Three C&I faculty were recognized at the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) Faculty recognition ceremony on September 14th.
The awards ceremony is to “celebrate the successes of faculty who hold named positions, and to show our appreciation to the generous partners who endowed these awards, creating a legacy of impact.”
Congratulations to Cassie Scharber – a Bonnie Westby Huebner Endowed Chair in Education and Technology. Crystal Wise – the Lindahl Leadership Faculty Fellow and Marek Oziewicz – the Sidney and Marguerite Henry Endowed Professor in Children’s Literature.
Kendall King, Ph.D, Professor of Multilingual Education and Director of Graduate Studiesin the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), was recently honored with the Linda Duttenhaver Distinguished Alumni Award from University of California, Education Abroad Program, This award according to UCEAP “honors an alumna or alumnus who have a record of extraordinary service or achievement in their field and has made a significant impact on the global community.”
We are excited to introduce our newest faculty to the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Annette Beauchamp – Assistant professor in Literacy Education, Betsey Maloney Leaf- Assistant professor in Arts Education and Ranza Veltri Torres – Assistant professor in Mathematics Education.
A big, warm welcome to our new Department of Curriculum and Instruction faculty.
C&I department faculty members, Dr. Clarkson and Dr. Abby Rombalski, will be presenting/supporting at this year’s LEAD Conference.
Sessions: ‘An Equity and Excellence Framework for Mathematics’ and ‘Eighth Grade Algebra? YES!’ will be led by Dr. Lesa Clarkson.
Dr. Abby Rombalski, faculty advisor with YoUthROC, who has been supporting the St. Louis Park Youth Data Analyst program with CaT graduate Dr. Silvy Lafayette (St. Louis Park’s Director of Assessment, Research, and Evaluation). Their session is ‘Centering Our Community’s Hopes and Dreams through YDA’.
The 2023 Leading in Equity, Action, and Diversity (LEAD) conference supports education leaders in improving PreK-12 school systems to disrupt pervasive racial inequities. Read more about the LEAD Conference.
Current Arts in Education–Culture and Teaching Ph.D. candidate, Đenise Hạnh Huỳnh shares what drives her research and creative expression.
What is your Ph.D research focus?
Through the embodiment of critical arts based ethnography, my work investigates the creative efforts we make as we unlearn harmful teachings from our upbringings. In particular, I am interested in the experiences of Vietnamese American artists in Minnesota and the implications of our work as it relates to culturally and linguistically sustaining arts curriculum, policy, and pedagogy. I want to understand how our lived experiences contribute to diasporic growth and creative expression–how we engage with, against, and past the real world context of colonialism and imperialism.
What drove you to enroll in the program?
I never met someone who held a Ph.D. until I arrived at Macalester College as a first-generation college student. Previously, I had only seen professors played by actors on television. Growing up, many people also told me that the arts were not possible for people like me–a descendant of working-class refugees. Instead, people with my set of experiences and people “like me” were expected to choose more “practical” fields. I want to be a part of changing these narratives.
What do you hope to get out of your educational experience?
I have been grateful for the space to teach, research, and make art. I plan to continue deepening my publication and performance record alongside meaningful engagement with the community as I continue my dissertation work. I hope the time I have taken to reinvest in my own education will meaningfully contribute back into my collaborations with communities.
What do you plan to do after graduation?
Throughout my career, I have sought to understand educational policies, systems, and theories that impacted the trajectory of my life and the lives of other human beings who are marginalized by these systems. In terms of tangibles, I want to publish my first debut collection of poems, a picture book series in the works, and continue collaborating with other Vietnamese American artists. As such, I want to continue making art, teaching students, doing research, and serving my community; to continue investigating the questions that have always mattered to me.
Lesa Clarkson, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), was recently honored with the University’s Outstanding Community Service Award.
The University of Minnesota Outstanding Community Service Awards recognize faculty, staff, students, and University-affiliated community partners who, by devoting their time, talents, and expertise to serve the public good, have made significant, demonstrable, and direct contributions to society’s well-being. This is the university’s highest award for these efforts.
In her award statement Lesa shared, “Nominees for the Outstanding Community Service Award should demonstrate work that advances more than their own scholarship. They should build a case to reflect selflessness and genuine commitment to community-based issues. These characteristics are a foundation for my service. I envision what is possible in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for urban learners. My work with mathematics (primarily in urban settings) is comprehensive – working not only with underserved students in urban schools but also with their urban teachers and their community at large. I view the lack of diversity in STEM fields as a matter of social justice and the motivator for my community service projects.”
