October 2018
THE COLLEGE INSIDER
NEWS ABOUT FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENTS
OF THE UA COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
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The College Insider
is a digital publication for faculty, staff, undergraduates, and grad students and will come out on the first of each month of the academic year.
The College Insider
features:
- New faculty and staff
- Research and outreach projects, including international projects
- Publications
- Workshops
- Awards
- Statistics, such as enrollment numbers of grads and undergrads
The
College Insider
is for news that doesn’t necessarily fit the
Message from the Dean
, although there may be some overlap at times.
The deadline for submissions for
The College Insider
is the first Friday of every month. Whenever you have news to submit, please enter your information
here.
If you have any questions, please contact
Director of Marketing & Communications Ana Luisa Terrazas
at
anat@u.arizona.edu
.
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Originally from Dallas,
Danielle Hargett moved to Tucson a year ago because Texas just wasn’t hot enough. After graduating from the University of North Texas in 2012, she began her career at a Dallas ad agency where she spent three years working on campaigns for clients like McDonald's and Visionworks. Since then, she has enjoyed working on marketing efforts for nonprofits and businesses in the fashion, environmental, and, most recently, medical industries. She is thrilled to join the College of Education team in her new role as marketing specialist. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, camping, and dancing, and she loves the occasional night of karaoke.
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College of Education Junior Wins the Arizona State Museum’s “Year at the Museum” Award
Rebekka Weismantle was awarded a competitive work-study position from the Raymond H. and Molly K. Thompson Endowment to provide a two-semester, hands-on educational experience at the Arizona State Museum. Weismantle is pursuing a degree in leadership, literacy, and learning with a minor in family studies and human development. Arizona State Museum’s Community Engagement program provides a stepping stone into her dream career of working in museum education. The program will provide training and experience in the promotion, scheduling, and presentation of the museum’s Muse2You education kits at K–12 schools, libraries, and community organizations. She will work under the direction of Associate Curator of Education Lisa Falk, who also is the head of community engagement, and Assistant Director of Education Heather Ingram through the spring 2019 semester.
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Research & Education Programs
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We’re Creating a New Institute
The college received a grant from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona to create the Tucson Regional Teacher Professional Development Institute. Leading the charge for the new institute are
Dean Bruce Johnson,
Assistant Dean Sara Chavarria, and
Professor of Educational Psychology Ron Marx. As a result of their efforts, we received $50,000 from a donor through the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona to begin a needs assessment this fall. In the winter, the design work begins.
Why create this institute? Teachers are professionals who should have more choice in advancing their careers. Schools and districts provide important professional development for their teachers, but they are limited by resource and time constraints, so they must focus on school or district priorities. They cannot also be expected to meet the individual needs of all of their teachers.
There is strength in acknowledging that no single entity can do it all. Partners for the creation of the institute include UA STEM Learning Center, Pima County Schools Superintendent, CITY Center Collaborative, Tucson Values Teachers, Southern Arizona Association for the Education of Young Children, Partners for Equitable Science Instruction, and several local school districts and charter schools.
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Two Years and Growing!
Upward Bound is entering its second year at the College of Education and is proud to announce the program was awarded an additional $11,000 to serve 63 students from both Pueblo and Cholla high schools. Six UA undergraduates of different personal and educational backgrounds were hired to tutor or mentor the Upward Bound participants.
On Saturday, September 29, participants and staff will travel to
Biosphere 2 where students will learn about different ecosystems through hands-on learning activities with a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility.
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Hispanic Serving Institution Fellows Program
The
HSI Fellows Program is launching a new project-based leadership opportunity for 10 thought and action leaders, including junior and mid-career faculty, academic and administrative heads, program directors, and individuals identified as emerging leaders. The program is designed to strengthen capacity among faculty and staff to advance the UA’s efforts as a newly designated HSI. Faculty and staff from all backgrounds are invited to apply. Support the nomination of someone in your college or department or consider pursuing this opportunity yourself.
Applications are due by
Monday, October 8. Please view the
attached program for details.
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Can Environmentally Friendly Attitudes Be Measured?
In July,
Dean and Professor Bruce Johnson presented alongside
TLS Assistant Research Professor Sanlyn Buxner and
Lisa Felix, a TLS graduate student, at the 12th Conference of European Researchers in Didactics of Biology in Zaragoza, Spain. Their presentation demonstrated ways to measure environmentally friendly attitudes, knowledge, and behavior across environmental education.
Also at the conference,
Johnson presented with Jan Činčera of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, about measuring the impact of earth education on children’s environmental perceptions.
