Classroom in a CommPACT school. Photo courtesy of the People’s United Community Foundation.
People’s United Community Foundation, the philanthropic arm of People’s United Bank, announced that it has awarded $40,000 to the University of Connecticut Foundation for their CommPACT Schools initiative on school reform.
The grant will support the Neag School of Education’s innovative CommPACT initiative, designed to help close the achievement gap in Connecticut. Under the leadership of the Neag School’s Institute for Urban School Improvement, CommPACT is redesigning eight schools that serve more than 4,000 at-risk students in grades K through 8. The eight schools that will benefit from the grant are: Barnum, Longfellow (Bridgeport); M.D. Fox (Hartford); Davis Street, Hill Central (New Haven); Washington Elementary, and West Side Middle (Waterbury).
“The CommPACT initiative marks a radical departure from the top-down operations typical of school systems,” said John Martin, President of the UConn Foundation. “School reform is accomplished through the collaborative efforts of students, educators, parents, school communities, local and state governing bodies, community-based partners and higher education institutions.”
“We are committed to supporting programs such as the CommPACT Schools initiative to address the statewide achievement gap in Connecticut,” said Hank Mandel, Executive Director, People’s United Community Foundation. “Statistics show an overwhelming number of children in Connecticut are lagging behind the rest of the state and the country, and we will continue to fund initiatives that help improve academic performance in Connecticut.”
Established in 2007, People’s United Community Foundation was formed to help support programs and activities that enhance the quality of life for citizens in the communities that People’s United Bank serves. With special emphasis on programs designed to promote economic self-sufficiency, education and improved conditions for low-income families and neighborhoods, the funding priorities of the Foundation include: community development, youth development and affordable housing.
Dr. Wendy Glenn, Director of Teacher Education and Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, talks with a student during class.
Wendy Glenn is a teacher’s teacher and, therefore, a natural to be the new director of teacher education in the Neag School of Education at UConn.
Her predecessor, Associate Dean Marijke Kehrhahn, who laid the administrative groundwork for the job, is even humbled by Glenn’s talents. “I’m not a teacher educator, and she is to the bone,” Kehrhahn says. “She spends her entire day thinking about how to better prepare teachers.”
Glenn is riding a high wave right now. Besides her role as director, new this semester, she was honored last year as a teaching fellow, and returned this summer from a year in Norway as a Fulbright Scholar.
But her true calling is as an associate professor of English education, an expert in young adult literature, and a mentor to myriad Neag students preparing to be teachers.
“I don’t want to give up the opportunity to teach and advise the English education students because they’re why I’m here,” says Glenn, who earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Arizona State University and left the Southwest to join the Neag faculty in 2002.
Glenn says the new role is allowing her to see the full range of schooling in areas such as music, special education and elementary education, in which she does not hold specialties. Her favorite task ahead as director is facilitating a re-evaluation and revision of the teacher preparation programs at the university.
She has just returned from her year in Norway, where she and her daughters – Miranda, 10, and Shelby, almost 7 – were immersed in the culture and language. Glenn met with 8th- to 10th-graders to discuss American culture, while her daughters took classes taught in Norwegian. And they took pictures and blogged during the entire trip, while her husband, Martin, held down the fort at their Oslo apartment.
When Glenn asked students in Norway what they associated with America, they responded “McDonalds! Paris Hilton! Bad health care and violent schools,” she says. “Having said that,” she adds, “their understandings are also coupled with a real interest and often admiration of what America represents. My mission was to try to complicate their understanding.”
She brought home a larger lesson or two. Norway’s cultural values – an abiding love of the outdoors and pride in family life and hobbies – infuse the way of life.
“In Norway life outside of work has a greater value than work itself, and ironically most Norwegians have a positive attitude about work,” Glenn says. “They’re not resentful of it because it doesn’t take over their lives. It’s just a part of who they are. And they have the time and the freedom to pursue the other parts of who they are.
“I don’t know that that happens in the U.S., ” she says.
Glenn’s specialty, young adult literature, is really a mission. An avid reader in her own girlhood, she sees a propensity among high school students, as they become immersed in required reading, to lose their earlier passion for reading. And, because some educators are not as versed in the richness of the growing young adult genre, it’s often dismissed as romance novels or horror sagas. Trash is the word some use.
But that view is selling the genre short, says Glenn, who has published works about their themes of class, diversity, bullying and conspicuous consumption. “Our responsibility is to teach young readers to be critical readers,” she says. “You can easily have conversations around author’s craft and literary elements, like setting and tone and character.”
Love of reading plays into creating real learners in the classroom, and beyond its walls, she says. Rather than engaging in intense mastery test preparation, which she calls “sacrificing children to what we believe is some greater good” and “morally wrong,” she advocates “a classroom community where students are reading and writing and speaking and thinking authentically.”
