At the Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Conn., elementary school students work on an experiment with their teacher. (Photo Credit: Peter Morenus/UConn)
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.
“These are incredible, national-level investments in one of the world’s top gifted and talented education programs, furthering the research of two outstanding professors and their research teams,” says Scott Brown, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology and the head of the Neag School’s Department of Educational Psychology.
Project LIFT Awarded a total of $2.4 million in funding that went into effect earlier this month, Project LIFT (Learning Informs Focused Teaching) is focused on students with high academic potential — particularly those from underserved populations.
“The overall premise of Project LIFT,” according to principal investigator Catherine Little, professor of educational psychology, “is that students with high academic potential are more likely to demonstrate high-potential behaviors while engaged in instruction that encourages such response.” In addition, she says, “teachers can strengthen their use of such instruction through professional development and access to resources.”
With Project LIFT, the research team will be building on ongoing work in the field centered not only on promoting teachers’ understanding of the behaviors that may indicate high potential in students, but also on offering students access to opportunities to demonstrate their potential.
“These are incredible, national-level investments in one of the world’s top gifted and talented education programs,
furthering the research of two outstanding professors and their research teams.”
— Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Scott Brown, Department Head, Educational Psychology
Professor Catherine Little is the principal investigator for Project LIFT, recently awarded $2.4 million in funding.
“We feel that it is really important to focus on how general education teachers are equipped to support the needs of advanced learners within the context of serving all the learners they support,” Little says, adding that “the most powerful supports can come through curricular and instructional resources.”
By examining differences in teacher practice, teacher perceptions, and student achievement between a treatment and comparison group, the researchers hope to learn more about how teachers understand these populations, as well as what professional development approaches are helpful for these teachers in their work.
Also part of Project LIFT are Christopher Rhoads, associate professor of measurement, evaluation, and assessment; Rebecca Eckert, associate clinical professor of teacher education; and Kelly Kearney ’14 Ph.D., a research associate in the Department of Educational Psychology.
The project is funded through September 2022.
Thinking Like Mathematicians Professor of educational psychology E. Jean Gubbins is the principal investigator of a second newly funded project, entitled “Thinking Like Mathematicians: Challenging All Grade 3 Students.”
Professor E. Jean Gubbins is principal investigator for a project entitled “Thinking Like Mathematicians,” awarded $2.5 million over five years.
Funded for five years through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act, the project is a “scale-up of promising evidence-based quantitative and qualitative mathematics studies; identification and programming studies; and a qualitative study of identification practices for English learners,” which were also previously funded by the Javits Act, according to the researchers. These prior studies emphasized the importance of supporting talented students from historically underrepresented groups.
The Thinking Like Mathematicians project “focuses on providing challenging curriculum to promote talent development among all students in academically and culturally diverse schools,” Gubbins says, “and experiments with developmental identification strategies, which are important issues in our field.”
Funding for the project’s first year, which went into effect Sept. 1, is $500,000, with funding for the second through fifth years remaining the same in each subsequent year, pending the availability of funds from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead and Aarti Bellara, assistant professors of measurement, evaluation, and assessment, as well as Tutita Casa, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, are serving as co-principal investigators.
Editor’s Note: The following — written by George Sugai, Neag School professor of special education, and Geoff Colvin, a retired research associate in the University of Oregon’s College of Education — was originally published in the “Guest Viewpoint” section of The Register-Guard, a local newspaper based in Eugene, Ore.
George Sugai, professor of educational psychology at the Neag School of Education, speaks to teachers at Illing Middle School in Manchester, Conn. (Photo credit: UConn)
As a new school year begins, educators, families and students are gearing up with high aspirations for a successful year. However, relatively overnight we have witnessed significant changes in societal and global norms that are in sheer opposition to the norms and practices we promote in our schools. Specifically, the presidential election was associated with reports of unprecedented negativity, intolerance and disrespect.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, reported 900 cases last November of harassment and intimidation in schools across the nation in which President Trump’s name was invoked by the harassers. In addition, the center disclosed that 90 percent of educators surveyed reported that the election created a negative climate in their schools that will likely have a lasting effect.