Jana Lo Bello Miller, co-director of Elementary Education, and Keitha-Gail Martin-Kerr, Associate Teaching Professor in Curriculum and Instruction, are recipients of the prestigious fellowship award on Antisemitism and Jewish Inclusion in Educational Settings from George Washington University.
They will travel to Washington D.C. this summer to learn how to recognize, study, and teach antisemitism and foster Jewish inclusion within colleges and departments of education and other educational settings.
With this knowledge, the goal is to strengthen C&I’s programmatic leadership and administration, curriculum and pedagogy, and school and community partnerships.
Lori Ann Laster, a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction with a graduate minor in human rights, is the winner of the prestigious PEO (Philanthropic Educational Organization) Scholar Award. Laster is one of 110 scholars within the U.S. and Canada to receive this award. She is also the recipient of a new award from the Center of Jewish Studies, the Jerome L. Joss Graduate Student Research Grant. Laster also recently won the CEHD Seashore Graduate Fellowship Award.
Last year, Laster received the Ruth Eckert Scholarship and Theresa and Nathan Berman Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Jewish Studies (CJS).
Laster’s current research focuses on the intersection of religious literacy, cultural identity, and education. She feels incredibly lucky to benefit from the continued support and mentorship of her co-advisors in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Lori Helman and Susan Staats, and her human rights and Jewish studies advisor, Bruno Chaouat.
On April 5, 2023, aspiring teachers from the DirecTrack to Teaching and Elementary Education Foundations programs in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction sat down with Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) Commissioner Willie Jett to talk about what supports they need as they head into the teaching profession. Jehanne Beaton, PhD, DirecTrack to Teaching coordinator, supported students in this effort.
Darren LaScotte, a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), was recently honored with the 2023 TESOL Award for Excellence in Research for a paper on second language teaching and learning. The paper was written with Professor Emerita Elaine Tarone, a former faculty member in the MA TESOL program in C&I.
The award recognizes excellence in research on language teaching and learning and is given for empirical research that advances English language teaching policies, programs, or practices, or generates new knowledge about additional language acquisition.
LaScotte will receive the award at the upcoming TESOL International Conference in Portland, Oregon. He is the keynote speaker for the TESOL Graduate Student Forum on March 21, and will receive the award later that day at the opening plenary presentation. He will give a second featured presentation on March 22.
The award-winning paper, “Channeling ‘voices’ to improve L2 English intelligibility,” was published in The Modern LanguageJournal last year. The article documents ways that seven adult second language learners in an intensive English program improved their English intelligibility, while some of them also improved their delivery, as they all mirrored and subsequently channeled the voices of model speakers in rehearsed oral presentations over the course of seven weeks.
Professor Mary “Fong” Hermes and alumna Dr. Mel Engman of Queens University, Belfast received the annual Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Research Article Award for their work, “Land as interlocutor: A study of Ojibwe learner language in interaction on and with naturally occurring ‘materials,’” published in the Modern Language Journal (MLJ).
Alumna, Dr. Mel Engman
Professer Hermes
The committee praised the article for its “innovative thinking,” and for “presenting a new paradigm of inquiry.” They declared the work a “clear and rigorous example of both ecological approaches and more importantly, decolonial language reclamation efforts and research approaches that also skillfully engage with dominant theoretical paradigms.”
They also noted that the findings have broad significance in the field of language education both theoretically and in terms of pedagogical practice.
Teachers from Meadowbrook Elementary in Golden Valley, MN host partner teachers from Jamaica.
Associate Professor Keitha-Gail Martin-Kerr in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction is co-leading a week-long immersion experience for four Jamaican teachers as part of the Jamaica Exchange in Teaching (JET) program. The program is designed to build a sustainable partnership with the Ministry of Education in Jamaica where every year at least eight teachers from both countries will have a transformative week-long experience being immersed in the education system and culture.
This year, teachers from Jamaica are visiting the University of Minnesota campus and five metro schools including Meadowbrook Elementary, North Junior High, Hopkins High, Collaborative Lab, and Global Arts Plus. The JET program began with an exchange of four Minnesota-based teachers at Meadowbrook Elementary who visited Jamaica in February, 2021 for a parallel immersion experience.
In February 2023, four teachers from Highland Elementary in Columbia Heights will visit Jamaica to partner with an Infant School in St. Ann. In May 2023, the St. Ann teachers will visit Minnesota for an immersive education experience with their partner teachers in Highland Elementary .
Learn more about teacher preparation in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Dr. Marek Oziewicz lecture on climate literacy in Chile.
