Engineering Students Go Beyond the Books to Assist Massachusetts Girl

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Last spring, biomedical engineering students Kevin Franzino, Jeffrey Peterson and Kelly O’Neill often found themselves working late into the night on a very special project.

Fueled by pizza and coffee brought in by a supportive parent, the trio worked into the early morning, pushing the limits of their engineering knowledge and skills to plot, design and build three pieces of customized equipment for a little girl from Boston, then 3 years old.

The girl, Samantha Gillard, has Rett syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system that occurs mostly in females and can limit a child’s mobility, speech  and cognitive development.

The students were introduced to Samantha through her grandmother, Jane Gillard, a program assistant at UConn’s Nayden Rehabilitation Clinic in the Neag School of Education. Gillard had heard about UConn’s biomedical engineering program, in which seniors tackle real-world problems and create innovative devices to fulfill their graduation requirements, and she wondered whether the students might be able to help Samantha.

Gillard refers to her granddaughter as a “sunny kid,” and the engineering students recall being drawn to Samantha the moment they met her.

“Sam is very social. She likes people, and she loves going to school, where she is well-liked by her peers and teachers alike,” says her father Geoff Gillard, a laboratory scientist at Harvard.

After speaking with the family and meeting Samantha, the students decided to design and build for her a customized chair, a personalized ski sled, and a remote-controlled, battery-powered car. The students say the equipment gives Samantha a degree of freedom she never had before.

While similar devices are available commercially, the students modified their designs so the equipment Samantha received was tailored to her specific needs.

Geoff and his wife, Jenny, say they are grateful for the students’ efforts. The family members hike and ski in the mountains of New Hampshire in their free time, activities Samantha can now also enjoy with her new gifts from UConn.

“We use her chair every day for a variety of functions,” Geoff Gillard says. “It fits everything we asked for and more.”

Peterson, one of the student designers, says, “The assistive skiing device is essentially a stroller on skis with a hinge that replicates the articulation of the knee. It allows the device to stand up and sit down on chair lifts.” Peterson has since graduated and is now pursuing a master’s in biomedical engineering.

And as for the battery-powered car, Jane Gillard says Samantha could not be happier.

“It’s great. It’s screaming pink. The car has room for two kids,” she says. “It’s remote-controlled, so her parents can control it for her. She loves it. It makes her smile. She grins like crazy.”

The car includes a five-point restraint harness to ensure Samantha’s safety.

The family first used the finished products at the School of Engineering’s Senior Design Demonstration Day, an annual event held in Gampel Pavilion at the end of the academic year. It was a moment the family and the students will remember for some time.

“The day of the fair, Geoff was just learning to navigate the car, so Sammy was all over Gampel,” Jane Gillard recalls. “People were laughing and cheering.”

“Seeing Samantha at Senior Design Day was absolutely the most rewarding part of the project,” says O’Neill, who graduated with a biomedical engineering degree and currently does clinical research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We were able to apply our knowledge base to implement a solution to a real-world problem and physically see the results.”

“Every project has a real-world function,” says retired engineering professor John Enderle[CN1] , Ph.D., who oversaw UConn’s biomedical engineering program for more than 20 years before stepping down from the post last year. “Many of our students elect to get valuable work experience by working on a design project with local companies.”

As a result of their senior design involvement, quite a few UConn seniors are offered jobs by their company sponsors before graduation. Assistant Professor Donald Peterson, Ph.D., currently serves as the biomedical engineering program’s interim director.

Other projects UConn students have developed include digital hearing aids, assistive learning devices and environmental control systems for individuals with disabilities. The equipment is given to the clients free of charge.

Franzino says he opted for an adaptive devices project because that was where his interests lie. “The whole reason I elected to study biomedical engineering was for the opportunity to design and create parts that would help people,” says Franzino, who graduated in May 2011 with a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering.

O’Neill says that despite the hard work and long nights, the senior design project was the most memorable experience of her college career: “Being able to present the Gillards with projects that would make a difference in their day-to-day lives and seeing how thrilled they were was the best feeling of my undergraduate career.”

Even Mild Dehydration Can Alter Our Moods

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Stock photo: water pouring into glass.Most people only think about drinking water when they are thirsty. But by then, it may already be too late.

Even mild dehydration can alter a person’s mood, energy level and ability to think clearly, according to two studies recently conducted at the University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory.