Sadly, these negative effects persist as we speak. For instance, the Unite the Right rally and torch-lit march of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., represented seemingly commonplace images of hate, intolerance, incivility, dishonesty and unbridled racism that children and youth are exposed to frequently. Instead of providing moral leadership for the nation on Charlottesville, the president of the United States chose to make inflammatory statements that only worsened the situation, setting the stage for further violent confrontations.
Moreover, the ongoing acts of terrorism throughout Europe, most recently in Barcelona, have exacerbated the divisions and hatred among people at a global level.
Our schools are in a prime position to support the academic, social, emotional and behavioral health of our children and youth and to counter the negativity
so prevalent in today’s society.
Of paramount concern to us is the effect that these messages of negativity may have on our children. Many years of published research (e.g., the U.S. Surgeon General’s report) warn that what children see and hear about the world through the media influences how they behave.
As the new school year begins, we appeal to all educators, school leaders and family members to redouble their efforts to actively resist and prevent the negative influence these troubling trends may have on the growth, development and education of our children and youth. How can this be done?
It is immediately within the purview of schools to 1) systematically model, encourage, and formally “teach” civil, safe and responsible behavior to promote and model respect for differences and diversity; 2) reject dehumanizing behavior, and 3) stand up for children and youth who are victimized by hate and discrimination. We cannot afford to wait and hope for the negative public discourse to simply go away.
Fortunately, we have teaching practices and effective models with strong evidence to guide this doubling-up effort. For example, in the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education funded a project we developed in the College of Education at the University of Oregon designed to shift school practice from reactive, exclusionary and negative discipline to more preventive, inclusionary and positive support.
Initially, this federally funded project was piloted in three local school districts, and then expanded to schools throughout Oregon and other states. The current form of this project, called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, widely adopted in Lane County schools and throughout the state of Oregon, has been tested and implemented in more than 25,500 schools across the United States and adopted internationally (e.g. Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, New Zealand and the Caribbean).
More than 20 years of research results indicate meaningful and sustained improvements in school discipline, academic achievement, school climate, school attendance and related social behavioral outcomes (see pbis.org).
Given the 180-day school year and the six-hour school day, our schools are in a prime position to support the academic, social, emotional and behavioral health of our children and youth and to counter the negativity so prevalent in today’s society.
Our schools must act decisively and urgently to (re)teach, model and encourage behavior that nurtures and maintains our most cherished individual and collective values of civility, diversity, equity, responsibility and freedom of expression that serve as the foundation of our democracy.
The tools are available. It can be done.
Malala Yousafzai, in her inspiring story of survival from terrorism, “I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban” (2013), expressed our message most poignantly: “Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.”
Geoff Colvin of Eugene is a retired research associate in the University of Oregon’s College of Education. George Sugai is a former professor at the UO and currently a professor at University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education.
Republished with permission from The Register-Guard
Professor Todd Campbell has been named editor of the Journal of Science Teacher Education. (Photo Credit: Shawn Kornegay/Neag School)
Todd Cambpell, professor of science education, has been named co-editor of the Journal of Science Teacher Education (JSTE), the flagship journal of the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE).
As the only English-language journal focused exclusively on science teacher education, JSTE disseminates research and theoretical position papers concerning preservice and in-service education of science teachers, including articles offering ways to improve classroom teaching and learning; professional development; and teacher recruitment and retention at preK-16 levels[1]. It is published online eight times a year and in print on a quarterly basis by Taylor & Francis.
Also joining the new editorial team are Campbell’s fellow co-editors University of Colorado at Denver’s Geeta Verma and Lakehead University’s Wayne Melville. Their appointment begins Jan. 1, 2019.
Access the most recent issue of the Journal of Science Teacher Education here.
Erik Hines, assistant professor of educational psychology, with students at Scholars House at Next Generation Connecticut Hall in July 2017. (Photo Credit: Peter Morenus/UConn)
Editor’s Note: The following piece, authored by Julie (Stagis) Bartucca ’10 (BUS, CLAS), was originally published in UConn Magazine’s Fall 2017 Edition. View the original story on the UConn Magazine website.