“The irony is that if we teach with a passion and allow students to behave as real readers and writers and thinkers, they’re going to do just fine on those tests,” Glenn says.
Some literature for the young deals with controversial themes that not every adult in a community deems appropriate. “My students ask me, ‘Would you let Miranda read this?’ ” Such community discussion requires teachers “to have very clear rationales that underpin why they’re teaching particular texts,” she says, even, or perhaps especially, an accepted author such as Shakespeare, who deals with harsh themes. “If you can articulate the value you see, then you can enter a discussion with the parent,” she advises.
Young adult titles she believes are strong include “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, a disturbing but poetic handling of a story set during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany; “We Were Here” by Matt Del a Pena, a counter narrative of a Latino youth “who doesn’t fit the media portrayal of urban youth we often are privy to”; and “Sold” by Patricia McCormick, the story of a 13-year-old Nepalese girl whose desperate father sells her into prostitution in Calcutta. “I love the strength of the character, but I think it’s just beautifully written,” she says.
Glenn has one foot planted in the content of her English specialty, but the other is firmly rooted in the methods of teaching that she imparts to her Neag students. How does she combine the two?
“We try to live for students the kind of teacher we ultimately hope they will become,” she says. But the second part is “we want to stop and step back and analyze from a critically aware perspective what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and how we might modify what we’re doing in a classroom of 30 rambunctious 10th-graders.”
Glenn is known as a textbook exemplar of such ideals, responding to emails and emergency calls, not just from her Neag students, but also from alumni teaching in the field.
Isabel Meagher, Neag BS 2007 and MA 2008, now teaches at Glastonbury High School. She recalls presenting with Glenn and others on issues of race, class and sex in Young Adult literature at a November 2008 conference in Texas. “She did not take this opportunity to tell us what she’d like to present. Wendy did what all outstanding teachers do: she let go,” treating the co-presenters as colleagues rather than students, Meagher said.
Glenn was an advisor for Erica Berg, who graduated from the Neag School in 2006 with a bachelor’s, followed by a master’s in 2007. Berg now teaches at Rockville High School in Vernon. “The pre-teachers joke that we become ‘Little Wendys’ when we exit the program,” Berg says, “because we can’t leave her classes without wanting to teach exactly as she does, with an incredible amount of passion and warmth.”
CHIP Principal Investigator Jeff Volek is disseminating nearly a decade’s worth of research on the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets through a well-received new book.
The book has appeared on the top of the London Times non-fiction best seller list and has been consistently in the top 15 of the New York Times Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous best seller list since it was released at the beginning of March. It also has received hundreds of favorable reviews on Amazon.com.
A number of features set the new book, published this spring, apart from previous Atkins books, including meal plans, recipes, tips for eating out and success stories. To Volek, however, the most important difference between his new Atkins book and previous Atkins books is the focus on sharing the emerging science behind the diet in such a way that readers can easily understand it and consistently apply it to their daily lives.
“Significant scientific discoveries have been made in the last eight years that could be described as paradigm shifting,” Volek explained. “We went to great lengths to simplify complex concepts and provide easy incremental action steps for readers. We wanted them to understand not only what to do, but why. The book is more flexible… Perhaps the most important aspect of the new book is that we address the critical issue of sustainability from both a nutritional and a behavioral perspective.”
The New Atkins for a New You compiles research from more than 50 scientific studies, including 20 articles Volek has authored since he began studying the safety and effectiveness of the Atkins diet and other low-carbohydrate diets in 2001.
Volek’s research has examined how low-carbohydrate diets affect weight loss, body composition and risk factors for metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease. His team has measured dozens of different cardio-metabolic risk factors, including sophisticated analysis of different lipids, hormones, and inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, and consistently has found improvements. Specifically, his team has seen decreases in triglycerides, increases in HDL cholesterol, increased size of LDL particles, decreased glucose and insulin levels and decreased inflammation.
Among his more recent work in this field, Volek has addressed the issue of saturated fat on the Atkins diet.
“Despite consuming three times more saturated fat compared to a low-fat diet, saturated fat levels in the blood went down more than two-fold greater than with a low fat diet,” he said. “How? On Atkins, saturated fat becomes an important energy source so you burn both body fat and fat in the diet for fuel. Also, the body makes less saturated fat.
“What we have learned is that carbohydrates control the fate of saturated fat,” he said. “As long as carbs are low enough, the body processes saturated fat very efficiently. In the presence of an abundance of carbohydrates, saturated fat can be problematic.
“The key is finding the level of carbohydrate you can tolerate and then fat is your friend.”
One way Volek and his co-authors simplified the science behind the diet was with two new concepts: the Metabolic Bully and the Atkins Edge.
“Eating too many carbs acts like a bully cutting in line in front of fat to be burned,” Volek said.
