UConn Today (Neag School doctoral student Sarah Luria is featured about her scholar award)
Sally Reis: A Reflection of 40 Years of Success at UConn
Sally Reis, the Letitia Morgan Chair in Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education, first connected to the University of Connecticut during her master’s program at Southern Connecticut State University in the mid-1970s. While in one class, she heard UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Joseph Renzulli talk about his work in educational psychology, specifically his internationally-known and pioneering work in gifted and talented with the Enrichment Triad Model.
Something sparked during that talk, and they would go on to become friends. Renzulli encouraged Reis to join the Neag School’s educational psychology doctoral program, and they worked on professional collaborations, including research papers, workshops, and presentations. According to Renzulli, one thing led to another, and their partnership blossomed into something more significant: “We fell in love, and we got married.”
When asked about Reis’ strengths, Renzulli is quick to describe her academically, similar to his work with the Triad Model. “I picture Sally’s strengths like a triangle, with kindness to people at the center,” he says. “One corner is an innovative, creative scholar, the second corner is leadership, and the third is communication.”
“I picture Sally’s strengths like a triangle, with kindness to people at the center. One corner is an innovative, creative scholar, the second is leadership, and the third is communication.”
— Distinguished Professor Joseph Renzulli
During her master’s program, Reis worked as a gifted and talented teacher for Torrington (Connecticut) Public Schools. Her whole family was from Torrington, including her uncle Ray Neag. Neag would later donate to the Neag School a significant gift of $1.5 million in 1996, following a family Thanksgiving dinner discussion about how much it cost to endow a chair. Through the UConn Foundation, after that family discussion, Neag named a chair in gifted education in memory of his wife of 40 years, who had lost her battle with cancer earlier that year.
A few years later, Neag would donate the largest gift to a school of education in the country at that time. Unfortunately, Reis’ uncle passed away in 2018, but he has had a legacy and life-changing impact on the Neag School of Education and across the University through that original gift and subsequent gifts.
Later, Reis would become the coordinator of gifted and talented programs for Torrington Public Schools. Around the same time, she also started teaching in the gifted and talented program at UConn. As the gifted and talented coordinator for the Torrington school district, her role was the first of many leadership roles that she would have during her successful professional 40+-year-career.
Leadership Across the University
When colleagues and former students across the University and beyond think of Reis, they are all quick to highly commend her for her gifted and talented ability to lead and work with others and to lead major initiatives across the University.
Her vitae is a huge estate filled with notable accomplishments that grew and flourished over time, which could fill volumes. After serving in increasingly responsible faculty roles, one of her early leadership roles at the Neag School was serving as the educational psychology (EPSY) department head.
Dean Emeritus Richard Schwab, who was a doctoral student at the same time as Reis, needed someone to lead the EPSY department, and he knew who to turn to. “Before returning to UConn as dean, I had stayed in touch with Sally (and Joe) through professional conferences and collaborations,” he recalls. “I was always impressed with her talents.”
“When I was recruited back to the Neag School, I needed a clear plan for the future of the school. There was a lot of turmoil at the time, and we needed a visionary strategic plan to guide our decisions,” says Schwab. “So, I put Sally on that committee, knowing she would know what strengths to build on and where we needed to make changes to become one of the top schools of education in the country.”
“The plan guided us to build centers of excellence, close weak programs, and would later be shown to Ray Neag to encourage his interest in investing in us through his transformative gift that would later name the school,” he says.
“Nobody loves UConn more than Sally or had dedicated more of her life.”
— Dean Emeritus Richard Schwab
Soon after the plan was launched, Schwab appointed her as department chair and knew she would lead the Educational Psychology Department to one of the top raked departments on campus because she “was visionary.”
Schwab recalls Reis being “fair, a visionary who made tough decisions, but also cared deeply for her faculty.”
“Nobody loves UConn more than Sally or had dedicated more of her life,” says Schwab. “(In that role) she was fabulous. Being department head is the toughest job on campus, and we worked side by side, but nobody will second guess her because she had strong legitimacy across campus.”
Another current faculty member who has known Reis since his Neag School doctoral student days, Joseph Madaus, recalls her role as the department head. “She was always gracious of her time and supportive and created different kinds of opportunities. She was like a mentor to so many young faculty members, and she took an interest in their careers and research.”
“She has the people skills and cares for the people she works with,” recalls Madaus. “She’s an amazing problem solver and visionary. She can look at situations and find positive solutions that benefit a wide range of people, the department, and the University.”
While serving as a faculty member, Reis became director of the Young Scholars Saturday Semester, an early version of the still running Young Scholars Senior Summit, a three-week program hosted by UConn and funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
Reis also became co-director of the Confratute-Summer Institute on Enrichment Learning and Teaching with her co-collaborator Joseph Renzulli, which was among the many initiatives she nurtured. Now in its 44th year, Confratute, an annual weeklong event sharing research-based strategies that engage all types of students in learning, has drawn tens of thousands of educators worldwide to the University’s Storrs campus during the summer.