Erik Hines is passionate about helping black male students succeed at UConn. The assistant professor in the Neag School of Education says he is on a mission to help attract and retain African-American male students.
As faculty director of the new learning community ScHOLA²RS House, Hines hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the variables that influence positive academic and career outcomes for black males, the subject at the heart of both his day-to-day counseling work and his academic research. (ScHOLA²RS stands for Scholastic House of Leaders in Support of African-American Researchers & Scholars).
“We want to cultivate all of our students to be the best and brightest.”
“He is all in,” says Sally Reis, the former associate provost who brought Hines in to work on the newest of the University’s learning communities. “He is completely dedicated to these young men, focused on their graduation from UConn and their success in graduate school and work. He is passionate, committed, and a remarkably strong mentor.”
Born and raised in Tampa, Hines decided to become a school counselor while attending community college there. He went on to earn his bachelor’s in social science education at Florida State University, his master’s in education for school counseling at the College of William & Mary, and his Ph.D. in counselor education at the University of Maryland. He joined the UConn faculty in August 2014.
Hines says he is doing the work he set out to do at age 19. “My career feels purposeful, fulfilling, and empowering. All I think about now is solutions for improving the graduation rate for black males, recruitment of black males in STEM and career fields in which they are underrepresented, and how we help first-generation and other vulnerable populations be successful, too.”
We caught up with Hines over the summer in his Gentry Building office, which overlooks a grassy, tree-lined knoll next to The Benton.
Q: You work with graduate students, preparing them to become school counselors. How has educating them changed with new challenges, such as social media, cyber bullying, and climbing rates of suicide in adolescents?
Hines: Counselors’ goals still are variations of making sure students get their needs met socially and emotionally, even outside the school walls, and accountability — ensuring that students not only understand what they need to know to get to the next grade, but also think long-term: What will life be like post–high school?
I would say school counselors are needed now more than ever. When we were in the space race, after Sputnik, the federal mandate came to put in school counselors to identify the best and brightest in science and math [Title V of the National Defense of Education Act, 1958]. Now, we want to cultivate all of our students to be the best and brightest.
Q: Neag’s school counselor program emphasizes working with underrepresented students. What are some of the tools that you teach to specifically work with those populations?
Hines: We train students to look at the data, as well as how to collect data of their own through observations in classrooms, surveys, reading articles. We teach them to find literature that supports what they want to do and to address what the data is telling them.
Hines teaches his students how to use data to identify areas that need improvement and discover ways to make those improvements. He says he does the same thing when developing programming as faculty director for ScHOLA2RS House, a living-learning community for black males. (Photo Credit: Peter Morenus/UConn)
Q: Can you share an example of how that works?
Hines: In my School Counseling Development and Evaluation course, students do a mock advocacy project. They use the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection website to look at a local school district. They look for gaps, disaggregating the data by factors such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender.
Say an AP algebra II class has 20 students, and 5 are female. There’s obviously a gender imbalance. So students try to figure out why: they can interview teachers and students and look at the process by which students are chosen to take the class. We discuss best strategies for how to advocate for all students to be eligible for these types of programs and courses, maybe advertising the course to girls, or encouraging the school counselors to talk to students about it. Maybe the teacher needs more culturally responsive training to understand how to promote equity in the classroom.
Imagine an educational pipeline from pre-K all the way to graduate school. We are trying to make sure that we close all the leaks in the pipeline. The leaks can be under-resourced schools, teachers not adequately helping students get their needs met academically, and so on. We want to partner with teachers to help them best work with students, and vice-versa.
Q: What sort of pipeline got you to where you are?
Hines: I am forever grateful for the education I received in the great state of Florida. I went to mostly public schools. I went to a community college. And I think being in community college helped me really reflect on my life, because I didn’t do so well my first semester, but it encouraged me to think about what I really wanted to do that could be impactful as a job or career. Of course, my mother was on top of me saying, “You can’t be in college forever.”
