Teachers for a New Era improves how to
prepare teachers for the classroom

Four years of participation in the Teachers for a New Era (TNE) project is causing an undeniable change in the teaching culture among faculty at the Neag School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences.

“We’re looking at a change in culture via a systematic program that has arts and science and education faculty working together.

In the past that has happened on a personal level but not on a systematic level,” says Scott W. Brown, professor of educational psychology and director of the (TNE) at UConn.

Jason Irizarry, a TNE Fellow, meets with Rashana Wilson, left, a fifth-year Elementary Ed major, and Kara McKenna, a first-year psychology master's student.

Photo by Peter Morenus

TNE is an educational reform initiative started by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, with additional support from the Annenberg Foundation and the Ford Foundation, to stimulate construction of excellent teacher education programs at the selected colleges and universities.

UConn is one of only 11 institutions participating in the program across the country.

Participating institutions agree to build three key design principles into their teacher education programs — establishing the importance of demonstrating student achievement through evidence, fully integrating faculty from the liberal arts and sciences to enrich future teachers’ general and subject matter knowledge, and extending support to beginning teachers after they graduate as they enter the profession as teachers.

Research in the program has established that the quality of the teacher has a profound influence on pupil learning, and some researchers believe that this so-called “teacher effect” is so pervasive that it can be considered the single most important factor in pupil achievement gains in schools.

Since its inception at UConn, TNE has spurred a host of educational reform projects such as GlobalEd, an experimental study of gender-based differences in group decision-making and negotiating skills; Classroom of the Sea, which features problem-based learning to boost the scientific literacy of deaf students; and the BEST Impact Survey, a cooperative effort with the Connecticut Department of Education’s Beginning Educators Support and Training Program (BEST) to evaluate perceptions, support, and understand new teachers and their support networks.

One of the initial findings in TNE surveys at UConn is that beginning teachers in Connecticut want training and preparation in the development of their BEST portfolio while they are still undergraduate students.

Connecticut teachers must successfully complete their BEST portfolio during their first two years of teaching to receive their certification as educators.

The beginning teachers also indicated they want more support in several areas from their alma mater, such as integrating technology into the classroom, and more interaction with their mentors during their second year as teachers, when the required portfolios must be submitted.

Laura Reese '05 (CLAS), '06 M.A. teaching a lesson in her English class in Glastonbury (Conn.) High School. She was part of the Teachers for a New Era program at UConn.

Brown says the Neag School has responded to these findings by enhancing its teacher preparation curriculum to include guiding students through the process of developing the BEST portfolio with the help of an electronic portfolio system that is used for university courses and professional development.

The program allows beginning teachers to customize their teaching methods to measure effective learning and demonstrate student progress based on established state and national standards.

Neag faculty are also addressing specific needs stated by alumni, such as how to work with parents, and additional special education training by incorporating those topics into appropriate undergraduate and graduate coursework.

Additional curriculum enhancements include linking coursework in classes across semesters and across CLAS and the Neag School.

Neag is expanding its support to alumni by establishing access to mentors in several ways, including the use of Tapped In, an established online resource for teachers to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another.

Highly qualified mentors are also available online through the Center for Teacher Quality, as well as those assigned specifically to supplement the BEST program activity to enhance the support of beginning teachers and address their concerns and challenges in a timely manner.

“The TNE principles and funding have provided the foundation upon which we have focused our efforts to gather data and make decisions about how we can best improve the preparation and retention of teachers using local data collected on our campus as well as national research data,” says Brown.

“We work collaboratively together across all 11 TNE schools to learn from one another and to develop exceptional models of teacher preparation and retention based on best practices and proven results. The ultimate outcome is raising the academic achievement of all the pupils in our schools.”

At UConn, TNE is guided by seven faculty members who serve as TNE Fellows, three from Neag and four from Arts and Sciences.

Since the project commenced at UConn, the work of TNE Fellows has led to a review of Neag School and Arts and Sciences course offerings as they relate to state and national standards for educators to ensure that these key standards are addressed in Neag and Arts and Sciences courses, the introduction of a teacher candidate self-assessment survey, initial approval of an option of a double major in education and a content area in arts

and sciences to enhance the content knowledge of teachers, and even the development of a university-wide diversity studies minor available for all students.

