November 2020 Good News in the College of Education

​​Welcome to Good News in the College of Education, a listing of some of the great things our faculty, staff, and students have accomplished recently.

Dr. Christopher Worthman has been selected as a fellow for the OpEd Project Public Voices fellowship program at DePaul.

Dr. Sonia Soltero was interviewed for an article and podcast by Chicago NPR WBEZ.

Dr. Rebecca Michel and her research team were interviewed about their study on politically divided relationships and featured on the front page of Faculti.

Meredith Gioia is a recipient of a 2020 Women of Spirit and Action Award, and was nominated by Nancy Hashimoto. Congratulations, Meredith!

On November 6, 2020, Dr. Hilary Conklin presented the commissioned paper “Pedagogical practices and how teachers learn” for the National Academy of Education's annual meeting as part of the Civic Reasoning and Discourse project.

The book Learning to Teach in an Era of Privatization, in which Dr. Hilary Conklin co-authored a chapter, was awarded the American Educational Studies Association’s (AESA) Critic's Choice Book Award for 2020.

On October 23, 2020, the DePaul University and Facing History and Ourselves Collaboration hosted a virtual convening of university partners to launch a new phase of the collaboration and share anti-racist and justice-oriented initiatives across the national network. Partners from nine of DePaul's partner universities attended, along with COE leadership and Chicago Facing History Executive Director Maureen Loughnane.

In September, Advisor Kevin McCann and his wife became grandparents to Emmett Lawrence Diedrick. Congratulations, Kevin!

In November 2020, Dr. Autumn Cabell presented at the Illinois Counseling Association Virtual Conference. The title of the presentation was “Assisting with career development in the virtual space.”

During the fall quarter of 2020, Dr. Donna Kiel's graduate course, A&S 491, Effective Leadership of Schools, included intentionality around examining diversity, equity, and inclusion in leadership practices. As a result of this focus, student Jamel Chambers facilitated Dr. Janice Jackson, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools attending the Zoom class session as a guest to discuss leadership practices in action.

Dr. Roxanne Owens was quoted in the Chicago Tribune article, “Is a 96% attendance rate a bright spot in a pandemic stricken school year? Not exactly, as remote learning skews annual report card.” Says Owens, “We want our students to go into communities and see how they can help people that look just like them; that’s a very powerful thing in this profession.” Well said, Dr. Owens!

Dr. Amy Clark and Dr. Sunny Park-Johnson were awarded the 2020 Excellence in Teaching Awards.

In her new role as Director of Admissions and Outreach at College of DuPage, International Students and Campus Central, COE student Tamara McClain is designing and implementing strategic student recruitment initiatives and generating innovative ideas to increase student enrollment.

COE alumna Dr. Suzanne Velasquez-Sheehy co-authored the article “Mind/Body Tools for Children,” published in the Fall 2020 edition of The Energy Field. The article details her work with Energy psychology tools with children, a topic she discovered while conducting research for her dissertation.