Month: April 2018
HESA Student Recieves Neag Scholarship
This story has been altered from its original version. The original version was written by Danielle Falper and was published on the Neag website on March 9, 2018. It is available here.
The Neag School of Education at UConn recently announced HESA student Denée Jackson as a recipient of the Neag School of Education Alumni Board Scholarship.
The Neag School of Education Alumni Board Scholarship provides a $1,000 award available annually to students enrolled in a master’s, doctorate, or sixth-year program and who have proven academic excellence or demonstrated financial need. The scholarship is intended to invest in the education and experience of Neag School students. For the 2019 academic year, there were 35 applicants.
Denée Jackson with her award. (Photo by Jennifer McGarry)“The Neag School of Education Alumni Board Scholarship is one that aims to not only support aspiring educators, but also honor the passion and talents of those who are committed to doing what is arguably one of the most important and challenging jobs of today,” says Kate Lund, president of the Neag School of Education Alumni Board. “As a board, we are committed to awarding these important scholarships each year and are entirely grateful for the generous contributions from our alumni, who share our support of and pride in these promising teachers.”
Jackson received her bachelor of arts in communications from the University of Connecticut in 2014. Jackson was enrolled in a master’s program at North Carolina State University, but she returned to Connecticut after her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
“I approach my learning with a ferocity because the more I learn, the more I can influence change and uplift communities,” says Jackson, whose mother inspired her to pursue higher education. “The more that I learn about oppressive policies within systemically unequitable systems, the more I can do to deconstruct them and build new equitable and inclusive systems.”
“Although my responsibilities sometimes require urgent attention, I have a legacy to uphold. I am hoping that my passion and grit, built on the foundation that my amazing mom instilled in me, will lead me to attaining my master’s and doctoral degrees while espousing my conviction of education as a means to attaining a more socially just world,” says Jackson.
Jackson is currently a Husky Sport mentor, facilitating coursework as well as professional development for a team of 40 graduate and undergraduate students.
She is also a graduate student intern at the UConn Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, and assisted in the development of a new Greek life program, and advised the 2016 HuskyTHON to benefit the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
Sport Management at the 2018 AAC Conference Research Symposium
Sport Management undergraduate student Marisa Maccario and Associate Professor Dr. Joseph Cooper will travel to the University of Central Florida this weekend to attend this year’s American Athletic Conference Research Symposium.
Maccario, a four-year member of the women’s ice hockey team, will be participating in a panel discussion on Friday, April 6 that focuses on critical issues concerning the well-being of student athletes at the Division I level. More specifically, the conversation will surround mental health, sleep recovery, leadership training, career development, transition to post-eligibility and body issues.
Dr. Cooper will be presenting with Dr. Drew Brown from the University of Delaware on the cultural well-being of student athletes in the AAC. He and his colleague will focus on how, and to what extent, the students’ cultural needs are being met and by whom.
Scott Brown, UConn’s NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative, AAC Conference Faculty Representative Committee Chair and the head of the Educational Psychology department in Neag, will also be accompanying Maccario to Orlando for the conference.
Follow @UConnSPM on Instagram and Twitter to get live updates from the symposium.
HESA 2nd-Year Presents at National Conference
Emily Fiagbedzi
Recently, 2nd-year HESA student Emily Fiagbedzi presented two workshops at the 2018 National IMPACT Conference. According to the conference website, IMPACT is the “largest annual conference focused on the civic engagement of college students in community service, service-learning, community-based research, advocacy and other forms of social action.” This year’s conference was held at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Emily’s first workshop was entitled “Doing well and doing good: Supporting students in their pursuit of social good career paths,” and it targeted administrators and professional staff. The workshop shared the history, structure, and activities of UConn’s Careers for the Common Good initiative in an effort to inspire similar collaborations at universities across the nation. It included a planning and group sharing component that allowed participants to create concrete plans to take back to their institutions.
In her second workshop, “Design Thinking with the Community: Creating more effective programs and initiatives,” Emily shared how the design thinking framework (also known as “human-centered design” or “empathetic design”) can be used to develop and co-create programs alongside communities, centering community voices in order to more effectively address community needs. The workshop not only introduced the framework of design thinking, but provided resources and activities that students, administrators, and professional staff could take back to their communities and implement in their programs.
EDLR congratulates Emily on her recent conference success.