Known by many as a masterful organizer and one that “gets things done,” Reis has led Confratute for the past 20 years. “She makes all the pieces fit together,” says Renzulli. “It always amazes me that she can juggle 16 balls simultaneously and not drop one.”
“Confratute is Sally’s pride and joy (after her family),” says Stephanie Huntington, a program assistant with UConn’s Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development. “Teachers from all over the world have had the opportunity to come to this unique conference. The teachers are treated like family, leaving feeling inspired by their experiences. The community of teachers (from) worldwide is like nothing I have ever seen before.”
Lisa Muller, executive program director of the Renzulli Center, has similar insights. “Confratute is a unique experience … and Sally is integral to the feeling of family that participants experience while at Confratute. For example, Sally sees off every bus that leaves Confratute to transport the participants back to the airport. Every single bus gets a farewell from her.”
Neag School alumna Rachel McAnallen, a math expert and Confratute attendee for the past 38 years, recalls Reis’ visionary keynote from 30 years ago. “I remember it like it was yesterday. She gave a passionate talk about the dumbing down of curriculum in the public schools in the US. At that time, I had noticed the change in math textbooks. There were more cartoon-like illustrations and less complex math problems.”
“I sat with tears in my eyes as Sally said, ‘We may not notice this now, but we will see its effects later down the road,’” recalls McAnallen. “And here we are.”
“Sally is the single most effective leader I have known. I have never seen Sally encounter a problem she could not solve, a difficult situation she could not diffuse, or a stranger she did not make feel welcome.”
— Del Siegle, Director of the NCRGE
Another notable leadership role that Reis cultivated over time was her role with the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT), which was the precursor to the National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE).
“(She) was the driving force of NRC/GT, and she was responsible for the national legislation that created the Javits program that funds the national center and all of the Javits research we do at UConn,” says Del Siegle, director of the NCRGE and a former doctoral student of Reis’. “She stands out as a leader because she offers practical and creative solutions to pressing issues schools and the field of talent development are facing.”
“Sally is the single most effective leader I have known,” says Siegle. “I have never seen Sally encounter a problem she could not solve, a difficult situation she could not diffuse, or a stranger she did not make feel welcome.”
During Susan Herbst’s term as UConn’s first woman president, Reis was named vice provost for academic affairs. She bloomed into a university-wide leader responsible for many initiatives, including undergraduate education programs and majors.
While in this role, where she also served as a member of the President’s Cabinet, she excelled and achieved numerous accomplishments, including restructuring the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to more effectively serve faculty and staff; creating a University Office of Engagement; leading all training for department heads and associate deans; revising of the university’s promotion, tenure and reappointment process; increasing student retention and graduation rates; and leading the development of a five-year strategic university plan, to name a few.
She managed various departments, including the Institute for Student Success, which houses the Office of First Year Programs and Learning Communities. In addition, Reis was instrumental in launching the ScHOLA²RS House, which helps influence positive academic outcomes for Black males, and recruiting former Neag School faculty member Erik Hines to be the inaugural director. Hines has since left UConn, but ScHOLA²RS House continues to positively impact Black male success in college.
Reis worked with many administrators, including Jennifer Lease Butts, the current associate vice provost for enrichment programs and director of the Honors Program, whom Reis had encouraged to apply to the director position after a staff retirement.
“Sally championed numerous Honors initiatives across the University, including ensuring that an Honors education was available at all regional campuses,” Lease Butts says.
After serving in that vice provost role for six years, she became the senior advisor to the provost and president for special projects for two years.
Reis and Rachel Rubin, chief of staff to then-President Herbst, established the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network in 2019 to develop female student leaders at UConn.
Lease Butts and Reis have worked together on the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, where Reis has continued as the faculty director, and Lease Butts oversees the administration of the enrichment programs.
Reis excelled in all these roles due to her “unique combination of being not only a brilliant academic and talented administrator, but somebody who people gravitate toward,” says Schwab.
“She had legitimacy because she was an outstanding scholar,” says Schwab. “Nobody could question her academic ability because she had deep leadership experience from running the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented to being department head to being on the faculty senate.”
“She worked her way up the ranks and established herself as a faculty member, but a faculty member who always looked out for the best interest of the faculty members,” says Schwab.
“Sally knew lots of folks and knowing people in Connecticut is very important because of the trust you build over the years,” recalls Schwab. “She knew faculty and administrators, but she also knew people in the legislature.”