Q: You proved her wrong, didn’t you?
Hines: Yes, I did. Yes! Even at times from my bachelor’s to master’s, she told me I needed to get a job. Don’t think she didn’t say that. “You’re going back to school again? You need a job!”
I thought about my strengths, I thought about what I could do, I thought about what I would be fulfilled by doing. I was helping in my local church at the time as a Sunday School teacher. And I was like, oh, I like kids. And then I really thought about my life and what I felt I didn’t get or I needed more of [growing up]. I think in high school, if I really had more people to push me, or I knew about more of the programs available to me, I could have been more successful.
My junior high school counselor, Mr. Robert Davis, stands out though. He was always trying to provide opportunities. He was very engaged with students. He took students on field trips to New York, for instance. Remembering that helped me think, “I want to be a school counselor.”
Q: Was it a straight path?
Hines: I started by going through computer science and business as majors, thinking I wanted to make a lot of money. Then I realized what I really wanted to do was help students develop their potential.
Q: Who do you consider your biggest mentors?
Hines: At Florida State University I met two of my mentors, Dr. Lee Jones, who has since passed away, and Dr. James L. Moore III. [Moore is now interim vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at The Ohio State University.]
Because of them, I was in the Brothers of the Academy, an academic organization for black men who aim to be tenure-track faculty or academic administrators. That helped me think about how we best help African-American students, and students in general who need help.
Q: How did the idea for ScHOLA²RS House develop?
Hines: Administrators looked at the data — when we talk about advocating, again, we have to look at what the data is saying. And the data told them that the graduation rate for black males at UConn was 55 percent, where our other populations — men, women, Asian, Latinx, white, black women — they were hovering in the high 70s and low 80s. And UConn’s overall graduation rate at the time, 2012–2013, was at 83 percent. They decided that a black male learning community could be instrumental in helping black men.
Currently, at any given time, there’s between 450 and 500 black males on campus, from freshmen to seniors, and there’s 18,000 to 19,000 students on the Storrs campus. So you can imagine, the population is that small, and only half of them were graduating. Something needed to be done.
How do we as a community, how do I as a professor, a father, a teacher, a mentor, an African-American male, help other young men be successful, transcend some of these issues, and not get too bogged down?
Q: When you first heard about it, did you think a learning community was a good idea?
Hines: Yeah! I was focused on the academic achievement part. So I was like, “Oh, this is great!” Because it was crazy that the graduation rate was 55 percent. Nationally for black males, it’s 34 percent, so we’re actually doing better because our institution is more selective, and a lot of our black men are coming from the top of their high school classes. Still, imagine that you graduate salutatorian or valedictorian from your high school, and then you look at that rate and think, “UConn may not be a viable option for me to complete.” That’s problematic.
I was naive to the fact people would be concerned about black men living together.
Q: What were some of the things you heard after it was announced?
Hines: Some students were hesitant; some wanted to see what it was about. Of course there was some racist propaganda, some students who were African-American who thought it was segregation. I had to combat the stereotype. What is problematic with black men living together? We have other groups living together on campus [WiMSE, or Women in Math, Science, and Engineering, is an all-female learning community, for example.]
To me, [if that’s seen as a problem], then we need to challenge our paradigm of what we think about black men. This should be something that — and I applaud the University of Connecticut — we have to jump on, be at the forefront. We have to take on some of these challenging issues that may not make everyone happy.
Q: Our University spokesperson said she was so shocked by some of the nastiness that you heard from people on the internet. But she said you weren’t shocked by it.
Hines: I’m not. I live and breathe being an African-American man every day. Sometimes I do get those looks; I have been searched unlawfully; I have been questioned about my intellect. I stick with data and I look at the bigger picture: How do we as a community, how do I as a professor, a father, a teacher, a mentor, an African-American male, help other young men be successful, transcend some of these issues, and not get too bogged down? I’m not saying ignore it, because I’m not doing that, but sometimes you have to be the bigger person to challenge it.
