News

Recreation and sport activities provide countless benefits for communities and people of all ages. Our new minor not only prepares students for potential careers in recreation, sports, and parks, but challenges them to think critically about issues impacting their communities. Educational inequities in the United States are often exacerbated by unequal access to quality after-school programming, as well as extracurricular and summer...

Student teachers from the college's early childhood education program visited La Estrella Bakery to learn about one of the most celebrated traditions in Mexico: Día de los Muertos. The class was led by Franco sisters Erica and Isabel, who shared stories about growing up in the bakery. Their parents opened La Estrella in 1986. Students learned about Día de los Muertos traditions like the making of the altar and pan de muerto. In honor of their...

The 32^nd annual Teaching, Learning, & Sociocultural Studies (TLS) Graduate Student Colloquy will be held on Thursday, February 21, 2019. The colloquy is an opportunity for graduate students from across departments and programs to present research.

We welcome our keynote speaker, Angela Calabrese Barton, a professor in Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her research is grounded in the intersections of...

Our Indigenous Teacher Education Project has received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education that will double the number of Native American students in the program, establish new tribal partnerships and support a new focus on STEM education. Only 6 percent of American Indians earned a bachelor's degree in science and engineering disciplines in 2014, and in 2016, only 3 percent of Native American students in Arizona met the...

Natalie Aileen Larez comes to the University of Arizona from Douglas, Arizona, a small town southeast of Tucson on the border of Mexico. With two older brothers, a younger sister, and a handful of younger cousins, she set out to pave a path as a first-generation college student. She started at the UA as a public health major but she quickly realized she wanted to make a shift while working for the College Academy for Parents . Her job there...

Together with UA school site coordinators and the Department of Disability & Psychoeducational Studies, Director of Field Experience Maggie Shafer placed 163 undergraduate student teachers for the spring 2019 semester. This includes three students at Baboquivari Unified School District, three students at Casa Blanca School in Gila River, and 14 students who are planning to student teach...

Junior, Bekka Weismantle received the Arizona State Museum's Year at the Museum Award, a competitive work-study position from the Raymond H. and Molly K. Thompson Endowment to provide a two-semester, hands-on educational experience at the Arizona State Museum. Weismantle is pursuing a degree in Literacy, Learning, and Leadership with a minor in Family Studies and Human Development. Arizona State Museum's Community Engagement program provides...

A new hands-on science curriculum, co-developed by the University of Arizona and launching in three Southern Arizona high schools this fall, engages students in citizen science projects to measure air quality at various sites in and around Tucson. The Rising Vision curriculum — being piloted at Rincon and University high schools, as well as at Sierra Vista’s Center for Academic Success — has high school students measuring air quality at the...

Associate Professor Jill Castek is the principal investigator on a new project supported by the National Science Foundation on how best to develop inclusive studio-based learning environments. Castek and Assistant Professor Blaine Smith will be collaborating across campus with Kevin Bonine, Jennifer Nichols, and Leslie Sult from UA...

We know skilled teachers leave lasting impressions on their students, and for Jennifer Chee, her students did the same in turn for her- right on the fabric of her dress. Jennifer Chee, who was named 2018 Outstanding Student Teacher in Early Childhood, created unique, wearable art with the students she taught as a student-teacher at Gale Elementary and at Gentle Hands Center for Children. The early childhood program director,...