Mentoring and Nurturing Through Communication
While Reis was successful as an accomplished leader throughout Connecticut and beyond, she was also known as a kind and generous mentor to many, whether a graduate student, colleague, or one of the many individuals she managed. It’s often related to her “kindness at the center” trait that Renzulli acknowledges and her “willingness to help people.”
“Sally immediately engages you and takes an interest in you. You always feel like you have her time and attention,” says Lease Butts. “She had encouraged me to apply for the Honors position and had told me at the time, ‘I think you’d be great.’”
“She’s a nurturer and caretaker, and she just believes in people,” says Lease Butts. “It’s really about promoting and developing the talents in other people, helping them to be the best versions of themselves, seeing potential when others may not be seeing it.”
Neag School alumna Melissa Thom ’15 MA started attending Confratute in 2009, where she learned about the Three Summers Program. While pursuing her studies, she focused her graduate program on gifted and talented. A previous educator at the Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Connecticut, Thom came to Connecticut to teach at the Renzulli Academy after meeting Reis at an international reading conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
“I consider Sally to be one of the most important mentors in my professional life,” says Thom, who is currently a middle school teacher librarian for West Hartford (Connecticut) Public Schools. “She is a very important person in my life!”
Muller is also among the many who recognize Reis’ ability to nurture and help others. “Sally is warm, personable, caring, and funny,” she says. “Sally is a giver and loves to assist anyone … and is always willing to make that phone call or reach out to someone to help and provide support personally.”
Muller also benefited from Reis’ support when working on a research project. “Under her guidance, my skills blossomed, and I soon took on many more responsibilities and had a more significant role. I credit Sally with being one of the first to recognize my gifts and talents and providing me with the opportunities to continue to grow professionally and personally.
One of Reis’ early successes as a mentor was when she was working as a doctoral student. She co-taught many courses, including one for a master’s student, Thomas Hébert, who would earn his master’s and then doctorate in gifted education. He is currently a professor of gifted and talented education at the University of South Carolina and has “admired all of Sally’s significant professional achievements for many years.”
“My earliest memories of Sally are of her nurturing all students in the master’s degree cohort and maintaining her passion for the field we were entering,” he recalls. “While Sally was pursuing her doctorate, she was also working part-time as coordinator of gifted and talented for Torrington Public Schools. As a result, she recruited me to teach as an enrichment teacher.”
“She works diligently to uncover her students’ skills, strengths, and experiences, and then nurtures these seeds … to ensure the opportunities for individual growth.”
— Associate Clinical Professor Rebecca Eckert
“My fondest memory of Sally is her dedication to working with Michael, a second-grader in my classroom,” he says. “The intense discussions and laughter … that emerged is a memory that makes me smile today.”
A graduate student of Reis’ who now works as an associate clinical professor in teacher education at the Neag School, Rebecca Eckert, thinks “Sally’s work with students resembles that of a patient gardener.”
“She works diligently to uncover her students’ skills, strengths, and experiences, and then nurtures these seeds of excellence carefully with so much support and careful planning to ensure the best possible opportunities for individual growth and the achievement of great goals,” says Eckert.
“Like a true gardener, Sally is always one to celebrate the beautiful things that bloom from all this hard work,” says Eckert. “It’s no wonder she has a long list of grateful former students and such a beautiful garden.”
Another graduate student, Nicole Waicunas, now the Schoolwide Enrichment Model outreach coordinator at the Renzulli Center, echoes similar sentiments.
“Sally is brilliant. She also takes the time to see others and help them uncover their gifts and talents,” says Waicunas. “I am grateful for her continued belief in me, even when I doubted myself.”
“Sally takes on the struggles, and she sees the diamond in the rough,” says Waicunas.
Susan Baum, a fellow doctoral student of Reis, is in “awe of her dedication to the field … and goes out of her way to mentor others and rejoices in their accomplishments.”
McAnallen recalls how “she couldn’t have asked for a better advisor.”
“Her timing was priceless because she knew when to hold your hand and when to kick your ass,” says McAnallen.
While Lease Butts isn’t a former graduate student, she’s thankful for Reis’ mentorship. “I’ve benefited daily from her guidance and mentorship, learning how to be an administrator and woman leader,” says Lease Butts.
Innovative Creative Scholar
Reis’ over 40-year career at UConn was built on the foundation of her innovative and creative scholarship, for which she was well known locally and internationally.
Schwab, working for the University of Qatar to help reform their teacher education programs, sat down with one of their administrators, who held up a brochure and said, “Do you know these people by any chance? They’re our heroes.” The brochure featured Reis on the cover for Confratute.
Reis, who has served as the principal investigator for the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT) from 1990 to 2013 and is the co-project director of Project 2e-ASD, has authored more than 250 articles, books, book chapters, and technical reports.
She is a Board of Trustees Professor in Educational Psychology, the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member at UConn. She also holds the first Letitia Neag Morgan Chair in the Neag School.