I believe the University of Connecticut is on the verge of doing something very innovative and I believe we can be pioneers in improving the graduation rate of black men, and showing our fellow institutions how to do that as well.
Agnes Baluka Masajja, a 2017 Global Sports Mentoring Program Emerging Leader, takes part in a physical training session with fellow emerging leaders at Ambitious Athletics in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of U.S. Dept. of State in cooperation with the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace, & Society. Photographer: Jaron Johns)
The Global Sports Mentoring Program (GSMP)’s Empower Women Through Sports Initiative is an international initiative co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and espnW that partners emerging female leaders from 17 countries with leading executives and experts in the U.S. sports industry. For the second consecutive year, Neag School faculty members Jennie McGarry and Laura Burton will be serving in the coming weeks as hosts.
Now in its sixth year, Empower Women Through Sports recognizes female achievement in sport leadership and aims to empower these emerging leaders to serve their local communities through increasing access to, and opportunities for, women and girls to participate in sports — and, ultimately, ignite change as an ambassador for female athletes around the world.
McGarry and Burton, both professors in the Neag School’s Department of Educational Leadership, were invited back to GSMP to serve as 2017 program mentors for emerging leader Agnes Baluka Masajja, sports tutor at Uganda’s Busitema University and head of the Education Commission with the Association of Uganda University Sports. Baluka Masajja is one of 17 women tapped as 2017 GSMP emerging leaders, all of whom have three or more years of professional or volunteer experience with a sport-based development organization. Each selected emerging leader uses this opportunity to explore a key challenge facing girls and women or people with disabilities in her home country.
“What sports has done for me I feel it can do for girls throughout Uganda. … Sports becomes a platform for a bigger conversation.”
— Agnes Baluka Masajja,
2017 Global Sports Mentoring Program Emerging Leader
‘This is my destiny’
Baluka Masajja has always been a natural when it came to sports. She excelled in all her athletic endeavors, including netball, soccer and track and field. However, despite her achievement in sport, her father pressured her to abandon athletics and focus entirely on her academics.
In her featured GSMP emerging leader profile, she explains how she managed to continue her participation in athletics despite her father’s wishes, “I would have to hide when I ran so he wouldn’t find out,” she says. “I would avoid any national competitions or races where there’d be media coverage because I didn’t want to get in trouble. By the time I got to university, I told my dad, ‘This is my career. This is my destiny.’ So he couldn’t refuse me anymore.”
Baluka Masajja is the second GSMP Emerging Leader to be hosted by professors Laura Burton and Jennie McGarry at the Neag School. (Courtesy of U.S. Dept. of State in cooperation with the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace, & Society. Photographer: Jaron Johns)
Patriarchal structures in Ugandan society treat men and women very differently in sports. Athletics are seen as part of the natural domain of men. Females in sport often face societal pressure to focus on domestic duties as well as a threat of sexual harassment from male coaches.
Baluka Masajja’s story, however, is different. She broke through barriers and currently serves as a role model for other Ugandan female athletes to do the same. As a sports tutor at Busitema University, she holds positions as a coordinator and supervisor for the university’s 16 athletics programs, only five of which are available for women. The limited number of programs is something she is striving to change. In addition, she serves as head of the Education Commission with the Association of Uganda University Sports, through which she organizes national and international tournaments; coaches workshops for sports trainers and tutors; and hosts seminars and conferences across Uganda. Baluka Masajja also was a coach for the country’s athletics delegation for the 2015 World University Games in South Korea, and will serve in the same capacity for the 2017 competition in Taipei.
According to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs website, girls who participate in sports are more likely to have higher rates of school retention and participate in society more. “When women and girls can walk on the playing field, they are more likely to step into the classroom, the boardroom, and step out as leaders in society,” the website states.
For Baluka Masajja, this sentiment rings true. “What sports has done for me, I feel it can do for girls throughout Uganda … Sports becomes a platform for a bigger conversation,” she says. As a GSMP emerging leader, she adds, “I hope to develop skills related to management and business that will help me contribute to economic growth. I also hope to learn about U.S. sports and nonprofit environments so I may implement similar ideas at home.”