The tests showed it didn’t matter if a person had just walked for 40 minutes on a treadmill or was sitting at rest—the  adverse effects from mild dehydration were the same. Mild dehydration is defined as an approximately 1.5 percent loss in normal water volume in the body.

The test results affirm the importance of staying properly hydrated at all times and not just during exercise, extreme heat or exertion, says Lawrence E. Armstrong, one of the studies’ lead scientists and a professor of physiology in UConn’s Department of Kinesiology in the Neag School of Education.

“Our thirst sensation doesn’t really appear until we are 1 or 2 percent dehydrated. By then, dehydration is already setting in and starting to impact how our mind and body perform,” says Armstrong, an international expert on hydration who has conducted research in the field for more than 20 years.

“Dehydration affects all people, and staying properly hydrated is just as important for those who work all day at a computer as it is for marathon runners, who can lose up to 8 percent of their body weight as water when they compete,” he adds.

Separate groups of young women and men were tested. Twenty-five women took part in one study. Their average age was 23. The men’s group consisted of 26 men with an average age of 20. All of the participants were healthy, active individuals, who were neither high-performance athletes nor sedentary and typically exercised for 30 to 60 minutes a day.

Each participant took part in three evaluations 28 days apart. All of the participants walked on a treadmill to induce dehydration, and all of the subjects were hydrated the evening before the evaluations commenced. As part of the evaluation, the subjects were put through a battery of cognitive tests that measured vigilance, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory and reasoning. The results were compared against a separate series of tests when the individuals were not dehydrated.

In the test involving the young women, mild dehydration caused headaches, fatigue and difficulty concentrating, according to one of the studies, which appeared in the February issue of The Journal of Nutrition. The female subjects also perceived tasks as more difficult when slightly dehydrated, although there was no substantive reduction in their cognitive abilities.

In the test involving the young men, mild dehydration caused some difficulty with mental tasks, particularly in the areas of vigilance and working memory. While the young men also experienced fatigue, tension and anxiety when mildly dehydrated, adverse changes in mood and symptoms were “substantially greater in females than in males, both at rest and during exercise,” according to the study. The men’s study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition in November 2011.

“Even mild dehydration that can occur during the course of our ordinary daily activities can degrade how we are feeling – especially for women, who appear to be more susceptible to the adverse effects of low levels of dehydration than men,” says Harris Lieberman, one of the studies’ co-authors and a research psychologist with the Military Nutrition Division, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass. “In both sexes, these adverse mood changes may limit the motivation required to engage in even moderate aerobic exercise. Mild dehydration may also interfere with other daily activities, even when there is no physical demand component present.”

Why women and men are so adversely affected by mild dehydration is unclear, and more research is necessary. But other research has shown that neurons in the brain detect dehydration and may signal other parts of the brain that regulate mood when dehydration occurs. This process could be part of an ancient warning system protecting humans from more dire consequences, and alerting them to the need for water to survive.

In order to stay properly hydrated, experts like Armstrong recommend people drink eight, 8-ounce glasses of water a day, which is approximately equivalent to about 2 liters of water. People can check their hydration status by monitoring the color of their urine. Urine should be a very pale yellow in individuals who are properly hydrated. Urine that is dark yellow or tan in color indicates greater dehydration. Proper hydration is particularly important for high-risk groups, such as the elderly, people with diabetes  and children.

The dehydration studies were supported by Danone Research of France and conducted in partnership with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, University of Arkansas, and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine in Dallas, Texas. UConn professor Douglas Casa, Ph.D., adjunct assistant professor Elaine Lee, Ph.D., and members of the graduate student team at UConn’s Korey Stringer Institute for the prevention of sudden death in sport helped gather data for the two studies.

Exploring the New Literacies

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Don Leu, the John and Maria Neag endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology.
Don Leu, the John and Maria Neag endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology. Photo Credit: UConn Foundation

Is reading a school textbook and reading information online the same?

No, says Donald Leu, a prominent reading researcher, director of UConn’s internationally renowned New Literacies Research Lab in the Neag School of Education and the John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology. “Children today are digital natives, familiar with digital technology very early on,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean they know how to read and evaluate information online.”

Leu believes he can help. “We’ve identified the skills and strategies for successful online reading and writing,” he says. “I care deeply about preparing our children for the kinds of reading and writing demands that will define their future.”