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Marcy Wood Shares Research in Australasia
The Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia invited
TLS Associate Professor Marcy Wood to be the keynote speaker for the 41st annual conference held in Auckland, New Zealand, this past July. MERGA is a platform for mathematics educators and researchers to share research findings in mathematics education throughout Australasia. Wood’s talk, entitled Making Waves and Opening Spaces: Helping Each Student Engage in Rigorous Mathematics, demonstrated how Complex Instruction can help educators and researchers understand societies’ mathematical misconceptions and, ultimately, how CI can reshape classrooms to better support each student. CI is an approach that enables students to learn and teachers to teach at a high intellectual level in academically, linguistically, racially, ethnically, and socially heterogeneous classrooms.
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The College of Education awarded $542,000 in scholarships to 398 students — an 8.9 percent increase from last year!
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Fundraising Goals Surpassed
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The College of Education Office of Development surpassed its 2018 annual fundraising goal of $1.7 million, raising just more than $2 million. In addition, the college is already halfway to meeting the 2019 goal of raising $2.1 million!
More good news: Our college endowment has now surpassed $14 million.
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Arizona Schools: 49th in the Nation. Seriously? Let’s Fix It!
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
6:30–8 p.m.
Education Building, Kiva Room
Join the College of Education on
Wednesday, October 10, for a panel discussion on how citizen propositions, clean elections, and oversight legislation can save Arizona public education. Arizona’s annual school funding is a billion dollars less than it was in 2008. That’s a $4.5 billion loss since 2009. If we want a state where children can thrive, we need to invest in the schools that educate 95 percent of Arizona students.
About the panelists
Dawn Penich-Thacker is the co-founder and communications director of
Save Our Schools Arizona. She will discuss how grassroots movements can support and strengthen public schools.
Kirsten Engel is a professor at the UA College of Law and a member of the Arizona House of Representatives. Representative Engel will discuss the role of the Legislature in school funding and regulations.
Pam Powers Hannley is a member of the House of Representatives. Representative Powers Hannley will discuss the role of dark money and how we can protect clean elections.
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Binational Encuentro:
Female Migrations
October 11-19, 2018
The College of Education is proud to sponsor
Binational Encuentro: Female Migrations, a series of events that explores what it means to be a gendered border crosser. The nine-day series presented by the UA Department of Spanish & Portuguese and Splitseed Productions, a Tucson-based company that produces events for social change, features artists from Mexico City, Tucson, Phoenix, and Douglas. Attendees will discover concepts of border, territory, and displacement in a series of free workshops, roundtables, and performances open to the public. Events are in both Tucson and Douglas. Please see the
attachment for more details.
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COE Wine Harvest
Homecoming Reception
Friday, October 26, 2018
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Education Building, West Patio
Join the College of Education for its annual
Wine Harvest Homecoming Reception honoring the college's Alumnus of the Year Rufus Glasper ’95 and the Class of 1968 as they celebrate their 50th class reunion. Gather with fellow alumni for a special evening of selected wines and hors d'oeuvres. The event ends just in time for the bonfire.
All College of Education faculty, staff, and alumni are invited to attend at no charge.
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Be sure to send in your news! We're interested in workshops, publications, new faculty and staff, stellar students to feature, and awards.
Just push the button below to submit.
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Spotlight on Stellar Students!
“Yá’át’ééh.”
Hannah Evanishyn introduces herself in Diné bizaad, the Navajo language, honoring her clans as a reminder that she is of a greater community. The word “Diné” itself means “the people.” She weaves this reminder that she is of a community of people into conversation, just as she weaves this reminder into her life and actions.
An Arizona native from Chandler, Hannah Evanishyn is in her last year at the College of Education, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in elementary education with an ESL endorsement and a minor in American Indian studies. Evanishyn began her collegiate career in New York City at Columbia University, where she explored career opportunities in the fields of psychology, astronomy, and archaeology. One opportunity even led her to an internship at Kitt Peak, just southwest of Tucson on the Tohono O’Odham Nation Reservation.
After three semesters in New York, she decided to move closer to home, which brought her to Tucson, and eventually led her to the UA. She wanted a career that would allow her to use her natural social skills and make an impact. “I want to be a positive force in the world,” she says. She has found her niche in the classroom, where she can intertwine her passion for people, meaning, and education.
To further her knowledge of education within Native American communities, she joined the college’s Indigenous Teacher Education Project, which increases the number of Indigenous teachers serving Indigenous students, schools, and communities. As part of the program, she enrolled in a summer session with the American Indian Language Development Institute, which strengthened her connection to language. “ITEP has been a huge source of support for me,” she says as she explains the role the group has played along her path. Becoming a teacher was not an obvious choice for her. Instead, it came after honest self-reflection and soul searching. Plus, the college’s hands-on experiences of the past few semesters gave her the reassurance she needed.
Evanishyn’s maternal grandmother, who passed away last year, had a huge impact on her life. “She was a real matriarch,” she says. Her grandmother encouraged all of the women in the family to pursue higher education.
“Higher education is a gift,” Evanishyn adds. Through this gift, she hopes to bring her passion for people and community to the classroom. She offers thanks to her family, friends, and the ITEP community for the encouragement and support they’ve offered her throughout her educational journey.
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