“After a week or two on the Atkins diet, people’s bodies become extraordinary fat burners. That’s the Atkins Edge. But just one meal with a lot of carbs stops this process, and it can take up to another week to get the Edge back,” he said. “For most people, if they stay with the level of carb restriction in the Atkins induction phase, the carbohydrate metabolic bully is banished and major weight loss and overall health improvements are within their grasp.”
Michael Cain, a graduate of the University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) at Neag, visits with student Michael Boyce during a sixth-grade lunch period. Cain received a local NAACP Excellence in Education award. Photo courtesy of Dana Jensen/The Day
Norwich, Conn.– Kelly Middle School Principal Michael Cain arrived early last Friday for a meeting to review data on students’ reading progress and arrange for tutoring for those who need it.
He stayed late on Thursday to supervise and enjoy the “Back to School” dance attended by more than 300 students, some of whom earned discount reward coupons for their compliance with the school’s new uniform policy and hallway discipline practices.
Cain is three weeks into a busy fall at Kelly, which will open one wing of its $40 million expansion and renovation project in mid-October.
He now has to add another date to his crammed calendar. On Oct. 15, Cain will receive the Excellence in Education Award from the Norwich branch of the NAACP at its annual Freedom Fund Dinner at the Grand Pequot Ballroom at the Foxwoods Resort Casino.
“He has really done a lot in the field of education,” said Jacqueline Owens, president of the NAACP branch. “He has gotten it to the point where the kids are really excited about coming to school and motivated to learn.”
Owens said NAACP awards committee members had spoken to Kelly students and Norwich school administrators in considering Cain for the award.
“They just gave him an excellent recommendation,” Owens said.
Cain said he was honored to be chosen and said the recognition belongs to Kelly staff members, students and parents, all of whom have worked hard to improve the school.
“I’m very happy the NAACP considered me for any type of award,” Cain said, “but any award anyone gives to me comes from the people around me.”
Cain is starting his third year as Kelly principal. He previously served as assistant principal at Wethersfield High School and as a social studies teacher at East Hartford High School. He said he was attracted to the Kelly position because Norwich administrators were asking for someone with a specialty in literacy – a focus for the district, which is trying to improve state test scores.
Cain had earned a master’s degree in reading education from Central Connecticut State University and worked on reading strategies in East Hartford.
Cain credited Kelly teachers and a new method called research based decision-making for improving student performance. By constantly reviewing data on student progress – like Friday’s early morning meeting – teachers learn much more quickly why a student is struggling. Tutors and small-group lessons address the problem early in the school year.
Connecticut Mastery Test scores at Kelly had been disappointing in recent years. The school had been on the state’s “In Need of Improvement” list for four years. Results of last spring’s tests were announced in July, and this time, Kelly celebrated.
Scores improved in nearly every category, the improvements significant enough to lift Kelly into “Safe Harbor” status, exempt from remedial actions by the state.
In mathematics, Kelly students improved by 5 percentage points, with 79.9 percent reaching proficiency, just short of the state goal of 82 percent. In reading, 78.1 percent of Kelly students reached proficiency, a 4 percent jump and just 1 percent shy of the state goal. Economically disadvantaged students, a subgroup watched closely by the state, improved by 6 percent in reading at Kelly.
“In the middle of doing a $40 million building project and moving people around and being a school in need of improvement, he provided some stability there and clear guidance and goals for the school,” superintendent Abby Dolliver said.
Cain loves the new middle school discipline program, Positive Behavioral Supports, but doesn’t take credit for it. William Peckham, principal at Teachers Memorial Middle School, had worked on the program before Cain started at Kelly, and it was implemented during Cain’s first year.
Middle school students spend the first week of school practicing good behavior. They walk to lunch in lines, walk directly and efficiently to their lockers and to their next class.
The lesson can be a challenge, especially for eighth graders who might feel they don’t need to be led through the hallways. But Cain said the behavior becomes habit.
Standing outside the cafeteria Friday morning, Cain watched sixth graders file into the recently renovated, brightly lit room. One boy started to run.
“No running in the hallways,” a teacher said, “Right, Mr. Cain?”
One boy spoke directly to Cain, telling him another boy had punched him and he wanted to chase him.
“I’ll take care of it,” the principal responded.
Cain walked up and down the rows of tables, asking students about their day, their class work and their families. He picked up a notebook and read one girl’s poem about how much she loved fall. Cain beamed. The girl smiled shyly.
“For Mr. Cain, it’s always about the kids,” Dolliver said. “He’ll say that a number of times and you can see that in his actions. He believes it.”
According to Thomas C. DeFranco, Dean of the Neag School of Education, “I am extremely pleased with results of our NCATE report. In all cases we have met or exceeded the rigorous standards set by NCATE. This report is a testament to the scholarship and hard work of faculty and staff over the past few years in preparing the next generation of highly effective K-12 teachers.”
