Cato College of Education

A project led by a UNC Charlotte doctoral candidate along with local high school students and experts is tracing the history of the Black educational experience in Charlotte and finding wisdom in the past to apply to the issues of today.

Leslie Locklear, Ph.D., is program coordinator for UNC Pembroke’s First Americans Teacher Education and First Americans Educational Leadership programs. She will present “Who’z Ya People: Understanding and Supporting Southeast American Indians” at 5 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 19.

Through the largest grant in the University’s history, a pair of researchers from the UNC Charlotte Cato College of Education are expanding their national effort to improve employment, education and community integration for students and youth with disabilities.

Niner University Elementary (NUE), UNC Charlotte’s first lab school, started the 2020-21 school year with remote learning on Aug. 17 for its 96 K-2 students.”Opening NUE has been a labor of love, years in the making,” said Pamela Broome, principal of NUE. “Though this is not how we envisioned opening NUE, we are off to a great start and are thrilled to begin our journey as part of this community.”

Results from a project led by a team of UNC Charlotte researchers are helping to ensure that students interacting online are not only successful but safe and thriving digital citizens.

For the past four years, the UNC Charlotte Summer Reading Camp welcomed elementary students from Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), providing daily, one-on-one literacy support for rising second and third graders who struggle with reading.

As teachers across the region prepare for a different sort of school year, faculty and staff at Charlotte’s newest school are in the building at Niner University Elementary at Amay James (NUE), readying for its opening on Monday, Aug. 17.

UNC Charlotte double alumna Michelle Plaisance ’09 M.A.T. ’14 Ph.D.  has been named dean of the School of Humanities at Greensboro College. Plaisance has taught English and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the college since 2014, also serving as director of the TESOL program. Upon graduation from UNC Wilmington with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish in 1992, teaching was not a career of interest for Plaisance. She experimented with a variety of jobs before discovering a passion for TESOL through the lens of a parent to her two daughters.

Chance Lewis received a Spencer Mentor Award that includes a $10,000 grant for his contributions to enriching the lives, research and careers of his students and junior colleagues and enhancing the field of education research.This national award is provided by the Spencer Foundation, an organization that is focused exclusively on supporting education research. 

Gov. Roy Cooper this week tapped UNC Charlotte urban education professor Chance Lewis to participate in a statewide task force on educational equity and inclusion.