“Reis is one of the first scholars in gifted education to pursue a focused line of research on the challenges faced by gifted females in American society,” says Hébert. “Her dedication to this work has had an incredible impact on women worldwide, particularly culturally diverse gifted women.” Reis’ book, Work Left Undone: Compromises and Challenges of Talented Females (Creative Learning Press 1999), has been widely used worldwide and translated into several languages.
“Her leadership as a principal investigator on numerous NRC/GT research studies has advanced the field of gifted and talented education for several decades,” says Hébert.
“Reis is one of the first scholars in gifted education to pursue a focused line of research on the challenges faced by gifted females in American society.”
— Professor Thomas Hébert
Her influence on the world of gifted and talented is well-known, and she has impacted the growth and development of children near and far. “She was amazing at implementing the Enrichment Triad Model in her classroom in Torrington,” recalls Baum.
“Through her efforts, the model became known, and the rest is history,” says Baum. “The Enrichment Triad Model and the Schoolwide Enrichment Model are the most widely used approaches in gifted education worldwide.”
Betsy McCoach, another former doctoral student of Reis’ and professor of educational psychology at the Neag School, agrees, “For the last 40 years, Sally has been one of the most prominent scholars in gifted education.”
“Her curriculum impacting study, Why Not Let High Ability Students Start School in January?, is still one of the most influential studies in gifted education,” says McCoach.
Madaus also agrees about her impact on the field of gifted education. “Her research line alone is remarkable. Everything else that she’s created helped foster and grow is incredible.”
The Next Chapter
While Reis recently decided to retire from the University as a full-time faculty member, she won’t be going very far.
A research team led by Reis, which includes Madaus and Nicholas Gelbar, is studying how students who are both academically talented and also on the autism spectrum can enjoy greater college success based on the correct high school experience.
“High school should not be just about deficit reduction, but about talent development,” says Reis of the findings.
Reis still has an active part in the annual Confratute conference and will continue to accept speaking engagements, which take her worldwide, including an upcoming project in Italy.
While she’s a natural nurturer, she’s always put family first on the list of her priorities. Now that her schedule is more open, she will spend more time with her young granddaughter, who turns four this year and help with wedding plans for one of her daughters, who is getting married this summer. She will also spend more time at home, in her garden.
“What many people don’t know about her is that she’s a very accomplished horticulturist and gardener,” says Renzulli.
Those traits of tending and nurturing others have blossomed into a garden of gifted and talented successes that have a lasting legacy, both at UConn and beyond.
View photos from an album gathered in honor of her retirement celebration. If you would like to honor Sally Reis and her legacy to gifted and talented education, please consider giving a gift to the Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis Renzulli Fund. Visit the website for more information.
Neag School Secures $25K+ in 36 Hours During UConn’s Giving Day
Thanks to 494 individuals, the Neag School of Education garnered more than $25,000 in contributions during this spring’s annual Giving Day at UConn. The University-wide fundraising event raised over $504,000 in total for UConn in just 36 hours, with incoming donations set up to support everything from scholarships and academic programs to student groups and athletics. The Neag School, including its Alumni Board, promoted seven different education- and sport management-affiliated projects during this year’s Giving Day campaign, held over the course of two days in March.
- Leadership In Diversity (LID) & Husky Sport – $15,909 from 315 donors (includes Dean’s Board challenge: $5,500 & 3rd place leaderboard challenge: $1,000)
- Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development – $2,650 from 57 donors
- Neag School Alumni Board: Supporting the Passion and Talents of Tomorrow’s Educators– $3,080 from 45 donors
- Department of Curriculum & Instruction: Forging a Path for Aspiring Educators – $1,953 from 30 donors
- Dr. Sue Saunders HESA Professional Development Fund – $910 from 21 donors
- UConn Collaboratory on School & Child Health – $505 from 17 donors
- Neag Global Education – $426 from 9 donors
One of these projects — the Leadership in Diversity (LID) & Husky Sport partnership project came in third place across all UConn Gives projects this year, raising over $15,000. With 315 donations from all over the world, the project initially raised $9,409. Two Giving Day matching gift challenges, one funded by the Dean’s Board of Advocates as well placing third on the leaderboard challenge, brought an additional $6,500 to the project’s total.
“Collaboration between LID and Husky Sport has continued to showcase the work of many cool and talented people within the Neag School of Education,” says Justin Evanovich, assistant clinical professor, and Husky Sport’s managing director. “Actions to support people and change in education and community remain at the forefront of both missions. We hope to build upon the support of generous donors and are thankful for those many relationships built over time.”
Husky Sport, housed within Neag School’s Sport Management Program, is a community-campus partnership that utilizes the power of sport to connect and empower partners from the city of Hartford and University of Connecticut. Since 2003, Husky Sport has collaborated to identify needs, implement programming, assess progress, and build lasting relationships through intentional programs facilitated in school, after-school, on weekends, and as part of academic coursework.