An affable and ambitious academic who is a graduate of Michigan State, Harvard and UC-Berkeley, Leu was comfortably ensconced as chair of the Department of Reading and Language Arts at Syracuse University when the Neag Endowed Chair came calling. He foresaw that the Neag chair would enable him to teach new ways of reading instruction and provide funding to create and run the literacy center.

During his tenure at UConn, the New Literacies lab has established itself as the premier center for research on new reading comprehensions and learning skills required by the Internet and other technologies. Leu recently co-published the Handbook of Research on New Literacies (Erlbaum, 2008).

Groundbreaking research has its perks. Leu’s reputation and the New Literacies lab’s discoveries have attracted the attention of a number of charitable heavy hitters, including the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Public Broadcasting System, the Annenberg Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, who have combined to provide grants in excess of $10 million.

“The John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology allows me to pursue research that I care deeply about, preparing students for the new literacies that will define their future in an online world of information and communication,” says Leu who was appointed to the Neag chair in 2000.

“The freedom I have to work hard and make this world a better place is something that I treasure greatly. It is only possible with the resources that an endowed chair provides.”

For more information on giving to the Neag School of Education, click here or contact Heather McDonald at hmcdonald@foundation.uconn.edu.

Save the Date: Alumni Weekend is Coming June 1 and 2!

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Join us as we celebrate Alumni Weekend, June 1 and 2, with past, present and future Husky generations! Visit campus and remember how UConn became your home—the place where lifelong friendships began and special memories abound. The Neag School of Education will  host a reception on Friday, June 1, from 4-5 p.m. Come back to see the Gentry Building, along with current and previous faculty. We will also have a special present for each individual in attendance.

This year’s festivities are especially exciting for the classes of 1962 and 1987, who will be enjoying their 25th and 50th reunions. Mark your calendars! Don’t miss out on a wonderful weekend of family, friends and Husky pride!  Sign the online guestbook here and see why fellow alumni love coming back to UConn for Alumni Weekend.

Details and the latest updates about Alumni Weekend will be posted here UConnAlumni.com/AlumniWeekend.

UConn’s Neag School Ranked Among the Nation’s Best Schools of Education

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RankingsThe U.S. News & World Report released its rankings of Graduate Schools  and the Neag School of Education continues to achieve top-ranking status as it rose in rankings to #32 in the nation. This ranking puts the Neag School as the #1 public graduate school of education in the Northeast and #22 among all public graduate schools of education in the nation.

In addition, the #32 ranking puts the Neag School in the top 11.5 percent of all graduate schools of education surveyed by U.S. News & World Report. In the specialty rankings, the Elementary Education program rose to #14 in the nation, the Secondary Education program rose to #17, and Educational Psychology is ranked #22 in the country.

Each year, U.S. News gathers opinion data from school superintendents and deans from across the country to rank professional school programs. Thomas DeFranco, dean of the Neag School is very proud of the accomplishments of the faculty and staff in achieving this ranking  and believes the rankings serve as one of several barometers used by the Neag School to assess its reputation and quality of its programs.

DeFranco also believes a factor helping to build the Neag School’s reputation is its work with public schools in Connecticut and across the country. “Faculty within the Neag School are not only focused on research and scholarship, they are committed to working in partnership with classroom teachers and educational stakeholders across the state sharing information about best practices and improving the academic performance of children,” he says.

“Our goal is to produce highly qualified teachers, principals, superintendents and health professionals who will impact the academic performance and health and well-being of children and adults in Connecticut and in the nation,” DeFranco says.

Neag and History Professors Collaborate on “Teaching History with Museums” Book

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Teaching History with Museums book imageMuseums provide students with opportunities and resources not available in the classroom. Through the physical participation of seeing, feeling, touching and overall experiencing the past, field trips to these sites and their corresponding lesson plans are crucial for successful learning in youth.

UConn’s Alan Marcus, Ph.D., associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the Neag School of Education, and Walter Woodward, Ph.D., associate professor of history and Connecticut state historian, believe museums promote a sophisticated understanding of social studies and facilitate the development of critical thinking habits and literacy skills not easily replicated in the classroom.

Dr. Marcus, Dr. Woodward and co-author Jeremy D. Stoddard, a Spears Distinguished Associate Professor of Education at the College of William and Mary, integrated their history orientations and education perspectives in the new book, Teaching History with Museums.

