Cato College of Education

More than 300 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools high school students spent the day at UNC Charlotte recently to explore careers in teaching. Hosted by the College of Education, Future 49ers Teach painted a picture of the teaching profession and of student life at UNC Charlotte. 

Special education and child development professor David Test was one of six leading scholars invited to speak at a recent White House symposium celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

College of Education doctoral student and adjunct instructor Jenny Root has been recognized as an emerging researcher and leader in teaching students with disabilities. She was named the 2015 Alice Hayden Emerging Leader by TASH, an international group that advocates for people with disabilities. Each year, TASH presents the award to a doctoral student who demonstrates potential for leadership in teaching, scholarship and service on behalf of people with significant disabilities. 

Ellen McIntyre, dean of the College of Education, and Munro Richardson, executive director of Read Charlotte, will be guests on the Oct. 30 edition of “The Live Wire,” Inside UNC Charlotte’s streaming webcast. Starting at noon, they will discuss the multimillion dollar Read Charlotte Initiative and the strategy for reshaping the landscape of early literacy across the city. The initiative’s goal is to double Charlotte -Mecklenburg Schools third-graders’ reading proficiency by 2025.

A new book edited and co-authored by College of Education faculty dives into the current state of literacy instruction and looks to the future of reading and writing in the classroom.

In “What’s New in Literacy Teaching?” Department of Reading and Elementary Education professors Karen Wood and Brian Kissel assemble a group of leading literacy scholars to cover a wide range of instructional issues.

The publication is composed of three parts: “Text, Talk and Tasks”; “Collaboration and Communications”; and “Literacy Learning With and Through Technology.”

College of Education professor Sejal Foxx will represent UNC Charlotte at an upcoming event to strengthen school counseling and college advising; it is being convened by the White House.

She will join delegates from 35 states representing K-12 schools, nonprofit organizations, research interests, policymakers and other stakeholders in an effort to increase the number of traditionally underserved students succeeding in post-secondary education.

New research co-authored by College of Education scholars is illuminating the path to teaching academic vocabulary words to students with learning disabilities.

Published in the journal Teaching Exceptional Children, the study reads like an instructional manual for teachers interested in expanded in-class vocabulary training. It examines which words can do the most to help struggling readers, how to effectively teach those words and how integrate the instruction into subject-matter class discussions.

UNC Charlotte has been selected to host the United States leg of a competition for one of the world’s most prestigious awards in water-related research. The Stockholm Junior Water Prize is presented to one high school student annually for research in water and sustainability issues. In an effort led by the Center for STEM Education, UNC Charlotte bested proposals from universities across the country to host the competition through 2018.

Florence Martin, an associate professor in the College of Education’s Instructional Systems Technology program, is a 2015 recipient of a Crystal Award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Division of Distance Learning.

The honor is for “an innovative and outstanding multimedia-based distance learning course or distance learning project,” according to the AECT. She will receive the Crystal Award formally during the 2015 AECT convention in Indianapolis on Nov. 6.

A recently launched online program available through the UNC Charlotte College of Education will train the next generation of virtual teaching and learning system architects and managers.