Marek Oziewicz, a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of the Center for Climate Literacy, delivered an invited lecture on climate literacy at Pontificia Universidat Católica De Chile in Santiago. The lecture was part of the talk series “Sustainability Dialogues—Imagining Futures” hosted by Pontificia’s Sustainability Institute. Oziewicz spoke about the strategies to develop universal climate literacy education for K-12 students. Over the next five days in Santiago, he gave a talk to graduate students and faculty at the Center for Educational Justice, met with Pontificia’s faculty, and led two workshops for teacher candidates taking a course on ecocriticism pedagogy. Oziewicz’s visit was organized by Dr. Andrea Casals Hill and is part of the Center’s effort to develop climate literacy networks at colleges of education and other teacher-training institutions across the globe.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Climate Literacy is excited to announce the launch of its inaugural Climate Literacy Teacher Leader Fellowship Program. The Fellowship will support seven committed teachers from the Metro area to develop and implement climate literacy curriculum in their classrooms. Fellows will gain a greater understanding of climate literacy education, contribute to scholarly publications, collaborate with international partners, and become leaders in the growing community of climate literacy educators in Minnesota and nationwide.
This year’s applications included submissions from teachers in over 17 districts, representing content areas ranging from economics to physical education in grades K-12. The 2023-2024 application process will open in early August.
The Climate Literacy Teacher Leader Fellowship program is made possible thanks to the generous gift from Dr. Pete Palmer.
A special issue of Critical Literacies in a Digital Age, Pedagogies: An International Journal is a 2023 recipient of the Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research. This award recognizes the most outstanding publications that bring to the forefront the importance and impact of 21st century literacies.
Members of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction contributed to two articles in the journal including Associate Professor Cassandra Scharber, PhD alumni Lana Peterson, Yu-Hui Chang, Ramya Sivaraj, and Anne Crampton, PhD student Sarah Barksdale, and former Department Chair Cynthia Lewis.
The articles are available online:
Scharber, C., Peterson, L., Chang, Y., Barksdale, S., & Sivaraj, R. (2021). Critical computing literacy: Possibilities in K-12 computer science education. Pedagogies: An International Journal. 16(2), 136-152.https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2021.1914055
Lewis, C., Crampton, A., & Scharber, C. (2021). The sociocultural role of imagination in critical digital literacy. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 16(2), 154-172.https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2021.1914056
Bic Ngo, Rodney S. Wallace Professor for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, is the recipient of the AERA Division G (Social Context of Education) 2022 Mentoring Award.
This award recognizes a scholar who has made distinguished contributions in the mentoring of undergraduate and PhD students, as well as junior scholars, contributing to the development of a new generation of scholars who focus on social contexts of education.
Three C&I alumni were recognized by the College of Education and Human Development at the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Awards ceremony on November 18. The awards honor alumni who have brought distinction to their professions and communities, with recipients spanning a diverse range of academic disciplines and career paths. Yet, all are community builders and leaders who make a positive difference in the lives of children, youth, families, schools, and organizations whose achievements bring honor to the college.
Congratulations to the C&I recipients, Jerry Becker, Bryan Jackson, Dolores Merrill, and the rest of the 2021 distinguished alumni!
Meet the 2021 C&I recipients of the CEHD Distinguished Alumni:
Jerry Becker (left, with Dean Michael Rodriguez)
Jerry Becker is a Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He received his bachelor’s in mathematics education from the U of M in 1959 and has taught math at elementary and secondary levels. His interests include improving practices in teacher education, curriculum development, international education, problem-solving, and learners’ cognitive development. Jerry’s long tenure in education is marked by his interest in building collaborations and worldwide information-sharing. Last month, Jerry was recognized by the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics with a lifetime achievement award.
Bryan Jackson (left, with Dean Michael Rodriguez):
Bryan Jackson is a passionate, equity-driven leader who has built his commitment to public education and student engagement into a career focused on improving systems and structures to enhance outcomes. An elementary education alum, he was a teacher and school administrator for 15 years, laying the foundation for his educational programs and curriculum development. He currently works as a consultant advising and transforming organizations on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racist practices. At his firm, Attach Consulting, and at Nonprofit HR, Bryan conducts assessments, builds relationships, leads training, and provides coaching to develop racial equity at all organizations. Bryan is co-creator of the Dad Genes podcast, which focuses on fatherhood, current events, and health from the hosts’ unique perspectives as fathers and Black men. CEHD recognized him ten years ago with the William Gardner PreK–12 Outstanding Educator Award.
Dolores Merrill (left, with Dean Michael Rodriguez):
Dolores Merrill was the first in her family to go to college. To earn her bachelor’s in math education, she took the streetcar every morning to campus, then after class took the streetcar to the St. Paul Montgomery Ward to earn her tuition and health fees. Dolores taught high school math for three years before joining IBM as a Systems Engineer, teaching, advising, and managing customer projects using computers. Her work involved various industries, including railroads, utilities, and insurance, and often involved travel within the US. She retired from IBM in 1991 after 35 years. Today, Dolores keeps busy volunteering, especially at the Science Museum and her church.
