On Thursday, November 13th, 30 of our ECE Music instructors gathered for a virtual professional development workshop. Attendees were joined by Justin McManus, the Director of Athletic Bands at the University of California, Los Angeles, for a guest lecture and Q & A session. Many thanks to faculty coordinator Shannon McAllister for her continued support for our ECE instructors and community! We look forward to the next workshop.
UConn Music Courses available through Early College Experience.
On Friday, November 7th, our ECE Sociology Instructors convened on the UConn Hartford Campus for their annual professional development conference. Instructors were given the opportunity to engage in a lively discussion of current successes and challenges in their classroom, followed by a presentation of exemplar assignments by instructors Mike Barile and Karen Prager, and faculty coordinator Ingrid Semaan. We extend our thanks to our contributors, and to Ingrid for her continued efforts to support our ECE instructors and community!
Sociology (SOCI) courses available through UConn Early College Experience.
On Thursday of last week, ECE hosted our Library Media Specialists for their semiannual training, thanks to the organization and efforts of Anna Twiddy, Student Success & Engagement Librarian. As always, we were joined by a number of librarians from the UConn Library who shared their expertise in four unique sessions. Details are below!
| Session | Contributor |
| Student Search Success Tips: Demystifying the Library Website | Ery Caswell, Student Success & Engagement Librarian |
| Helping Students Transition to College Writing Expectations | John Rendeiro, Student Success & Engagement Librarian |
| Finding Primary Sources | Laura Smith, Archivist |
| Leveraging the Library’s AI Literacy Basics Modules in HuskyCT | Erica Charis-Molling, Instructional Design & Learning Librarian |
Thank you to all of our contributors, and for those of you who were able to attend!
To access information from the training, as well as a number of other helpful resources, please visit the ECE LibGuide (linked here: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/ECE)
We will see you in March 2026 for another virtual training event!
This past week, ECE took a field trip with our Environmental Sciences Instructors to the UConn Middlesex County Extension Center in Haddam, CT. Instructors were given lots of time to share resources and build connections with one another, as well as engaging in a keynote address entitled Building Connections to Urban Forests: Your Teacher’s Toolkit.
We extend our thanks to faculty coordinator Morty Ortega, as well as Dr. Mayra Rodriguez, the UConn Extension Center’s Assistant Extension Educator in Urban and Community Forestry for their efforts in creating a meaningful professional development experience for our instructors!
Environmental Sciences (NRE) courses available through UConn Early College Experience.
On Monday, May 20th UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator from Statistics, Prof. Nalini Ravishanker met with a group of 44 UConn ECE certified Statistics teachers for their annual professional development workshop. The day included a presentation by James O’Donnell, Prof. Marine Sciences Department, UConn, and Director of Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation (CIRCA): “Analyzing Coastal Flooding in CT and Climate Resilience”. Prof. O’Donnell spoke about the impacts of sea level rise, and more technically about the changing risk of flooding at the shoreline.
Later Elizabeth Schifano, Prof. and UG Program Director, Statistics spoke about data science programs at UConn. After a short break, the group reconvened to discuss a variety of topics including:
UConn Statistics courses offered through ECE.
On Friday, May 17th UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinators from Education, Dr’s DeRosa and Levine met with a group of 20 UConn ECE certified Educational Leadership and Educational Curriculum and Instruction teachers for a joint professional development workshop.
After welcoming remarks from leadership in Neag, the teachers took time to introduce themselves and discussed Making College Level Reading Accessible. Later they broke into small groups to discuss problems of practice.
UConn Education courses offered through ECE.
On Tuesday, June 4th UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator from Art, Professor Emerita of Illustration, Department of Art & Art History, Cora Lynn Deibler met with a group of 16 UConn ECE certified Art Instructors for a professional development workshop.
After welcoming comments from Prof. Deibler, the teachers joined for a roundtable discussion regarding the fundamentals of drawing. They acknowledged the fundamentals of drawing can initially be “boring” for today’s young student artists as their usual visual world is fast, colorful, and immediate. While educators recognize the value of foundational work, they also know they are competing with TikTok, anime, and drawing apps. They shared strategies and insights into captivating Drawing I students, discussing impactful assignments and classroom activities that yielded enthusiastic responses from their students.
Later in the day, the group was privileged to gain insights from Professor Deibler and guest speakers Kathryn Myers, Professor of Art at UConn, and Jeanne Ciravolo, a distinguished faculty member of UConn’s Department of Art and Art History, who also serves as the Director of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery. Together, they explored portfolio preparation and admission criteria, providing valuable guidance to support students contemplating applications to collegiate-level art programs.
UConn Art courses offered through ECE
The event kicked off with an illuminating discussion led by Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, Mystic Seaport’s Senior Curator of Maritime Social Histories, which focused on the origins and sources of the museum’s current Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea exhibit.
Following this conversation, instructors broke into small groups and engaged in four activities across the museum. Beginning with a tour of the Charles W. Morgan, the oldest commercial ship still afloat in the US, our group then got some hands-on experience with rope-making, followed by an opportunity to observe primary sources from the Morgan’s heyday at the museum library. Finally, we explored the Entwined exhibit, which centers Black and Indigenous voices and histories and their interconnectedness, and unravels dominant, white-centric narratives of maritime history in Turtle Island, or North America.
This event was a new foray into offering interdisciplinary professional development experiences for instructors, allowing them to connect with faculty and instructors from several academic disciplines.
UConn U.S. History, American Studies, and Maritime Studies courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Monday, May 20th. UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator from Latino and Latin American Studies, Prof. Anne Gebelein, met with a group of 20 UConn ECE certified LLAS 1190: Introduction to Latin America and the Caribbean Instructors for a professional development workshop on the Hartford campus. The day included a presentation and discussion with special guest Lorenzo Martinez Ruiz about challenges to indigenous sovereignty in Nicaragua.
Lorenzo Martinez Ruiz is an indigenous leader of the Rama-Kriol peoples in southeastern Nicaragua, Lorenzo Martinez Ruiz, who helped unpack the two biggest issues for indigenous today: sovereignty and land rights. Lorenzo has been an activist for indigenous rights, whose community was involved in an InterAmerican Court case in which the Nicaraguan government was required to give the indigenous of the zone land titles. However, the government has ignored the many illegal settlers that have been encroaching and clearcutting the land to create cattle ranches; the indigenous have been documenting these breaches to prepare for a future return to the courts. In the meantime, Nicaraguan politician, Daniel Ortega banned Lorenzo from the country and stripped him of his citizenship. Lorenzo currently resides in Manchester, CT and he has applied for asylum.
After lunch the group discussed teaching indigenous studies today and later ECE Instructor Elise Weisenbach (Branford High School) led a discussion on college teaching challenges in the high school setting.
UConn LLAS courses offered through ECE.
Following a collegial conversation and opening remarks from Professor Johnson, the group delved into a discussion concerning the current climate surrounding UConn Classics courses at the university.
Later participants engaged in an insightful exploration of “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr, a text distributed to all attendees prior to the workshop which fostered an enriching dialogue among the group.
UConn Classics courses offered through Early College Experience.