“Leadership in Diversity’s donations from UConn Gives allow the student organization to thrive,” says Dominique Battle-Lawson, LID advisor and Neag School’s assistant director of student support. “LID uses resources for professional development, community work, community outreach, and more. We are beyond grateful for the donations, and without them, we would not be able to sustain all our efforts.”
“Giving to LID allows us as a group to have the flexibility to meet the needs of our pre-service teachers of color,” says LID’s recent president, Tamashi Hettiarachchi ’21 (ED), ’22. “LID is somewhere that many of us have strong ties to and financially supporting LID lets this work continue for years to come.”
Leadership In Diversity (LID) is a student-led organization at the University of Connecticut that aims to help maintain and encourage confidence and success in students of color as they pursue careers in the field of education. LID aims to provide their members with the necessary tools, networks, and information that they will need to be competitive, well-rounded, culturally responsive educators.
Giving Day 2022 may be over, but you can still offer your support. See how you can help fund different efforts at the Neag School of Education.
State Historian Walter Woodward Considers the Past as He Looks to the Future
CT Insider (Alan Marcus, who has worked with Walter Woodward, is mentioned)
Neag School Hosts Panel in Honor of 50th Anniversary of Title IX
To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Title IX’s passage this June, the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute, in collaboration with the Neag School of Education Sport Management Program, recently hosted a “Beyond the Field” roundtable discussing the past, present, and future of the landmark gender equity legislation.
Experts of Title IX were invited, along with women athletes and scholars holding different racial and sexual identities, to discuss what has worked and what should be celebrated about Title IX, while also challenging the Sport Management Program to consider that how they can work to make Title IX better serve all athletes who identify as girls and women.
Neag School Professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership Laura Burton and instructor Eli Wolff moderated the panel. Panelists included:
- Carol Stiff, President of Stiff Sports Media Consulting;
- Carole Oglesby, Global Advocate and Former President of WomenSport International;
- Victoria I. Mealer-Flowers, Brown University Program Manager of Student-Athlete Support and Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives;
- Courtney L. Flowers, Associate Professor of Sport Studies at Texas Southern University;
- Tai Dillard, University of Houston Assistant Coach and Recruiting Coordinator; and
- Julia Bilbao, a graduate student and member of the softball team at Texas Southern University.
Why Title IX is Important to Recognize
“This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX,” said Laura Burton. “The UConn Sport Management program is committed to making positive and equitable changes in sport, so we felt it was important to celebrate all of the opportunities and accomplishments girls and women have made in sport due to the passage of Title IX.”
“However, we also want to continue to examine and critique the law’s shortcomings, as those with more race and economic privilege (white girls and women with higher socioeconomic status) have disproportionately benefited from the law,” Burton continued.
“The Sport Management program is committed to making positive and equitable changes in sport, so we felt it was important to celebrate all of the opportunities and accomplishments girls and women have made in sport due to the passage of Title IX.”
— Professor Laura Burton
Burton, born in 1970 as a white girl from a middle family where there were opportunities for her to participate in sports beginning in elementary school, is a direct beneficiary of the law. However, throughout her sports career, her experiences were never equitable compared to boys’ and men’s experiences. This is one of the reasons she decided to pursue her doctoral degree, as she wanted to “better understand where there continues to be such disparities between girls’ and women’s experiences in sport when compared to boys’/men’s.”
A Thought-Provoking Discussion
Title IX states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
“As noted in the thought-provoking panel discussion, there is still much work to be done to ensure Title IX dues support all athletes who identify as girls and women,” said Burton.
However, panelists point out that much work is still needed, despite Title IX having gone into effect five decades ago.
As the panelists discussed, this was made particularly evident after Sedona Prince, a member of the University of Oregon’s women’s basketball team, posted a video in 2021 comparing female and male facilities at the NCAA tournament.
“[Prince’s] is very vocal, and when she put out her statements in her tweets, you cannot deny it,” said the University of Houston’s Dillard.
Touching Upon History
While the implementation of Title IX has provided numerous opportunities to women nationally, it also has resulted in negative consequences, panelists said.
“Those in power will always be the first ones out of the gate to reap benefits,” said WomenSport International’s Oglesby. “So, with Title IX, it was mostly men, strangely, that initially were the great benefactors.”
“Looking at the administrative offices within athletics, it’s very skewed to white males, and then white females, African American males, and then African American females,” added Dillard.
Panelist Mealer-Flowers of Brown University spoke about the lack of gender equity at the college level and at the high school level and earlier. Growing up as an underprivileged Black youth on the south side of Providence, Rhode Island, she shared that her city had only one basketball court for its children.