The NCATE has chosen to highlight UConn’s clinically based preparation programs at its national meetings and in a special session at the 2011 convention of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).
The NCATE’s site examiners reported that the Neag School has demonstrated through evidence that its students have acquired “knowledge and skills, and in particular dispositions to help all students learn.”
Further, students and alumni “uniformly spoke about student learning affirmatively and with confidence of having made an impact on student learning.”
The clinical-based preparation programs allow the students to “have experience in both suburban and urban settings and address the needs of students with diverse linguistic and learning needs and those who come from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
“Teacher quality is the most important factor in P–12 student achievement,” said Neag Assistant Dean Yuhang Rong. “Research indicates that a key element for successful learning is the opportunity to apply what is being learned and refine it. Carefully constructed clinical and field experiences can enable students in educator preparation programs to reinforce, apply, and synthesize concepts that they are learning in coursework. A clinical-based educator preparation program enables us to know that our children’s teachers enter the classroom ready to help them learn.’
NCATE, the organization responsible for professional accreditation of teacher education, currently accredits 623 institutions, which produce two-thirds of the nation’s new teacher graduates each year.
“NCATE-accredited schools must meet rigorous standards set by the profession and members of the public,” said Dr. James Cibulka, President of the NCATE.
According to Dr. Cibulka, “The NCATE revises its standards every five years to incorporate best practice and research in order to ensure that the standards reflect a consensus about what is important in teacher preparation today. In the past decade, NCATE has moved from an accreditation system that focused on curriculum and what teacher candidates were offered, to a data driven performance-based system dedicated to determining what candidates know and are able to do.”
Dr. DeFranco, agrees. “NCATE has taken a leadership role regarding accountability in teacher preparation by shifting the conversation from inputs to outputs, from coursework to competencies. They are requiring teacher preparation programs to provide evidence that their candidates have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be highly effective teachers and demonstrate their effect on pupil performance.”
“As a result of the new and rigorous NCATE standards, teacher preparation programs have redesigned their assessment systems and have become evidence-based in response to this trend, using continuous feedback to make necessary changes to enhance programs and improve accountability,” said Dr. DeFranco.
In the 2009 to 2010 school year, 165 out of 166 school districts in Connecticut employed a total of 3,090 Neag School graduates. A Neag School internal study indicates a majority of its teacher preparation graduates (73 percent) stay in the classroom for 10 years or more and in far greater numbers than their colleagues nationwide (50 percent).
Desi Nesmith, Principal of the Sand School in Hartford, completed his elementary teacher preparation and administrator preparation programs at the Neag School. The Sand School was recognized as Hartford’s most improved elementary school in the past year. Nesmith was recognized by the Connecticut Association of School in 2010 as the First Year Principal of the Year.
“Teacher candidates must have in-depth knowledge of the subject matter that they plan to teach as well as the skills necessary to convey it so that students learn,” Nesmith said.
“As a graduate from two programs at the Neag School of Education, I know it has a dedicated faculty, who carefully assess knowledge and skill of its candidates. The Neag School partners with Connecticut P-12 schools to design and implement the clinically based preparation, which has enabled me to develop the skills necessary to help students learn.”
“I can tell you from my own experience, that the graduates of the Neag School are prepared to understand and work with diverse student populations,” continued Nesmith.
The Department of Kinesiology in the Neag School of Education has received one of the highest honors in its field. For the second consecutive time, the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK) has ranked the doctoral program in Kinesiology No. 1 in the U.S. The No. 1 ranking stands for five years.
“We are extremely proud of this continued success by our kinesiology department,” says Thomas C. DeFranco, Dean of the Neag School of Education. “The competition was fierce and we are in good company in the rankings.” Doctoral programs in kinesiology are offered at 66 institutions of higher education. Among the top 20 programs are Pennsylvania State University (#2), Columbia University (#4), the universities of Maryland (#3), Massachusetts (#5), Virginia (#6), Illinois (#7), Texas (#10), Michigan (#12), Florida (#13), Georgia (#17) and Ohio State (#20).
“This honor is not only important to the kinesiology department in terms of highlighting the quality of its faculty, research, and students; it reflects well on the whole school,” Dr. DeFranco says. “Carl Maresh and his team have continually worked hard to achieve our mission by raising standards and recruiting some of the field’s top researchers and students.”
The National Academy of Kinesiology (until recently called the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education) is dedicated to educational and scientific advancements in the field. The most recent evaluation, based on data from 2005-2009, took into account 16 performance metrics involving faculty (nine indices) and students (seven indices).
Among the factors weighed in the evaluation were students’ GRE scores, percentage of students on research support, student placement in postdoctoral positions, faculty publications in refereed scientific journals, external grant funding, editorial boards served on, and fellowships in professional organizations.
