Neag School Sees Increase in Enrollment, Diversity of Students in Teacher Education Programs

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A student teacher reads to elementary school students.
Tracey-Ann Lafayette ’15 (ED), ’16 MA, ’22 6th Year reads with second graders at Verplanck Elementary in Manchester when she was a student teacher. She is now a third grade teacher at Robert J. O’Brien STEM Academy in East Hartford. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

Editor’s Note: The Neag School’s Teacher Education programs enrollment data was originally featured in this UConn Today story.

Since 2017, the number of students of color has more than doubled in the Neag School’s Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates and increased by 33% in the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program.

Education unions have sounded the alarm about the number of teaching vacancies in districts across Connecticut, just as schools prepare for a new academic year. While the U.S. does not track detailed data about national employment trends in the profession, the Connecticut Education Association has identified several educator certification shortage areas for the 2022-2023 school year and a 2019 report by The Center for American Progress found that enrollment in teacher preparation programs in Connecticut declined by more than 40% from 2010 to 2018.

UConn’s Neag School of Education is starting to see signs of hope, however, that will help mitigate the shortages.

Total student enrollment in its Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates has returned to pre-pandemic levels – in fact it has increased by about 3% from 2017 to 2022 – and the total number of students of color who are enrolled in that program has increased 111% over the same time period. The 11-month, full-time program is designed for students who already hold a bachelor’s degree and wish to earn their teacher certification in a specific subject area. It operates out of UConn’s four regional campuses: Avery Point, Downtown Hartford, Stamford, and Waterbury.

“It is inspiring and encouraging to see this amount of interest in our teacher education programs. This is a step in the right direction that will have a positive impact in schools across the state and nation.”

— Dean Jason Irizarry

The Neag School’s Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program has also seen increases in both the total number of admitted students (up 12.4%) and the number of admitted students of color (up 33%) since 2017. The five-year program allows students to earn a bachelor’s degree in education, followed by one year of graduate-level professional education leading to a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction or educational psychology. 

“There is no denying that it is a stressful time to be an educator, whether in the classroom or an administration office,” says Neag School of Education Dean Jason Irizarry. “Yet, it is inspiring and encouraging to see this amount of interest in our teacher education programs. This is a step in the right direction that will have a positive impact in schools across the state and nation.” 

While both programs did see dips in enrollment in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, they have since rebounded and surpassed their 2017 levels.  

“The pandemic provided an opportunity for us to implement some diverse outreach that we had not previously tried and allowed us to reach a more diverse range of students,” says Niralee Patel-Lye, who is an assistant clinical professor and associate director of teacher education at the Neag School. “Our partnerships and outreach with diverse districts across the state are appealing to students, especially with our recent expansion to the Stamford campus. We are partnering more closely with districts, especially the districts where our four regional campuses are located.” 

Enrollment data for the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates is as follows: 

2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Total enrollment 105 92 98 89 102 108
Total students of color 18 13 32 21 30 38

The admitted students data for the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program is as follows:

2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Total admitted students 121 130 136 115 131 136
Total admitted students of color 33 32 39 29 49 44

“We are thrilled the Neag School is attracting a steady stream of new teacher candidates and finding success in recruiting and supporting teacher candidates of color,” Irizarry says.

To learn more about the Neag School of Education’s Teacher Education programs, visit teachered.education.uconn.edu. 

Puppets Get the Laser Treatment

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Green sock puppet with googly eyes.
A just assembled puppet comes to life as the Proof of Concept Center (POCC) and the Ballard Museum and Institute of Puppetry collaborate on building puppets for the “Feel your Best Self” project at the Innovation Partnership Building on July 20, 2022. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

Editor’s Note: The “Feel Your Best Self” project, co-created by Neag School’s Sandra Chafouleas, was originally featured in this UConn Today story.

Interdisciplinary collaboration between the Neag School and Ballard Institute goes high tech with the help of the UConn Tech Park, to the benefit of children across the state.