“What else can we do at the grassroots level to make sure that we’re exposing young Black girls and young women of color to allow them the opportunity to explore [athletics]?” she asked. “Because our options are limited.”
If it weren’t for her father, brothers, and relatives advocating for her, Mealer-Flowers said, she does not know whether sports would have been an option.
Fellow panelist Bilbao, a student-athlete at Texas Southern University, said that she and her softball team must travel 20 minutes to a public park outside of campus.
“At this field, there’s temporary fencing,” she said. “We don’t even have a scoreboard out there, not a press box, just somebody who sets up everything for the games every day.”
Busting Revenue Myths
Many attributes unequal pay and unequal recognition between female and male sports to revenue differences. Male athletics are reported to generate more revenue; however, there is more to the story when broken down.
“I think that you have a lot of wealthy owners now in the WNBA and the NBA so that they can double down,” said Stiff of Stiff Sports Media Consulting. “It comes down to whether or not they want to shell out the money for this product.”
Stiff spoke that many women professional athletes are often working in the off-season, too.
“We’re sending our players out of the country to make a living when they should be here, marketing their WNBA team during the winter and resting their legs,” she said. “No other pro-male player needs to compete for an entire year.”
The revenue garnered by men’s athletics also relates to the amount of money invested into their programs, panelists said.
“Let’s put a figure on the money that the universities and cities are investing in their men’s programs that they’re not investing [in women’s],” said Oglesby. “They don’t get as much because they’re not investing as much.”
Beyond the financial inequities in sport, Mealer-Flowers noted that there needs to be a shift on a conceptual level – one grounded in higher expectations, not just a sense of gratitude.
“Men have typically gotten to a place, and maybe some of our white counterparts have gotten to where they can expect certain things,” she said. “We’re just happy to be a part of the conversation and be present.”
Title IX in the Future
Title IX has improved the equity imbalance significantly, but it has not entirely fixed it. There is still much more advocacy and action that needs to take place.
Mealer-Flowers highlighted the structural support that must occur during individuals’ developmental years.
“And if we’re not supporting the people who are supporting these young children, male [or] female, in these underprivileged communities, if they’re not getting the skills that they need to make sure that they’re protecting them as they’re developing, what are we doing?” she asked.
“It’s building the scaffolding, the strong foundation of expectation of ‘We’ve got to collaborate; we’ve got to collaboratively do this,’ but we’ve got to hold people outside of our academic institutions accountable to the same standard,” she said.
While she acknowledges the importance of research surrounding Title IX, Mealer-Flowers emphasizes the action that must occur following the research.
“We have to turn our research into practice,” she said. “We have to get out there in the communities and use our research to make change.”
Educating youth and providing resources are among the ways to take action, Bilbao said. “I just know that there are younger black and brown girls who want to play softball, and it’s just not an option for them because it’s an expensive sport.” She said she hopes to see dues and fees decrease so that people in lower-income communities have the opportunity to discover sports that they otherwise would not have experienced.
Bringing missing voices to the table, expecting opportunities rather than being grateful for them, continually striving for more, all doing our part and recognizing daily progress is what is in store for the future of Title IX.
Organized through Neag School’s Sport Management Program, Beyond the Field events are facilitated conversations around current social and political issues as they intersect with sport, featuring esteemed practitioners and scholars. The series covers a variety of issues such as gender equity, activism, and racism, and expands understanding within the realms of sport and society. Watch the April 20 recording on YouTube.
Feel Your Best Self: Educators, Puppets Unite to Teach Kids About Emotions
Enduring the turmoil of a global pandemic for more than two years now, many of us have struggled. We can recognize the importance of self-care and wellness, but not everyone has necessarily adopted a daily meditation practice or quit their late-night doomscrolling. By now, though, perhaps we can admit to ourselves one thing: It’s OK to not be OK in every moment.
In our daily lives, “it’s not realistic to think all emotions should be positive,” says Sandra Chafouleas, co-director of the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “But it is important to be able to evaluate when those negative moments are not helping you feel your best self and then ask what can you do to shift.”
A former school psychologist, Chafouleas is a renowned expert in such areas as social-emotional learning, trauma-informed schools, and behavioral assessment and intervention. Her research and writing have touched on everything from promoting well-being to improving youth sports culture.
In short, she knows what the research says about how we can most effectively handle stress, cope with uncertainty, and direct our emotions — the sorts of skills many of us likely wish we had mastered much earlier on in life.
Thanks to a pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration she is co-leading at UConn called Feel Your Best Self, elementary-aged children will soon have a chance to acquire those very skills in classrooms and childcare settings across the country — for free.
“It is important to be able to evaluate when … negative moments are not helping you feel your best self and then ask what can you do to shift.”