After attending this week’s annual espnW: Women + Sports Summit in California, an event that unites female athletes, leaders in sports, and other industry leaders, Baluka Masajja will arrive at UConn to spend three weeks immersed in various learning and networking experiences with McGarry and Burton as her host mentors, who are both experts in gender issues in sport, specifically with marginalized ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
The Neag School will welcome Baluka Masajja at the Department of Educational Leadership General Meeting from 9:45 a.m. to noon on Friday, Oct. 6, in Gentry Room 142 on the UConn Storrs campus, and will share more information on this and other GSMP-related activities in the coming weeks.
Learn more through thisfeatured GSMP video or visit the U.S. Department of State’s GSMP website. Or, check out GSMP on Facebook. Read more about Agnes Baluka Masajja here, and view more photos of Baluka Masajja’s visit to UConn here.
Joseph Cooper, assistant professor of sport management, weighs in on the recent #TakeAKnee protests. “Symbolic gestures garner attention, but economic activism stimulates substantive change,” he says. (Photo Credit: Sean Flynn/UConn)
Over recent weekends, several NFL teams have engaged in public demonstrations to show their solidarity in response to President Trump’s recent comments about how owners should respond if players follow Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling action during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner. Several teams chose to kneel during the anthem in direct objection to the President’s comments. Most of another team decided against being on the field until after the anthem ended. Numerous team owners locked arms with players, while others offered public statements expressing support of their players.
Despite the symbolic nature of these demonstrations, they are just that: symbolic. Let’s be clear about what these demonstrations were and were not:
They were a sign that these players and select owners have a modicum of consciousness of and consideration for the blatant disrespect of players’ rights to engage in peaceful protests.
They were a sign that sport can be useful as a unifying force in our society, even while differing perspectives exist.
They were a sign that the NFL is committed to maintaining business as usual amidst tumultuous political times.
The multiple impacts of these demonstrations are not mutually exclusive (either positive or negative).
However, it is important to understand that these demonstrations were not a form of activism.
Activism through sport has manifested in symbolic gestures, sport-based challenges, and grassroots efforts. Yet the most powerful form of activism within a capitalist society is economic activism.
Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee last year was activism because it disrupted the social order, drawing attention to vast inequalities and injustices in our society and issuing a direct call to action to all U.S. citizens — particularly lawmakers, judicial officers, and law enforcement — to be more reflective and prudent in their roles in serving communities that have been historically and contemporarily disadvantaged.
The actions by the NFL teams and their owners this weekend reflect what American author Ibram X. Kendi has described as protecting their self-interests. Make no mistake: The NFL is not primarily concerned with promoting and securing justice for all, but instead with maintaining its economic standing. It is no wonder the same owners who were silent on, or outright condemning of, Kaepernick’s initial act of activism are now offering support to players’ rights to protest peacefully and express their political views. What caused the sudden shift in opinion or tenor? Low NFL ratings signaling a decline in viewership and growing public discontent with disdainful rhetoric and perceived apathy from team owners.
Activism through sport has manifested in symbolic gestures, sport-based challenges, and grassroots efforts. Yet the most powerful form of activism within a capitalist society is economic activism. Numerous NFL fans have engaged in economic activism by diverting their viewership and overall consumption away from regular season games this year. Although not activism, players’ unions in the past have utilized strikes as a means of leveraging their power in negotiations with their teams.
Within the current context, symbolic activism is helpful, but economic activism is the real Black power salute. Black males constitute 70 percent of the NFL, and the causes for which Kaepernick kneeled impact the Black community disproportionately. So these players would make a more powerful statement if they leveraged their economic power to achieve certain aims — whether the aim is to eliminate the overt discrimination against Kaepernick due to his political stance, to push for more substantive changes in the NFL’s stance on proven domestic violence offenders, or to champion their role in promoting social justice in the broader society. When money is impacted, change will follow.