It takes quite a bit of tedious labor to hand-cut enough felt mouths for more than 200 puppet kits. Faced with the prospect of all that precise scissor work, the project leads of the Feel Your Best Self program did the most logical thing – they used lasers.

More specifically, they turned to the experts at the Proof of Concept Center (POCC) at the Innovation Partnership Building (IPB) at UConn Tech Park. In the process, they created an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, the Collaboratory on School and Child Health, the Neag School of Education, and the Office of the Vice President for Research – all for the benefit of hundreds of children across the state.

“It’s always cool to collaborate across campus and do something a little different,” says Joseph Luciani, director of POCC.

The Feel Your Best Self program brings together a far-reaching network of UConn faculty, staff, alumni, students, and donors from a number of fields, including educational psychology, puppetry, behavioral health, and finance. It teaches 12 simple strategies on managing emotions to elementary-aged children, including fun practices such as “shake out the yuck” to help calm yourself.

Sandra Chafouleas, the co-director of the UConn Collaboratory of School and Child Health and the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Neag School of Education, co-created Feel Your Best Self with Emily Wicks, manager of operations and collections at the Ballard Institute. Feel Your Best Self offers free online tools that caregivers of elementary school-aged children can use in classrooms, care centers, and homes throughout the state and country.

The program introduces children to CJ, Mena, and Nico – adorable, lively puppets who star in video lessons that demonstrate the different strategies. The trio of characters bring fun to learning the strategies and are ideal for use with elementary school students. The videos were recorded during the spring and launched online nationwide throughout the summer, complete with simple step cards in English and Spanish as well as a guide to help adults teach each strategy.

Therein created the challenge for Chafouleas and Wicks. To scale use of the puppet-making aspect of Feel Your Best Self, more and more puppet kits were needed. This summer, Feel Your Best Self staff teamed up with the Greater Waterbury YMCA to test adaptations to fit a camp environment. To do so, more than 200 kits were needed quickly, and it was up to the program founders to perform tasks like cutting scores of ping pong balls to create simple puppet-making kits for campers.

“Their puppet friends are bringing fun and joy as students learn the strategies to help them feel their best selves.”

— Professor Sandra Chafouleas

“We didn’t want kids using hot glue guns and scissors,” Wicks says. “We were previously only able to do things on a small scale.”

A chance meeting between Wicks and Luciani through the Mansfield Downtown Partnership introduced an opportunity to make the process much less monotonous and considerably higher tech.

The POCC works with innovators and researchers in a dynamic workspace at the Innovation Partnership Building, serving small and medium-sized businesses with production needs.

Two female students help assemble sock puppets.
Sophie Hall, a Ph.D. student, center, tries out a just assembled puppet at the Proof of Concept Center (POCC) at the Innovation Partnership Building on July 20, 2022. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

Leveraging its expertise in bringing concept to prototype, the POCC has also collaborated with UConn and UConn Health, handling mass 3-D printing of personal protective equipment, beginning with intricate designs dreamed up by inventors. Puppets, on the other hand, were a new endeavor.

Wicks said a “huge lightbulb went off” when she connected with Luciani. She explained the parts that would be needed to fill the kits, such as eyeballs, mouths, and other pre-cut pieces. The POCC took on the job to brainstorm and try out options, and Feel Your Best Self had another partner to its interdisciplinary collaboration.

“They needed to make perfect circles,” Luciani says. “We can do that, and we can do that at scale. Meeting the needs of 200 kids is not such a scary number anymore.”

The collaboration has resulted in many happy campers. The kits were delivered on time for use in the Waterbury YMCA camp. “The stories we are hearing are absolutely heartwarming,” says Chafouleas, who is also the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “The children are very protective of their puppet creations. Their puppet friends are bringing fun and joy as students learn the strategies to help them feel their best selves.”

Wicks says that the partnership with the IPB creates potential for Feel Your Best Self to expand even farther as they continue to test various options. The ultimate goal is to figure out how to mass produce the pieces inexpensively so more children have access to the puppet-making component to the program.

“Interdisciplinary work was a goal of this project from the beginning,” Wicks says. “Technology and puppetry go together hand in hand.”