It is the authors’ hope that their text will encourage teachers to design more effective museum visits with a fueling of collaboration between teachers and museum educators.

“The museum education experience is very different from teaching history in a classroom,” says Dr. Woodward. “Helping teachers and museum educators understand the differences between the two, so they can collaborate to give students a richer and more meaningful understanding of how history affects their lives, seemed awfully important.”

Dr. Marcus and Dr. Woodward believe that by bridging this gap and providing both groups of educators with the proper skills, students will become more analytical consumers and improved citizens in a democracy.

“[We] wrote the book to support teachers, pre-service teachers and museum professionals, and to help develop effective and engaging activities for student visits to museums and/or using museum resources,” says Dr. Marcus. “The book provides a theoretical framework for using museums to develop students’ historical understanding, as well as the importance of using museums more broadly. It also presents a series of case studies of teachers taking students to museums.”

The text introduces the importance, power and potential for historical knowledge of different types of museums. Each serve various purposes in learning. Chapters in the book are devoted to artifact, display and living history museums, as well as to historic homes, monuments, memorials and forts.

The book is grounded in well-established theory and research in history education, providing practical strategies for teachers and museum professionals alike.

“The activities presented are representative of key issues with each type of museum, so there are core concepts that can be applied to other living-history museums or other historic forts,” says Dr. Marcus.

Teaching History with Museums has not only lead to a collaboration between the two UConn departments, but to a partnership with one of the book’s case studies, the Mark Twain House and Museum.

The partnership includes pre-service history teachers interning at the Twain House, a Neag Social Studies Alumni Event in April and an upcoming free book talk, “What Role Can Museums Play in Educational Reforms in Connecticut.”

Nine students are currently interning at the Twain House, where they are being trained as exhibit guides. The experience prepares these pre-service teachers to develop curriculums and outreach for schools, as well as to create pre-visit activities for museum visitors.

In addition, Dr. Marcus is working on the development of a research study with a professor at the University of Nottingham in England to look at how students learn from museums, particularly those related to World War II and the Holocaust. The affiliation will entail collaborative work between pre-service history teachers at both universities.

Dr. Marcus hopes  this work will eventually expand to faculty in England, Japan and Germany to analyze how students learn about World War II from museums in these locations, especially given the potential for different perspectives.

Drs. Marcus and Woodward are also now in discussions with the Connecticut Humanities Council about hosting a workshop for teachers and museum educators. This summer, they hope to have a book talk in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the Smithsonian Museum. Both professors will be co-teaching a course on museum education in the coming academic year.

Dr. Marcus’ primary areas of scholarship focus on the use of film and museums to teach history. He has written numerous articles and books, including Teaching History with Film: Strategies for Secondary Social Studies and Celluloid Blackboard: Teaching History with Film. In addition, Dr. Marcus teaches a course called “Teaching History with Films and Museums,” which includes a two-week trip to Europe.

 

The “What Role Can Museums Play in Educational Reforms in Connecticut” book talk at the Mark Twain House and Museum will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on March 27. Admission is free and includes a formal presentation, question and answer period, book signing, refreshments and a sneak preview of the “Race, Rage & Redemption” exhibition.

Attendees will also receive two free Mark Twain House tour passes. Reservations can be requested at (860) 280-3146 or craig.hotchkiss@marktwainhouse.org.

The Renzulli Academy for High Performing/Low Income Students in Hartford Receives Grant for Summer Enrichment Program

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With a $250,000 grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the Renzulli Academy in Hartford will establish a robust summer enrichment program for its high potential/low income students.

Fourth-graders working on experiment with teacher
Fourth-graders perform an experiment with the help of their teacher Freddie DeJesus at the Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Conn., in 2011. (Photo Credit: Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

The academy, which opened two years ago, serves 110 students in grades four through eight using an approach to learning designed to affect the entire culture of the school and reach into the home lives of its students. Instead of a remedial and compensatory focus, the academy uses a learning theory called the Enrichment Triad Model that makes curricular topics more interesting and meaningful.

“The student success we’ve achieved has been unprecedented in Hartford,” says Joseph Renzulli, professor in the Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talented Development, who developed the learning approach used at the academy. “In 2010, 89 percent of the student body scored either at goal or mastery level; and in 2011, 95 percent of the student body scored either at goal or mastery level.”