— Sandra Chafouleas,
Feel Your Best Self Co-Executive Producer
The Show Must Go On
The Feel Your Best Self project is unique in its breadth, bringing together a far-reaching network of UConn faculty, staff, alumni, students, and donors from fields as diverse as educational psychology, puppetry, health, and finance.
Through 12 simple strategies bearing such memorable names as ‘shake out the yuck’ and ‘float your boat,’ Feel Your Best Self will teach children aged 3 to 12 how to identify and manage their emotions, good and bad. Better yet, kids will learn these bite-size lessons in emotional well-being from their three newest friends — lively, endearing puppets named CJ, Mena, and Nico.
It was through the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UConn that these lovable puppets came to life. Amid the pandemic, John Bell, director, and Emily Wicks, manager of operations and collections, had been seeking ways to carry on the Ballard Institute’s traditional programming via an online format.
“We were trying to adapt our workshops into a virtual environment, and we wanted to make sure to reach out to UConn’s school of education, to think about best practices,” says Wicks, co-executive producer for the project with Chafouleas.
When she and her team learned about Chafouleas’ work, including her research on simple wellness strategies, Wicks says “that’s when we put our heads together and thought that puppetry would be a really good method of engaging kids in these strategies.”
“We’ve known these strategies work. They’re things that we already use in school psychology,” Chafouleas says. “We’re packaging them into a really fun and engaging way.”
Each Feel Your Best Self strategy episode, plus the introductory video, stars the three puppets. Captured this spring, the episodes are slated to release beginning in June in select school districts and expand nationwide over the coming months.
Beyond the episodes themselves — which promise to be comical, fun, and engaging — the Feel Your Best Self project includes a comprehensive educational toolkit featuring numerous hands-on resources.
Facilitator guides offer educators and caregivers guidance on how to help children talk about their feelings and reflect on how the strategies work. Simply illustrated cards, available in English as well as Spanish, give kids a quick overview of each Feel Your Best Self strategy. Facilitator materials also detail how to incorporate puppet-making and journaling into activities.
The variety of tools, which to date have been piloted to more than 200 preschool and elementary-aged students over the past year, allows educators to use whichever resources work best in their space.
“Teaching and practicing social-emotional learning doesn’t have to be a set curriculum,” Chafouleas says. “Educators already have the skills that they need to build positive relationships and strengthen emotional well-being in their students. Using this toolkit is not scripted – it’s about how it fits for you. We’ve given lots of options to pick and choose from, doing whatever works in your setting.”
At the same time, Feel Your Best Self lets kids explore what strategies they like the most.
“It’s not that everybody has to master all 12 of the strategies we include in the toolkit,” Chafouleas says. “We want kids in classroom and families to try it out and find the ones that really fit best. The hope is that every person will find a couple of strategies that they really resonate with and can have ready in their back pocket to use in different situations.”
‘The Perfect Combination’
To create the Feel Your Best Self lessons, Chafouleas and her team, led by alumna and current postdoctoral research associate Emily Iovino ’15 CLAS, ’16 MA, ’20 Ph.D., reviewed the research literature, distilling strategies for managing emotions into three overarching categories: calm yourself down, connect with others, and catch your feelings.
“We took all the things that we know or that we’ve used and figured out which are the top 12 that can work for elementary students – and that could be taught easily by anybody – a classroom teacher, a family member, a bus driver,” Chafouleas says.
“Using puppetry is the perfect way to engage audiences in these wellness strategies,” Wicks says. For example, “with the puppets, the kids are able to see how we do belly breathing, see how we can make our puppet breathe and then have the kids come up and show each other.”
To Wicks, Feel Your Best Self stands out as “the perfect combination” of UConn’s School of Fine Arts and Neag School of Education.
“This project really shows the strength of this kind of interdisciplinary work,” she says. “I think it’s an amazing collaboration that has been a really fun way to meet a need.”
“Using puppetry is the perfect way to engage audiences in these wellness strategies.”
— Emily Wicks, Feel Your Best Self Co-Executive Producer
Building a Scaffolding
Feel Your Best Self came to fruition despite, and because of, the pandemic, but also with the support of donors contributing more than half a million dollars in combined funding.
Jo Christine Miles, director of the Principal Foundation and Principal Community Relations, the philanthropic arm of Fortune 500 company Principal Financial Group, learned of the project through Chafouleas.
“The Foundation’s mission is to advance financial security for all, and we endeavor to fund innovative programs that help people build the scaffolding needed to pursue financial security on their terms,” Miles says. From her perspective, helping people create pathways to financial security can very well go beyond such traditional avenues as asset management, 529 plans, or annuities.
“This program addresses many of the issues that are front and center today for people,” Miles says. “Having emotional health, education around self-regulation [is] an important part of moving one towards financial security, however he/she may define that.”
