News

Dear Colleagues, Over the past year, the School of Education faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders have collectively discussed the need for our community to be more purposeful and committed to creating an inclusive and supportive community for all and addressing issues of systemic racism embedded in our own culture, policies, and practices.  Given recent events in our nation, the need for such work has become even more critical and apparent.

The School of Education, in order to support a greater need for remote learning in K-12 education, launched the website Remote Education Resource Center, or RemoteEd. The site, which has immediate critical value in the current coronavirus crises, will not only help teachers incorporate remote learning tools into their classes, but also foster a community of practice in the Capital Region.

As part of the School of Education’s Equity and Inclusion initiative, a book club has been created to stimulate further discussion on culturally informed instructional strategies designed to foster a greater awareness of oppressive social structures that impede student success. As such, over the past two months a small group of SOE faculty and staff have been reading Bettina Love's 2019 volume entitled "We Want to do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom." In her book, Love demands that educators adopt an "Abolitionist" approach to their teaching, abolishing systems of oppression that result in the erasure of Black, Brown and other marginalized students within our schools.

Albany, NY (December 6, 2019) – Just before Thanksgiving, New York State’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli convened his office’s first statewide roundtable on School Safety on the UAlbany campus. The roundtable brought together urban, suburban and rural teachers and leaders, higher education officials, educational organizations, school facilities experts, and members of law enforcement to have a practical discussion about how to make schools and colleges across New York safer.  

The Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy, a partnership between the School of Education and the Literacy Research Association (LRA), is the first international award offered by the University at Albany. The 2019 Award was presented at LRA's annual conference to Dr. Jon-Philip Imbrenda, University of Pittsburgh, for his article, “Developing academic literacy: Breakthroughs and barriers in a college-access intervention” published in Research in the Teaching of English.

Albany, NY (November 20, 2019) – Last month, doctoral students from the Division of Counseling Psychology hosted a packed house for their 26th annual Diversity Conference.  This year’s theme was Towards a More Integrated and Authentic Society.  The day’s agenda included a talk on education and liberation by Dr. Kyra Gaunt of UAlbany’s Department of Music and Theatre, panel discussion on the theme, roundtable session, and keynote by Dr. Chloe Wright on Privilege, Perception and Gender Diversity: What Impacts the Process of Creating Inclusive Spaces.

Albany, NY (November 20, 2019) - In October, the Capital Region welcomed 20 new New York State Master Teachers from 14 different local school districts, encompassing grades K-12, and including all areas of STEM education.

Albany, NY (October 22, 2019) - Lijun Ni received two grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling more than $1.5 million to build capacity in K-12 schools to ensure that all students have an opportunity to learn computer science while in school. Ni, a faculty member in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice, will focus on building and enhancing professional learning communities of middle school and high school teachers to identify and scale best practices in teaching computer science.