focused on improving training programs for aspiring school principals nationwide. Over the past 10 months, dedicated workgroups have been developing a “theory of action” for redesigning UCAPP.

In their recently published edited volume, Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games and Game Mechanics Can Shape the Future of Education (Information Age, 2017), Neag School faculty Michael Young and Stephen Slota — both longtime video game devotees — explore the value of games, the role of games in the future of K-12 and higher education, and more. Here, Young, associate professor of cognition, instruction, and learning technology, and Slota, assistant professor-in-residence of educational technology discuss the book and share their insights on the intersection between games, technology, and learning.

Led by educational psychology professors in the Neag School of Education, two research projects have recently been awarded a total of nearly $5 million in federal funding, made available through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.