“It’s wonderful that our efforts are reflected in objective performance metrics,” said Dr. Carl Maresh, Professor and Department Head of Kinesiology. “We’ve been working hard and we’ve improved on things since the last rankings were released in 2005. We made concerted efforts to specifically improve in grant funding, students placed in post-doc positions and research publications. These rankings provide a great way for programs to measure themselves in comparison to other highly successful programs and conduct strategic planning to become better.”
The department offers two areas of doctoral study: exercise science and sport management. Both of these have dedicated research laboratories. The highly acclaimed Human Performance Laboratory brings together the exercise science team, with access to sophisticated research technologies.
Eleven tenure-track faculty members are involved in the kinesiology doctoral program. Dr. Maresh says the faculty is highly productive, and has also benefited by developing successful research collaborations both at UConn and other universities. As a result, NAK determined that over the last five years UConn led in the nation in the number of peer-reviewed publications generated from their research, along with the number of scientific presentations.
Dr. Maresh and his faculty are already looking ahead, however, to what it will take to stay on top. He hopes to build upon current success, where and however possible, with strategic faculty placements, starting new research initiatives, and facility improvements, to bring the program to pre-eminent levels.
Geno Auriemma, coach of the NCAA women’s basketball champions, encouraged more than 200 Neag School of Education graduates to merge the arts and sciences into their approach as teachers.
“Take the science that you learned, add the creative art that’s in your soul, and I think you’re on your way to become a good teacher,” Auriemma said to the Mother’s Day crowd in the Jorgensen Auditorium. An audience member punctuated his point with a loud handclap, and Auriemma responded, “Yeah, I like that, too.”
The Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame coach was introduced by Neag Dean Thomas DeFranco, who outlined Auriemma’s prowess on the court – seven NCAA titles, 78 straight wins, four undefeated seasons, five-time national coach of the year, and “more importantly, inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame,” the dean quipped about their shared heritage.
DeFranco relayed an anecdote about the coach’s generosity in helping the dean recruit a top specialist to Neag and praised Auriemma as an educator. “Every recruited freshman on the women’s basketball team who has finished her eligibility at Storrs has graduated with a degree. I’m sure he is equally proud of that statistic as he is about seven NCAA titles,” DeFranco said.
As if to punctuate the point, Auriemma started his talk by calling out to Jacquie Fernandes, a senior guard on his team who was earning a Neag degree that day.
Auriemma, an immigrant to the United States from Italy at the age of 7, spoke of the impact of teachers on his life. “The most important people in my life were my teachers. If it wasn’t for them I would not have been able to assimilate myself into this culture and to help my parents assimilate themselves into this culture. My teachers taught me everything that I know to this day.”
Later he returned to this theme, saying, “What I’m going to encourage you to do is to be for some of the people, if not all, that you come in contact with …that when they are 56 years old – my age – they will remember you as the biggest impact on their life.”
The coach’s speech was peppered with his trademark humor. He noted the on-stage presence of the president of the Neag Alumni Society Sandra Justin, apparently to establish the graduates’ initiation as alumni. “You’re a Husky forever,” he joked, “as long as your checks don’t bounce.”
But his message overall was straight from the heart, straight from his own experience.
He asked the graduates if their responsibilities once they become teachers would be to the principal, the parents or the school board. “No. Your responsibilities, the way I look at it, is every student that comes to your class either has the potential for greatness, and it’s up to you to make sure they’re great, or they have the potential to be good, and it’s your job to make sure that they’re good. If you have any other responsibilities other than that, then I think you’re in for the wrong reasons.”
Then he delivered his parting advice: “Don’t ever take no for an answer. When someone says you can’t do this, that’s your first step in getting it done.”
Eight outstanding graduates of the Neag School of Education, including the first recipient of the Promising Young Professional Award, were honored in May by the Neag Alumni Society at its 12th Annual Awards Dinner. Lynne Allen, the Neag alumni coordinator who is retiring, also was honored by alumni and faculty at the May 15 event.
Lisa Landa, already designated Teacher of the Year in Madison, CT, picked up the Neag honor for Outstanding School Educator. Landa, B.S. 1973 and M.A. 1978, teaches English at Daniel Hand High School and was nominated by her assistant superintendent, Anita Rutlin.
Landa, who banks books during the school year to read on her summer break, works hard to pass along her passion for literature to her students. Last year she taught a class of 10 boys with varying learning challenges and turned them on to Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”
“We absolutely loved this class,” she said. “They connected so much with Lenny, this misunderstood person who was certainly not a bright man and couldn’t communicate well, but had a good soul.” The class referred to the book all year, Landa added.