The academy, which recently moved out of a wing of the Simpson Waverly School into its own small building on Cornwall Street, will use the grant to establish a six-week summer program focusing on art, science and math, followed with an independent or small group project.

“One of our greatest challenges is helping all of our students have a background and context in which to understand big ideas in literature, history, geography, mathematics and science, so they can apply this knowledge to challenging academic work,” says Renzulli. “Most of the students attending the academy have never traveled to historical venues, have not attended live theater performances or visited a major university,” he says, adding that when the academy took students to a performance at the Bushnell, it was the first live production for 99 percent of them. “We have not had the resources to deliver the same types of opportunities to these students that their middle class peers enjoy on a regular basis.”

Sixth-graders work on writing projects with teacher Kim Albro
Sixth-graders work on writing projects with teacher Kim Albro at Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford on Dec. 14, 2011. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

The program will begin this summer for students in grades six, seven and eight,” says Renzulli Academy Director Ruth Lyons.  “We are going to work with the Bushnell, Talcott Mountain Science Center, Connecticut Public Television, and with alumni from the University of Connecticut.  We are excited that this grant will allow the academy to broaden the horizons of our students. For example, this year we are planning a trip to Washington, D.C. It is our hope that this grant will provide our students with as many opportunities as their academic counterparts in more affluent areas.”

“We’ll expand the program over the next two years, so it is available to all our students,” adds Lyons. The grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is renewable for up to three years. Located in Virginia, this private, independent foundation is dedicated to helping exceptionally promising students reach their full potential through education.

“These enrichment activities help the students apply and transform factual information into usable knowledge,” Lyons says.

For more information about how to support Neag School programs like the Renzulli Academy, visit here or contact Heather McDonald at hmcdonald@foundation.uconn.edu.

It’s a World of Possibilities

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GlobalEd imageGlobalEd 2 may sound like a game that leads to world domination, but it’s actually one that leads to word domination.

Writing quality and self-efficacy scores of middle schoolers in many cases double after 14 weeks participating in the computerized, interdisciplinary, problem-based GlobalEd 2 social studies game, which requires classrooms represent assigned countries and—via monitored email, chat and other secure online interactions—work with other “countries” to find solutions for water supply, climate change and other real-world, contemporary science problems.

Pre- and post-game evaluations of students also show improved critical and scientific thinking, leadership, engagement and problem solving abilities. African-American students from schools located in urban, low-economic, areas tend to have the biggest increases, closing any academic gaps seen at the start of the game between them and their Caucasian, suburban counterparts.

But it’s perhaps the excitement for learning and individualized educational accomplishments that students write about in post-game evaluations that excite GlobalEd 2 coordinators the most.

“GlobalEd 2 takes technology that’s available in most middle schools and encourages students to use it to become decision makers, negotiators, persuasive writers and problem solvers, as well as to learn about different countries, governments and the very real human and science-related problems our world faces today,” said GlobalEd 2 co-developer Scott Brown, Ph.D., a professor of Educational Psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education, who created the original version of the program with Mark Boyer, Ph.D., head of UConn’s Political Science Department.

“The best part: most of them want to do it,” Brown continued. “It’s fun—in many respects it’s like video gaming—and when you’re able to come up with a hard-to-find solution or negotiate a deal with another country, it’s exciting, too. For educators, it’s an empowering and innovative way to transfer knowledge, engage students in meaningful learning, and meet local, state and national demands for improved literacy, math and science skills.”

More than 5,000 public middle school students in 14 states, two foreign countries (Greece and Cyprus) and 35 Connecticut towns have participated in GlobalEd since its inception in 1998. Continuously funded by U.S. Department of Education grants and having evolved several times, the current program is being run as a partnership between UConn and the University of Illinois – Chicago, where Kimberly Lawless, Ph.D.—a graduate of the Neag School’s doctoral program in Educational Psychology: Cognition & Instruction—teaches and serves as UIC Educational Psychology department chair.

“It’s great to watch these kids working in the classroom, because what you see is kids excited about education. They’re noisy because they’re having meaty conversations or collaborating on the best way to get their point across,” said Lawless, who with Brown presented the success of GlobalEd 2 at the 2011 International Association for Development of the Information Society conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and published a paper in the IADIS journal in 2011.