Plans are in motion for Neag students and alumni to participate in a human rights studies seminar that has been offered to educators.

Unlike other funded projects, TNE is unique as it is a permanent initiative at UConn.

— Gary E. Frank

Chemist honored for research

Photo by Stephanie Gagliardi

Mark Peczuh, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, won the 2006 American Chemical Society New Investigator Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry.

He is conducting research at the atomic level to synthesize a new carbohydrate molecule in order to determine how to change the natural way carbohydrates interact with other basic chemical elements.

This research can potentially lead researchers toward new therapies for diabetes, fungus infections and immune system disorders, including HIV.

Unearthing clues to the domestication of animals

Using a fine brush to clean an artifact, UConn anthropologist Natalie Munro works at a dig site in northern Israel.

Photo by Naftali Hilger

Working in the Near East, primarily in the northern part of Israel, UConn anthropologist Natalie Munro is trying to unearth clues about when the domestication of animals began, which can provide better understanding about human demography and economic change.

An assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Munro is in the first year of a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

One of her primary investigations is the gazelle project, which aims to determine the long-term effects of hunting on wild mountain gazelles in the southwestern region of the Fertile Crescent.

Agriculture and the domestication of animals began generally when wild animal populations began to thin as humans hunted them.

Humans then settled in a particular area and started to develop resources for basic needs such as food and clothing, Munro explains. In studying how patterns of domestication developed, she examines skeletal remains of gazelles from 10 to 15,000 years ago to better understand the role of human hunting in the very earliest stages of the domestication process.

Gazelles were never domesticated, so studying their remains will provide insight into the impact of hunting without confusing these impacts with the early stages of domestication, she says.

Nutritionist tracks access to food in Brazil

A child waits as her mother harvests some beans on their small farm plot in Acaua, Brazil.

Photo by Andre Filipe, Getty Images

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, professor of nutritional sciences in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, in collaboration with a team of Brazilian researchers completed a landmark study of food insecurity, which is the inability to access nutritional food in sufficient quantities without resorting to socially unacceptable means.

“Food security is being seen in Brazil as a human right involving access to work, health, education, housing and income,” says Pérez-Escamilla.

“The government is using our study for guidance as it moves forward in all these areas.”

The Brazil study now is being adapted by other Latin American countries to evaluate their own food insecurity issues.

What started as a series of small qualitative and quantitative studies culminated in a major national survey in 2004 that collected food insecurity data in 120,000 households throughout Brazil.

The final report was released in Brazil, where it attracted national attention, including that nation’s recent presidential election.

Primary findings include that approximately 65 percent of Brazilian households see themselves as “food secure,” while roughly 6.5 percent — about 14 million people — experience severe hunger.

Rural households with young children and “Afro descendant” households have especially high rates of food insecurity.

Pineapple extract may help asthma relief

Photo by iStockphoto.com

An enzyme found in pineapples may offer relief for the millions of people who suffer from asthma, says a study by UConn Health Center researchers published in the journal Cellular Immunology.

Eric Secor, a naturopathic physician and NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow, led the research team that found that bromelain, an extract from the juice and stems of pineapples, appears to reduce the inflammation of cells associated with asthma.

The extract has been used clinically as an anti-inflammatory agent in rheumatoid arthritis, soft tissue injuries, colonic inflammation and chronic pain.

Using three groups of mice that were induced with acute asthma, the researchers found bromelain significantly reduced the total white blood cell count, which increases with the onset of asthma.

Additionally, the main inflammatory cells associated with asthma, were reduced by more than 50 percent in the lungs of the mice following treatment.

Secor says if the pineapple extract proves effective, it could reduce the use of steroid remedies, now standard for treating asthma patients, and thereby decrease the side effects that may result from long-term steroid use.

Secor is conducting research in the laboratory of Roger Thrall, professor of immunology at the UConn Health Center.