Desi D. Nesmith, principal of America’s Choice SAND Elementary School in Hartford, was nominated by former Dean Richard Schwab and current Dean Thomas DeFranco to receive the first Promising Young Professional Award. From the Neag School, Nesmith earned his bachelor’s in elementary education in 2001, master’s in 2002, and completed the University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) in 2009. Former Dean Schwab praised Nesmith as “one of the most talented graduates that we had during my tenure as dean.”
Susan F. Cooper, who holds a 1975 bachelor’s in recreational services and is director of recreation for the City of Newport, Rhode Island, won the Outstanding Professional Award. Cooper was nominated by Carol Ewing Garber.
Jonathan A. Plucker, B.S. 1991 and M.A. 1992 from Neag and Ph.D. 1995 from the University of Virginia, was honored as the Outstanding Higher Education Professional. Plucker, nominated by Marcia Gentry, is professor of educational psychology and cognitive science at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
Jeffrey A. Schumann was awarded the Outstanding School Administrator designation for his work as assistant superintendent in the Newington, CT, schools. Schumann, who has a 2005 Ph.D. in education administration from Neag, was nominated by Suzanne D’Annolfo and Barry Scheckley.
Michael J. Frechette, Ph.D. 1987, was honored as Outstanding School Superintendent for his role in the Middletown, CT, public schools. Frechette was nominated by Mark Shibles.
The Outstanding Kinesiology Professional is John W. Castellani, who holds a Ph.D. in exercise science, 1995. Castellani is a research physiologist in the Thermal and Mountain Medicine Division at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, MA.
Nancy D. Ciesla, a physical therapy clinical specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is the 2010 Outstanding Physical Therapy Professional. Ciesla, who has a 1972 B.S. in physical therapy, was nominated by Craig Denegar, Denise Ward and Richard Bohannon.
Lynne Allen, a retired special education teacher in the Mansfield, CT schools, recalls the awards banquet growing from 100 attendees to 350, noting large crowds the years the late A.J. Pappanikou, pioneer in the field of developmental disabilities, and Fran Archambault Jr., alumni trustee, Neag professor emeritus and past chairman of the education psychology department, were honored.
Of the preparations for the eight annual honorees, Allen said, “I often thought it was like planning eight weddings all in the same night. I did it for 11 years, so that was 88 wedding receptions plus my own two kids … that’s 90,” she said, laughing.
“Lynne has been indispensable,” Neag Alumni Society president Sandra Justin said recently. “She makes the job of the president and a board member easy.
“She has taken the lead on every event, from soliciting door prizes for the Game Watch to taking the Polaroid pictures of ‘Jonathan and friends’ at Homecoming. We will miss her organization, her thoughtfulness and the way she makes everyone feel welcome with her warm smile.”
Allen, who earned her master’s degree in special education at the University of Illinois and a B.S. at Skidmore College, is a diehard Husky fan, along with her husband, George J. Allen, professor emeritus in clinical psychology. She proudly recounts her Neag connection – son Michael Allen, earned his Ph.D. in kinesiology from Neag, is now athletic director at Catholic University, Washington D.C. Allen received a gift and praise from Dean DeFranco and Lisa Lewis, executive director of the UConn Alumni Association, at the banquet.
Scholarships were bestowed on students who have excelled in the arenas of special needs, physical therapy, educational leadership and a host of other specialties at the Neag School of Education’s 16th Annual Honors Celebration in April.
“Over the past 16 years, this event has grown from a small, lunchtime reception in the faculty lounge, to over 170 scholarship recipients and more than 50 scholarships,” Dean Thomas DeFranco said in his welcome to the crowd on April 23.
Recipients were noted for their scholastic achievement, passion for a certain subject, research on children in low-income circumstances, global interests, work with persons with developmental disabilities, community service and a range of other high-level pursuits.
Donald Briere, a special education teacher and third-year doctoral student in the educational psychology department, was awarded the Lisa Pappanikou Glidden Scholarship, which supports a graduate student in special education. His focus is on positive behavioral interventions and supports, and his research centers on classroom management practices, small-group interventions, and fidelity of program implementation. Briere, Neag BS ’07 and MA ’08, says he developed his passion for research as a graduate assistant in the master’s program.
Besides the award itself, “being able to meet and talk with the scholarship donor was such an honor,” Briere said about his time with Elayne Marrotte, the sister of the scholarship’s namesake and daughter of the late professor emeritus A.J. Pappanikou and his wife, Lucette. “The scholarship will certainly aid in my journey through my post-graduate program. I am humbled by the accomplishments past recipients have made and am striving to uphold these high expectations with my future research and endeavors,” Briere said.
Along with recipients of specifically named and purposed scholarships, 74 students who received support through the Neag Endowment also were honored.