Symbolic gestures garner attention, but economic activism stimulates substantive change. My hope is that NFL players will decide to do more than take a knee, lock arms, and raise a fist for a salute and instead exercise their economic strength to drive the change we really need in sport and society. There is a point when playing the game does not outweigh championing social justice.
Joseph Cooper is an assistant professor of sport management in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.
Neag School Professor Emeritus Vincent Rogers (pictured here with his wife, Chris, who passed away in 1999), has announced a planned bequest to the Neag School, designating a legacy gift of $125,000 to expand the Rogers Educational Innovation Fund in support of innovative projects carried out by teachers in Connecticut. (Photo courtesy of Vincent Rogers)
When Neag School of Education professor emeritus Vincent Rogers’ daughter and her husband — both schoolteachers — received a $5,000 grant to study educational techniques in New Zealand, Rogers himself was inspired to add to his family’s existing Neag School fund with something similar for teachers in Connecticut.
Rogers recently announced a planned bequest to the Neag School, designating a legacy gift of $125,000 to expand the Rogers Educational Innovation Fund in support of innovative projects carried out by teachers in Connecticut. Through his gift, elementary and middle-school teachers across the state will be able to apply annually for a $5,000 gift for use in the classroom.
Rogers’ daughter and son-in-law, teachers at the Pine Point School in Stonington, Conn., used the grant they had received to visit schools in New Zealand, networking with educators and learning techniques that would, in turn, enrich the school where they teach.
Rogers, now 90, recalls how the grant impacted them and, ultimately, inspired him personally to expand a Neag School award he and his wife previously established, that will now, he says, “be an open-ended initiative for the teacher … to come up with a really creative idea that would help them, the school, and the children.”
Giving Back to Teachers Rogers and his now late wife, Chris, also a longtime educator, previously established a fund at the Neag School through which elementary school teachers in Mansfield, Conn., could apply annually for a $1,000 grant to enrich their classrooms. Over the years, eight grants were made to local schools.
Chris Rogers, who passed away in 1999 from complications after a 30-year battle with multiple sclerosis, inspired many children over her three-decade career, but did not let her disability keep her from making a difference, says her husband, who calls her “the greatest teacher the world ever saw.”
Vincent Rogers has announced a planned bequest to the Neag School, designating a legacy gift of $125,000 to expand the Rogers Educational Innovation Fund in support of innovative projects carried out by teachers in Connecticut.
Rogers’ additional gift will be open to elementary and middle-school teachers across the state of Connecticut to “support research and programs for the collaborative work of classroom teachers and the Neag School of Education,” and award recipients will have the freedom to use the award in any way they see fit. Rogers, who spent four decades teaching and writing about education techniques, led the Neag School’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction and served on its faculty, retiring in 1990.
A History of Inspiration A third-generation Italian growing up in New York, N.Y., Rogers had not traveled much beyond the city during his youth. But when a high school friend who went on to Cornell University invited Rogers to see his college campus, Rogers found himself inspired.
“That visit changed everything,” he says. “The sheer beauty of the campus, the academic atmosphere, the intellectual atmosphere … Those guys walked across the campus at 10 in the morning with a little folder under their arm, giving lectures.” He recalls thinking: “I’m interested in that job. How do you get that job?”
Accepted at Cornell as a history major, Rogers was drafted in his second year by the U.S. Army and originally slated to serve in combat overseas. But Rogers, a jazz musician during his high school days, was then reassigned to play trumpet in the West Point Military Academy band. After playing for West Point for nine months and completing his three-month basic training, Rogers qualified for the G.I. Bill, which allowed him to return to Cornell with his education costs covered.
Rogers was drafted by the U.S. Army during his second year at Cornell University. Originally slated to serve in combat overseas, Rogers — a jazz musician during his high school days — was reassigned to play trumpet in the West Point Military Bend. (Photo courtesy of Vincent Rogers)
Cornell provided more than a degree for Rogers; he also met his wife, Chris, there. Following college, they both taught in the Westhampton Beach, Long Island, school system for several years before Rogers was made school principal at James Port School on Long Island. It was a role he believes he was given not due to his natural leadership ability, but because he was a man.