“The ability of the program to make such an impact on students in such a short amount of time is something I’m especially proud of, especially when you compare student improvements in high socioeconomic and low socioeconomic schools,” she added. “All of students improve significantly, but urban schools improved the most. Sure, they had more to gain, but we also feel GlobalEd engages students in a way that they haven’t experienced in the past. It’s not science with tests and beakers. It’s science in the real world.”

Any seventh- or eighth-grade social studies teacher willing to take part in the mandatory three days of paid, summer training can have their class participate in GlobalEd. The program runs once a year and is generally limited to 12-18 classrooms.

Phase 1 of GlobalEd consists of six to eight weeks of in-depth research before the actual “game” begins. Classrooms are assigned a country and, through the secure GlobalEd website, given writing tasks, questions and problems designed to educate students about their country’s geography, government, economics, culture, health challenges and human rights issues.

Students are then presented with a science crisis that affects all the countries and challenged to not just come up with a solution, but one that every country agrees to. The scenario is set six months into the future to minimize the impact of current news events.

Connecticut and Chicago seventh- and eighth-graders who participated last school year were tasked with coming up with global solutions to slow or reverse climate change and quickly shrinking water resources.

“Past scenarios have included stopping a flu pandemic and putting a stop to child labor, and next year we hope to focus on food production and finding alternative fuel resources,” Brown explained, “because they’re real challenges countries are facing right now and that very well at some point may affect the students participating.”

During Phase 2 of GlobalEd—the simulation or actual playing of the game—UConn doctoral students experienced in international relations monitor and track students’ exchanges, offering feedback and suggestions designed to encourage students to think critically, as well as consider the tone and tact of their communications with other countries. They also make sure students stay “in character,” use proper diplomatic language, stay respectful and present suggestions both doable and consistent with their country’s resources, culture and values.

To avoid the stereotyping, only students’ initials and country names are used in communications. Students are not told the name, gender, race or location of their competitors, which ensures “even ground,” Brown said.

“We know the stereotypes, and there are plenty of them—that girls aren’t really interested in science; that the white kids from the suburbs will do better at the game than the African-American kids from the inner city,” he continued. “But when you take all those social stereotypes that suppress a child’s ability to learn, or believe in him or herself, there’s nothing but possibilities and opportunities for learning. And that’s exciting.”

Although there are no official winners in the game, each classroom’s goal is to negotiate an agreement with at least one other country by the end of the eight-week simulation period.

Students in the countries that achieve that goal then have bragging rights during the two weeks of debriefing that make up Phase 3.

“Kids are competitive, and GlobalEd causes students to step up and give their all to find the best solutions to whatever scientific crisis they’ve been given,” said Rick Coppola, an eighth-grade teacher at John B. Drake Elementary School in Chicago, who’s participated in GlobalEd the past two years. “No kid wants to hear from the game monitor that they’re slacking. They want to hear that they are doing stellar, which is what turns out to be the case.

“Hands-on, applied learning is so much more interesting than watching me—or any teacher—stand up at a podium and lecture,” Coppola continued. “It’s dynamic, cooperative learning, and because the problems students need to solve are multi-faceted, there’s a job for everyone. Kids interested in research might focus on research; those who are very vocal may become the diplomats; and there are so many responsibilities and layers that it’s hard for anyone to slink into the background and let others do the work. It’s amazing how seriously kids take GlobalEd, pushing themselves and their friends to make the kind of evidenced-based arguments needed to successfully negotiate a deal.”

Brown and Lawless, who with Boyer and others are already planning for next year, feel strongly that the kind of real-world, tech-savvy, problem-based learning GlobalEd 2 provides is built on best practices and will soon become more widespread—or if not, should.

“GlobalEd changes the way teachers teach and students think,” Brown said. “Not every student who comes through the program will go on to become engineers or geneticists, but they will have the skills and abilities needed to be better problem solvers and decision makers, see the relationship between local and global issues, and to communicate their ideas more effectively. We also hope they have the realization that learning isn’t just confined to a classroom. It’s ongoing.”

Change Agent and Champion of Educational Opportunity For All

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Howard K.

Fresh out of UConn Law School in the early 1960’s, Howard Klebanoff found himself in the middle of history, having landed a job in the Kennedy administration at the U.S. Department of Labor. He was as infused with the spirit of “Camelot” as anyone.

