UConn’s Office of First Year Programs and Learning Communities has tapped internationally recognized creativity expert and Neag School educational psychology professor Ronald Beghetto as the faculty director of UConn’s Innovation House. Beghetto, a 2015 UConn faculty of the year awardee who focuses his research on creative thought and action in educational settings, began his new director role this past fall.

Since 2001, the Fulbright Specialist Program has been pairing a selection of top U.S. faculty experts and other professionals from a variety of disciplines with foreign host institutions for anywhere between two and six weeks to serve as consultants — sharing their knowledge and skills, and taking part in activities that support the host institution’s priorities and goals — while being immersed in other cultures. Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology Scott Brown, who is certified as a Fulbright Specialist, accepted an assignment that sent him this past month to Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Pontifical Xavierian University) in Cali, Colombia.

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving has awarded funding for a project focused on leadership training through the UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP), a school leadership program based at the Neag School that prepares highly qualified school administrators in Connecticut.

As 2017 nears its close, work on the University Principal Preparation Initiative — an initiative led at UConn by the Neag School’s University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) — is getting ready to celebrate its first birthday. This past year, UConn was one of seven universities selected to take part in the Wallace Foundation-funded initiative, which launched officially in January and is focused on improving training programs for aspiring school principals nationwide. Over the past 10 months, dedicated workgroups have been developing a “theory of action” for redesigning UCAPP.

Led by educational psychology professors in the Neag School of Education, two research projects have recently been awarded a total of nearly $5 million in federal funding, made available through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.