DirecTrack to Teaching student in the mathematics track, Andrea Vargas Mungaray, discusses how community connection and support are the keys to creating growth in the classroom.
What drove you to enroll in the DirecTrack to Teaching program?
I think the pandemic has been really illuminating and has allowed me to see how important community is for me. DirecTrack appealed to me because of the strong emphasis on community connection, support, and a more exploratory approach to teaching.
What do you hope to accomplish as a teacher?
As a teacher, I hope that I can serve as someone who enriches others’ lives. I want to facilitate a more joyous approach to learning for students and teachers. I don’t want to be someone who just stands at the front of the classroom. I want to learn, grow, and embrace the entire human experience with my students and those in our community.
What has been your experience with the faculty?
In the few months that I’ve been in DirecTrack, I’ve had an awesome experience with the faculty I have interacted with. They’re not just advisors or instructors; they’re mentors. I’m extremely thankful for their role in this journey.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
In five years I’d like to still be learning and experiencing life to the fullest. I can’t tell where I will be or what I will be doing but I’d like to think I’ll be teaching in an urban area and supporting my community in whichever way I can.
What’s been your favorite course so far?
I’m currently taking CI 3901: Exploring the Teaching Profession, which is part of the DTT program, and I’ve really been enjoying it because of the many different future educators, their perspectives, and how varied our conversations can be. Hearing experiences from other educators and engaging with my peers and instructors always leave me thinking about who I am and where I stand as a future educator. It’s very invigorating. Outside of DTT, I took Issues in Urban Education this past Spring with Abigail Rombalski and it was such a good class. It’s also very focused on education but the connections to youth, race, socioeconomic class, language, and family make it a class I think anyone would enjoy.
What strengths do you think you will bring to the classroom?
I’ve had a lot of opportunities to change and adapt throughout my life and I’m hoping to bring that flexibility and resilience into the classroom. Care and compassion are extremely important to me and I want my students to feel as though the classroom is somewhere where they can explore and grow while feeling cared for.
Did you have scholarship support? If so, what did it mean to you?
I do have scholarship support. It means more than I could really express. Scholarship support means I can focus on my studies, immerse myself in my passions, and further develop the skills that will aid me and my future students on our journeys.
Any other thoughts you want to share about your experience?
I don’t think people are born to do anything, I think we’re just born to be us. That being said, we all have teachers regardless of our paths and those teachers leave lasting impressions through their passions for life and the knowledge they impart. As I continue on my path, I realize how instrumental some of my best teachers were in my life. It drives me to be better for myself and my fellow humans. We’re not just math teachers or English teachers; we’re all fully human and we all model opportunities and experiences and the complexity of life itself.
Associate Professor Lesa Clarkson in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction has received a 2021 UMN Sustainable Development Goal Research grant presented by the University’s Global Programs and Strategy Alliance. The award is part of the alliance’s systemwide initiative focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), granting around $120,000 to seven research projects in alignment with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the University’s strategic priorities, and community needs. The projects were selected after a competitive proposal process that included an interdisciplinary committee reviewing the proposals and providing recommendations for funding.
Clarkson and Professor Abimbola Asojo in the College of Design received the award for their research project, “Bridging the Digital Divide in STEM through an Immersive Local and Global Maker Program.” The project promotes learning for Minnesota Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students and underprivileged youth in the Makoko slum in Lagos, Nigeria in grades four through 12. The learning exercises focus on the intersection of design and mathematics and draw on patterns from ethnic minority communities of participating students. Students will learn about design and STEM careers through immersive, hands-on experiences in 3D modeling, simulation, making, and digital fabrication. The work aligns directly with SDG #4 and #10, ending poverty and ensuring prosperity for all.
Caldas Chumbes was one of two awardees to receive the 2021 Early Career Award from the AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG for her outstanding research focused on the role of bilingualism in education within ten years of receiving her doctorate. The SIG is a strong community of professionals who support and advance research surrounding bilingual education and bilingualism worldwide.
Caldas Chumbes received the 2020 Douglas Foley Early Career Award in November from CAE, honoring her research that reflects their tradition of critical engagement with culture and inequality, social change, and social justice.
Caldas Chumbes’ research agenda focuses on the preparation of Latinx/Mexican American bilingual teachers to respond to the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse bilingual children enrolled in dual language bilingual education programs that predominantly serve them in terms of curricula, pedagogy, and policy.