“A lot of us who were down there at that time felt we were going to change the world,” Klebanoff says. Nearly 50 years later, it’s clear that Klebanoff made good on his youthful aspiration for change, most dramatically in public schools across Connecticut.

But before the big changes he would help create, there were small ones, centered around his family and their Hartford neighborhood in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Klebanoff and his wife had seen firsthand the “white flight” that had driven many families out of urban life and urban schools, but they were determined not to be one of them. “I wanted our children to live in a multi-cultural area,” he says.

At about the same time, however, their daughter developed a hearing impairment and other health problems as a result of high fevers, which brought them into a public school landscape poorly prepared to handle children with disabilities.

The needed fixes were small, however—“little things,” as Klebanoff calls them—such as  making sure his daughter’s desk was in the front of the classroom, the teacher always turning to face the class before speaking , and the teacher double-checking that his daughter’s hearing aids were turned on.

But after the child suffered her first grand mal seizure several years later, the situation with her education became more complicated. For Klebanoff, though, it was also eye-opening. “It gave me empathy for what parents of special needs children go through,” he says.  “It also taught me that special education is a two-way street; that we, as parents, have to provide teachers with information about these conditions. It’s a partnership.”

In addition to empathy, though, Klebanoff also had the opportunity to initiate improvements. As House chairman of the Legislature’s Education Committee in the 1970s, he knew that Connecticut had relatively minimal special education laws in effect. Klebanoff built on that in an unlikely partnership that resulted from a phone call to Washington.

Hoping the Education Department might be able to help him find an “expert” in special education, he was told that two of the best were right at UConn, professors Jack Cawley and A.J. Pappanikou. Klebanoff invited both men to the state Capitol for a meeting, and Pappanikou set the tone right away, telling Klebanoff, “We’re going to make Connecticut a showplace for special education.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Pappanikou put together a workshop on the Storrs campus for Klebanoff’s fellow lawmakers, aimed at developing support for the passage of special education laws. It worked and “we were off and running,” says Klebanoff, who, over the next 35 years, developed a close friendship with Pappanikou that lasted until his death in 2009.

The laws they wrote were supposed to be simple, aimed first at establishing some basic rights for parents of children with special education needs, such as easy access to records about their child’s progress. There would be a dialogue between parents and educators in determining the most effective path. Planning and placement teams (PPT) would map out what was best for the child.

If there were disagreements, mediation—rather than a hearing–would be available to resolve them. But questions arose that weren’t easily answered. What were the special education responsibilities of the school system? What were the responsibilities of the parents? PPTs became lengthy meetings, crowded with school personnel facing parents who, Klebanoff says, often felt intimidated and incapable of asking questions.

Klebanoff, who up to this point had been in general practice, found himself becoming more and more involved in educational law, seeking due process for parents trying to challenge decisions from school districts. Still, Klebanoff says, 80 percent of the firm’s cases were settled by what he calls “alternative dispute resolution.”

That concept of bridging the gap between parent and educator is also the mission behind the Howard Klebanoff Institute at the Neag School, which Pappanikou successfully urged UConn to establish in Klebanoff’s name.

“We wanted it to be a bridge to new ideas, new techniques, with parents and teachers drawn together for the benefit of children,” Klebanoff says. “Our hope is to have more Neag students involved as part of their preparation to be teachers of special education students.”

And what would Klebanoff’s perfect school system look like? “There would be a lack of defensiveness on both sides,” he says. “It would have an openness, where no one feels that one side is attacking the other. We don’t circle the wagons. We remember that the student is our most important consideration. Our firm’s motto says it all: ‘Of all nature’s gifts, the most precious is a child.’ ”

First-Year DPT Students Prepare for Success

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Current DPT students
Current DPT students (L-R) Julie Maas, Jenny Richard and Liz Crowley learn about employment opportunities during the DPT Student Career Fair. DPT students have experienced a 100% employment placement rate. Photo credit: Shawn Kornegay

The practice of physical therapy is directing the restoration of function and the prevention of disability accompanying disease, injury, or loss of a body part. Physical therapists can change the way people live their lives.

Current first-year students of the Neag School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology chose the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program (DPT) with that desire in mind. As a graduate of the three-year, post-bachelor’s program, the 17 members of the 2014 class will be able to go on to practice in a wide range of settings.