Many thanks to scholarship donors who attended the 16th Annual Honors Day
Mrs. JoAnn Aitken, Andrew T. Aitken Physical Therapy Scholarship
Mrs. Lynne Allen and Mr. William Barney, Neag School of Education Alumni Society Scholarship
Dr. Francis X. Archambault, Jr., Friends & Colleagues of Francis X. Archambault, Jr. Fellowship
Dr. & Mrs. Scott & Margie Brown, Vernon and Elizabeth Brown Family Scholarship
Dr. & Mrs. Robert & Gladys Dunn, Robert E. and Gladys B. Dunn International Scholarship
Mrs. Kettely Florian and her sister Eurley Hercule, Hans Carson Hercule Memorial Scholarship
Mr. Richard V. Jackman, Fran Tappan Student Aid Scholarship
Mrs. Elayne A. Marrotte, Lisa Pappanikou Glidden Scholarship Fund
Mr. Roland J. Perreault and Dr. Joseph W. Smey, Joseph W. Smey, ’68 EdD, PT Endowed Scholarship in Physical Therapy
Drs. Sally M. Reis & Joseph S. Renzulli, Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis Renzulli Fund for Graduate Studies in Gifted Education
Drs. Richard & Kristin Schwab, Richard L. and Kristin E. Schwab Fellowship Fund
Dr. & Mrs. Steven J. & Catherine W. Smith, Steven J. Smith Scholarship Fund
Drs. Thomas & Mary Weinland, Thomas P. Weinland Fund
Congratulations to all the 2010 Scholarship Recipients
Akeya Peterson
Amy McCullough
Amy Sevigny
Annie Ramos
Anthony Spinelli
Ashley Bates
Ashley Capozzoli
Ashley Ruegg
Ashley Sullivan
Asia Boxton
Asia Boxton
Bethany Rataic
Brianna Ozimek
Britney Bush
Brittany Perotti
Bryan Yarrington
Caitlin Masopust
Caitlyn Hardy
Caroline Stackhouse
Catherine Burland
Cedric Haddad
Chelsea Becce
Chelsea Lawrence
Chelsea Maigis
Christine Barile
Christopher Baxter
Christopher Miller
Cleo Rahmy
Conor Calabro
Courtney Jump
Courtney Moody
Craig Waterman
Cynthia Bushey
Dana Lovallo
Dana Neely
Daniel Marcoux
Danielle Jeffries
Daria Szafran
Donald Briere
Edward Boynton
Eileen Gonzalez
Elisabeth Werling
Elizabeth Ann Santos
Elyse Botelho
Emily Dreher
Emily Hernberg
Emily Roberts
Emily Wallingford
Erica Armstrong
Erika Urcinas
Eury Cantillo
Evan O’Neill
Gail Buller
Garrett Waldron
Gul Jaffery
Heidi Koeppel
Jaclyn Chancey
Jaclyn Long
Jacob Sklarew
Jacqueline Guerrera
Janine Firmender
Jena Savage
Jennifer Corbett
Jennifer Falcigno
Jennifer Garofalo
Jennifer Green
Jennifer Jorgensen
Jennifer Ortiz
Jennifer Richard
Jennifer Suen
Jenny Barnett
Jessica Vargas
Joannah Graham
Joseph Ingriselli
Joseph Pinola
Kaitlyn Rojee
Kara Pettit
Karen Nixon
Karen Rambo
Katherine Jolly
Katherine Swedberg
Katherine Van Deveire
Kathryn Taft
Kathryn Ward
Kelly Dibble
Kelsey O’Reilly
Kelsey Seddon
Kevin Ballard
Kimberly Krzyk
Kimberly Weber
Krista Burnham
Kristen DeBona
Kristin Deming
Kristin Holsing
Kristina Forzaglia
Kristina Jablonski
Kristina Scarrozzo
Lacey LaHaie
Laura Blanco
Laura Tiffany
Lauren Anthony
Lauren Cerulli
Lilah Sharaf
Lily Huang
Lindsay Hom
Lisa Mishriky
Llancylluis Williams
Lukas Kailimang
Marisa Birdsell
Marissa Chowaniec
Mariya Yukhymenko
Mary Jane Skelly
Matthew Gade
Matthew McKay
Matthew Spector
Megan Ramsey
Megan Ramsey
Meghan McNichol
Melissa Levenstein
Melissa Mitchell
Meloney Bailey
Meredith Bellamy
Michael Lewis
Michael Rambone
Michele Battinelli
Michelle Levenduski
Nathan Bean
Nicole Holland
Nicole LaPierre
Paige Moore
Paul Griswold
Pei-Hsuan Chiu
Rachel C. Anderson
Rachel Rodziewicz
Rebecca Zielinski
Rhema Fuller
Robert Gendreau
Robert Smith
Sara Mykietyn
Sarah Scranton
Sarah Stockmann
Sarah Tung
Sevan Angacian
Shannon Cohane
Sheena Boyle
Shirley Armenteros
Staci Puto
Stephanie Kin
Stephen Charette
Tara Lloyd
Taylor Lebovich
Terri Clark
Zachary Penwell
About 200 Neag School of Education students received bachelor’s degrees and sixth-year diplomas in educational specialties at the May 9 graduation ceremonies in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.