“I was a good teacher, but hadn’t been there that long,” he says. “Most of the faculty were women, and Chris would have made a better principal.”
While leading the school in Long Island, Rogers took graduate extension courses through Syracuse University. One professor took a liking to Rogers and suggested he go to Syracuse for a graduate fellowship program.
“Here was my way to get what I wanted: to be a college professor,” he says.
Against his parents’ wishes, the Rogers family went to Syracuse. “My family [thought] that I was crazy to leave a job like a principalship. Back in the 1940s, you didn’t leave good, steady jobs,” he says.
Eventually earning a doctorate in history in 1949, Rogers was hired as an assistant professor at Syracuse — fulfilling his dream and starting his long-awaited career as an academic.
Open Education Rogers taught at Syracuse for a number of years and was then recruited to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Through colleagues, he later connected with faculty at Johns Hopkins University, which had a center for international studies in Bologna, Italy. There, he participated in its American teachers abroad program, a six-week opportunity for Rogers and fellow faculty from history, economics, sociology, and education, which turned into two summers abroad for Rogers and his family.
University of Minnesota came calling next, where they spent the next five “incredible” years. During this time, the Fulbright Program came into the picture for Rogers when an administrator of education from England, who had been following Rogers’ published works, suggested he apply for a Fulbright.
“He visited my classrooms, and we had long conversations about education in general,” recalls Rogers. “He seemed to think I was just what they needed.”
Rogers’ Fulbright research targeted child-centered learning in British schools, which focused attention on children doing and being active in the classroom, versus being lectured to. His work led to the publication of a book called The Social Education of British Children (1968, Heinemann Publications). The Fulbright ended, and he returned to University of Minnesota. Through his time, he continued publishing about child-centered education, also known as open education.
Rogers, who spent four decades teaching and writing about education techniques, led the Neag School’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction and served on its faculty, retiring in 1990. (Photo Credit: Shawn Kornegay/Neag School)
This work sparked the attention of many institutions, including that of the University of Connecticut, which sought an individual to lead the nation in developing child-centered education in the U.S. as chairman of the curriculum and instruction department in the School of Education. Rogers led the department for five years and continued to publish and travel the world, speaking and writing about child-centered education until returning to a faculty role and continuing his research.
“Everyone was interested in open education, and I was giving lectures everywhere,” Rogers says. “I’m a firm believer that if you want to improve and get new ideas, it’s best not just to read about them, but to go and see it happen.”
“Vin was absolutely one of the very best department heads I ever knew,” says Neag School professor emeritus Gil Dyrli. “He led by example through conducting groundbreaking research, publishing significant books and articles, and presenting keynote addresses at major professional conferences.”
“He was a world leader in international education and the education movement known as ‘open education,’ and wrote the definitive book in the field,” Dyrli adds. “As I travelled the country throughout my career, representing UConn and doing staff development, a common question was ‘Do you work with Vin Rogers?’”
Innovation Back Home In Connecticut, Rogers followed through on his innovative work. He connected with a fellow School of Education faculty member, the late A.J. Pappanikou, whose focus was on special education, with whom he partnered to ensure that future educators were getting hands-on experience in urban school settings.
Together, they coordinated about 20 UConn students to do their student teaching in New Haven, Conn., where, Rogers says, students had an opportunity to get a view of schools beyond suburbia — a rare and innovative practice at the time.
“His many students have gone on to important positions at state, national, and international levels in public and private education,” says Dyrli. “His original contributions and seminal ideas continue to be worth exploring, and thanks to the internet and online resources, they are more accessible than ever.”
With his newly announced bequest to the Neag School, Rogers will now be passing that spirit of innovation to yet another generation of students, giving teachers in Connecticut the opportunity to enact innovative projects of their own in elementary and middle-school classrooms across the state.
Learn more about the Rogers Educational Innovation Fund — and apply for the grant — at rogersfund.uconn.edu. Consider a gift in a support of the Neag School.