Feel Your Best Self, she adds, “allows us to prepare children to be a better version of themselves, to know that it’s OK to not be OK, and hopefully achieve a higher form of their potential, while being able to put these resources out for free expands access.”
The Neag Foundation, which funds projects in such areas as education and healthcare, is another integral partner in bringing Feel Your Best Self to life.
“I love this project because it gives concrete tools to children to put a name on their feelings, to understand that feeling badly at times is normal, but there are ways that we can cope with it,” says Sally Reis, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of the Neag School and a co-founder of the Neag Foundation.
“I love this project because it gives concrete tools to children to put a name on their feelings, to understand that feeling badly at times is normal, but there are ways that we can cope with it.”
— Sally Reis, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor
An internationally recognized scholar in the realm of educational psychology, Reis is also the niece of the late Ray Neag ’56 CLAS and his wife, Carole, after whom the Neag School of Education is named. She and Carole Neag established the Foundation following Ray’s passing in 2018.
“The Foundation feels there’s nothing that we can invest in that is more important than childhood well-being,” Reis says. “Ray would’ve been delighted, and we are very excited to see where this will go in the near and far future.”
Also involved is UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), which supports similarly interdisciplinary collaborations and is handling Feel Your Best Self’s fiscal management.
Behind the Scenes
Meanwhile, even UConn alumni and students are lending a helping hand with Feel Your Best Self. Among them are graduate assistant Yanniv Frank, who worked to create the original stories and characters, as well as puppetry alumni Heather Asch ’90 SFA, Sarah Nolen ’16 SFA, and John Cody ’17 SFA, the project’s supervising producer, director, and puppet builder, respectively. A large team of UConn undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines also have joined the project, getting firsthand experience.
“We tried to bring in the best people we could find,” says Asch, executive director and producer at nonprofit No Strings USA, a production company that makes educational puppet films for at risk children worldwide, as well as an Emmy Award-winning puppeteer whose résumé includes work with Jim Henson and Sesame Street.
“UConn has all the research, all the subject matter needed to be able to create work like this and really set a standard in the field of making educational content for kids in a really unique way — that also sets the grads up, when they leave the program, with life skills,” Asch adds. “A project like this is really a game-changer.”
Learn more about Feel Your Best Self at feelyourbestself.collaboration.uconn.edu.
2022 Commencement At a Glance
UConn Today (Neag School of Education’s Undergraduate Commencement ceremony is mentioned)
Study: VR Better Than Video for Student Performance, Engagement
K-12 DIVE (Michael Young is quoted about a virtual reality study)
Class of 2022 Senior Profile: Xinhai “Toby” Wei
Editor’s Note: As Commencement approaches, we are featuring some of our Neag School Class of 2022 graduating students over the coming days.
Major:
Mathematics Education
Hometown:
Zhongshan, China
An interest in both teaching and human rights brought Wei “Toby” Xinhai to UConn from his home in China, but he hopes to stay in Connecticut after graduation to work as a teacher – bringing the “joy of productive struggles in math” to future generations of students.
Why did you choose UConn?
UConn was a good mix of what my parents wanted and what I wanted. My parents wanted high-ranking universities, and I wanted a dedicated education program and was very interested in human rights. After learning this is where the Dodd Center and Neag were located, it was a no-brainer choice for me.
What’s your program of study and why did you choose it?
My program of study is the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s (IB/M) at the Neag School of Education for secondary mathematic education. I chose this program because I want to make an impact in the future generations and spread joy of productive struggles in math. (Yes, math can be hard and fun at the same time!)
What are your plans after graduation?
Hopefully, I will be able to teach somewhere in Connecticut.
What activities were you involved with as a student?
I was the student director for the Human Rights and Actions House for two years while working with the Community Outreach Office. I also participated in the UConn Gaming Club, which was a blast. Of course, a lot of tutoring programs and educational outreach organizations.
“Meeting different people and exchanging cultural experience helped me to get a feel of encountering the diversity that exists in the world.”
How has UConn prepared you for the next chapter in life?
Meeting different people and exchanging cultural experience helped me to get a feel of encountering the diversity that exists in the world. Not to mention that Neag guided me to get a teaching certificate!
Any advice for incoming first-year students?
Be open to ideas and experiences. And start thinking about financing if you haven’t already.
What’s one thing every student should do during their time at UConn?
Ask professors about their projects or research! Seeing their excitement about knowledge is inspiring.
Who was your favorite professor and why?
Megan Staple, she is my Connecticut mom. Since I’m so far away from home, I don’t get to go back home just for a short holiday break. So, I partake in holiday traditions here through her family!
Two Fifth-Graders from Darien Write Award-Winning Essays for Contests, and More
The Hour (Letters About Literature contest, sponsored by the Neag School of Education, is mentioned)