“I’ve been telling him to be a school teacher his whole life … summers off,” Paul Hurst said before the proceedings. He was speaking of his son, Michael Thomas Hurst, a teacher preparation student in secondary English. Paul Hurst works in the Hamden schools and says he and his son often discuss philosophy. “He’s an all-around kid, very cerebral and physical. He could have done anything.”
But the day mostly belonged to the mothers. Barbara Simone, mother of athletic training graduate Erica Simone, complained just a bit about the 50-degree chill in the air. “We’re freezing. It was 94 degrees when we left” Cocoa Beach, Fla.
Erica Simone’s aunt and cousins in Cheshire and Southington – her family support in Connecticut – also attended the event. Having left Connecticut years before, Erica didn’t even know all of her local kin. She told her mother there was a really cute guy in her class, “and I said, ‘that’s your cousin,’” Barbara Simone says with a laugh.
Her daughter’s love of playing soccer and perhaps her bad knees led her to her concentration on athletic training, Simone said. “She decided she’d rather fix the people. Her dream was to come to UConn – out-of-state tuition and all.” Erica Simone, honored as a New England Scholar, will pursue a master’s degree at the University of South Carolina on a generous scholarship.
Amanda Courtney Powell’s graduation day support included her grandparents, sister from Chicago, aunt and mother, Berneda Powell, who said her daughter loved to play school as a child. Grandmother Renee Powell said the family wasn’t surprised by Amanda’s path toward teaching high school math. “We kind of knew this from quite a while back. She’s a go-getter…not going to stop ’til she gets there.”
Before the colorful procession of degree candidates and robed faculty from the Gentry Building, Dean Thomas DeFranco outlined the ceremonies for the auditorium full of supporters. The dean in purple, keynote speaker Geno Auriemma in black and white, and bedecked faculty filed onto the stage as marshals in trademark Henry VIII-style blue velvet hats assisted.
The Community School of the Arts Ceremonial Brass Quintet played prelude and processional music, and music education degree candidate Paige Revens sang the National Anthem.
After a welcome by Associate Dean Marijke Kehrhahn and remarks by Neag School Alumni Society President Sandra Justin, the dean introduced the speaker, UConn’s winning women’s basketball coach.
DeFranco relayed an anecdote about Auriemma’s helping him recruit a top specialist to Neag. “A very generous offer from a very busy person,” he said of the coach, praising his record on the court but moreso his record as an inspiration to his players.
Demonstrating his signature ease with public speaking, Auriemma called out to Jacquie Fernandes, one of his players in the crowd of Neag graduates, which also included NFL pros Donald Brown, a member of the Baltimore Colts, and Marcus Easley, drafted by the Buffalo Bills. Brown made good on his promise to his parents to finish his degree as he played his first year of professional football. On this occasion the sports celebrities were careful to avoid any fanfare and to blend into their academic field of contemporaries.
Auriemma urged the graduates to remember how they felt about teachers who were inaccessible or who lacked understanding, and resolve to be better.
“You’re not creating derivatives on Wall Street. You’re creating a life. You’re creating hope and you’re creating a future for young people,” he said.
The dean then recognized students who had achieved academic distinction, and degrees were conferred, as the candidates crossed the stage to the sound of their names being called.
Bachelor of science degrees went to 143 students in all. Of the 45 kinesiology students, 10 majored in social science-sport/leisure, 24 in exercise science and 11 in athletic training.
Other bachelor degree recipients, who will return next year to complete a master of arts in education, included 39 in elementary education, 12 in special education, ten in history, ten in English, six in mathematics, four in biological science and one each in eath science and general science. Fifteen future music educators were awarded with dual bachelor’s degrees, one in music education and the other in music.
Sixty-seven sixth-year certificates were awarded to graduates who pursued their specialty beyond a master’s degree.
At the end, the graduates and dignitaries recessed into the brisk, sunny day before attending a reception in the atrium at Gentry.
Patty Hess’s sons, Zachary, 12, and Nicholas, 10, were pretty proud of their mom’s sixth-year diploma in the administrator preparation program. “It’s pretty amazing. It’s hard to go back to school after about 15 years,” Zachary said before the family took off for a Mother’s Day brunch.
Hess of Vernon said she was actively seeking employment as a principal. “Like Geno said, you want to impact students. Then you impact a life. As a principal, you want to impact more than groups of students, you want to impact whole schools.”