According to DPT Director and Professor of Kinesiology, Craig Denegar, Ph.D., PT, the program has evolved from the original bachelor’s degree program to an integrated bachelor’s/master’s program into the DPT which began in 2007. The DPT has grown and developed just as he and others had hoped.

With the transition to the DPT, UConn has experienced an increase in diversity of disciplines and richness of students coming in from programs across the country, Dr. Denegar said. Non-traditional students, like those with backgrounds in education, or business, for example, are incredibly valuable in creating a flourishing learning environment.

“I think you should learn as much from your classmates as you do from the faculty,” said Dr. Denegar.

Many DPT students indicated that the hands-on, clinical education, small class size and faculty expertise particularly attracted them to this nationally and internationally recognized program.

“I was accepted into other programs, but I was immediately drawn to UConn’s,” said Ben Wicki, who received his B.S. in exercise science at Sacred Heart University last May. “There are constant opportunities to help with current research, shadowing and observation of patients in all different settings.”

This level of interaction in early patient exposure helps student progress and gain proficiency in skills. The professional but close-knit environment further fuels comprehension with the constant exchange of feedback.

“Our program introduces us to and immerses us in clinical learning situations early on,” said Elizabeth Leslie, who worked a few years at a New Hampshire insurance company before returning to school.

“Currently I’m spending four hours of class time a week in a hospital setting observing and assisting with physical therapy care…It’s getting me ready for my first full-time hospital affiliation this upcoming summer,” she continued.

The emphasis on evidence-based medicine, as opposed to problem-based learning, was another popular lure, especially for students like Jesse Lang. Lang, who enjoys how the DPT forces students to support treatments with the most current evidence available, received a B.S. in exercise science at the University of New Hampshire before working toward a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland and UConn. He left medical school and switched gears with the DPT program.

“They teach us how to use clinical prediction rules to think scientifically and not rely on anecdotes or theory,” said Lang.

Many students in the program knew early on that physical therapy was the career path they wanted to pursue and prepared accordingly with pre-requisite requirements, internships and real world exposure to the industry.

Exercise science graduate, Abby Gordon, for example, had family members and friends who required physical therapy over the years and decided to return to UConn after working four seasons with the Connecticut Sun Basketball team as their travel coordinator and equipment manager.

“I worked in athletics and observation of athletes recovering from injury helped confirm that helping people heal would be a meaningful career for me,” said Gordon.

Like Gordon, Tom Kassan’s passion for physical therapy derived from personal experience. After tearing, repairing and undergoing physical therapy for his anterior cruciate ligament, Kassan gave up his original plan of attending law school to achieve what he discovered to be a more fulfilling way to spend his life.

“I saw how rewarding it was for my therapist to get me back to health and I knew that being able to provide this to my patients would make for a very rewarding profession,” said Kassan. “I love the constant interaction with patients and being able to help them get back on their feet without using drugs or invasive surgeries. I think it’s amazing how much we can do with using just our brains and hands.”

Other non-traditional students, however, came across their interest later on, like JungSoo Kim, who received a B.S. in chemistry as an undergraduate or Rob Pritchard who double-majored in history and political science.

Regardless of their original career paths or backgrounds, all 17 first-year DPT students have a mutual passion to help patients in need, educating them to see beyond the diagnosis for a healthy recovery.

To do so, the 2014 class believe confidence, compassion, trustworthiness and good communication skills are key to future success. Like anything else in the medical field, thinking on your feet in determining the source of the problem, interventions and the likelihood of an appropriate outcome also come along with the territory.

“Knowledge, intelligence and analytic ability are essential,” said Lang. “Add to that intuition, a friendly, likeable personality and a gentle touch. Also, the desire to constantly improve.”

The DPT program was recently recognized by the Commission on Accreditation in a Physical Therapy Education with national accreditation. The renowned faculty has attributed to the success, making students feel less like a number and more like a person, as one said.

“Our professors are all practicing PTs, so we’re learning up-to-date/real-life material on a daily basis,” said Kassan. “Although every professor brings a unique perspective and knowledge set to the program, Dr. Denegar has really allowed me to realize the great potential of being a physical therapist. Watching him diagnose and problem solve is just amazing and I can’t wait until I’m able to reach that ability.”

For more information on the DPT program, contact Dr. Denegar at craig.denegar@uconn.edu.