Dr. Del Siegle
Dr. Del Siegle serves as director of the Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development. He holds the Lynn and Ray Neag Endowed Chair for Talent Development in the Neag School of Education at UConn, where he was honored as a teaching fellow. Prior to earning his Ph.D., Del worked as a gifted and talented coordinator in Montana. He is past president of the National Association of Gifted Children and has served on the board of directors of The Association for the Gifted. He is also past chair of the AERA Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent SIG. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Advanced Academics and Gifted Child Quarterly. He writes a technology column for Gifted Child Today. Along with Gary Davis and Sylvia Rimm, he is an author of the popular textbook, Education of the Gifted and Talented (6th and 7th ed.). He is the Director of the National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE). He is a recipient of both the NAGC Distinguished Scholar and Distinguished Services awards.
Email: del.siegle@uconn.edu
Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli
Joseph Renzulli is a leader and pioneer in gifted education and applying the pedagogy of gifted education teaching strategies to all students. The American Psychological Association named him among the 25 most influential psychologists in the world. He received the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Award for Innovation in Education, considered by many to be “the Nobel” for educators, and was a consultant to the White House Task Force on Education of the Gifted and Talented. His work on the Three Ring Conception of Giftedness, the Enrichment Triad Model and curriculum compacting and differentiation were pioneering efforts in the 1970s, and he has contributed hundreds of books, book chapters, articles, and monographs to the professional literature, many of which have been translated to other languages. Dr. Renzulli has received more than $50 million in research grants and several million dollars of additional funding for professional development and service projects.
Dr. Renzulli established UConn’s annual Confratute Program with fellow Educational Psychology Professor Sally Reis. This summer institute on enrichment-based differentiated teaching has served more than 35,000 teachers from around the world since 1978. Dr. Renzulli also established the UConn Mentor Connection, a summer program that enables high-potential high school students to work side by side with leading scientists, historians, and artists and other leading edge university researchers. He is also the founder along with Dr. Reis of the Joseph S. Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Connecticut which has become a model for local and national urban school reform for high potential/low income students.
His most recent work is an online personalized learning program that provides profiles of each student’s academic strengths, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression. This unique program also has a search engine that matches multiple coded resources with student profiles. Teachers also use the program to select and infuse high engagement enrichment activities into any and all standardized curriculum topics.
Email: joseph.renzulli@uconn.edu
Dr. Sally M. Reis
Sally Reis holds the Letitia Neag Chair in Educational Psychology, is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Neag School of Education and served as the former Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Connecticut. She also was a Principal Investigator of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented and Head of the Educational Psychology Department. She was a classroom teacher in public education as well as an administrator before her work at UConn. She has authored and co-authored over 280 articles, books, book chapters, monographs and technical reports, and worked in a research team that has generated over 50 million dollars in grants. Her latest work is funded research that enables an in-depth study of academic success in 2e students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, with the development of programs and interventions based on what works for this population. Her research interests relate to gifted education and talent development, as well as special populations of gifted and talented students, including: students with learning disabilities, gifted girls and women, and diverse groups of talented students who are often underserved. She has won many professional awards including the Distinguished Scholar of the National Association for Gifted Children for her scholarly contributions to the field. She won the Neag School of Education Outstanding Research Award and the Educator of the Year Award from Future Problem Solving. Among her proudest accomplishments, besides her family, is her work on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model and her leadership of Confratute, with her partner and husband, Joseph Renzulli for over four decades.
Email: sally.reis@uconn.edu
Dr. Catherine Little
Catherine Little is a Professor in Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent Development in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. She joined the UConn faculty in 2004 and teaches courses in gifted education and in the undergraduate Honors Program, and she was recognized as a University Teaching Fellow in 2012. She serves on the University’s Honors Board of Associate Directors and as one of the Honors Advisors for students in the Neag School of Education. Dr. Little’s research interests include professional learning, differentiation of curriculum and instruction for advanced learners, and classroom questioning practices. She co-edited the text Content-Based Curriculum for High-Ability Learners with Joyce VanTassel-Baska. She has been the Project Director for Project SPARK and Project LIFT, two recent Javits-funded initiatives focused on working with schools and teachers to recognize and respond to advanced academic potential in the early grades, particularly in students from underserved populations.
Email: catherine.little@uconn.edu
Dr. E. Jean Gubbins
Jean Gubbins, PhD is Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Through grant funding from the United States Department of Education for The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT, 1990-2013), Dr. Gubbins implemented quantitative and qualitative research studies in culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse communities focusing on the curricular strategies and practices in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) high schools, reading and mathematics education in elementary schools, professional development, and gifted education pedagogy for all students.
She served as the Associate Director and co-Principal Investigator of the National Center for Research on Gifted Education (2014-2019). She was involved in implementing initial, multi-year studies focusing on exemplary practices in identification and programming for gifted and talented students as well as identification practices of gifted and talented English learners.
Currently, Dr. Gubbins is the co-Principal Investigator of the recently funded National Center for Research on Gifted Education (2020-2025). She is involved in two main studies: efficiency and effectiveness of identification systems; effectiveness of subject acceleration in reading and mathematics and grade acceleration in elementary schools.
Dr. Gubbins is also the Principal Investigator working with math, research, and evaluation specialists at the University of Connecticut to implement a grant funded by the United States Department of Education, Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program. The curriculum and research project is entitled Thinking Like Mathematicians: Challenging All Grade 3 Students. The team implemented a unit on algebraic thinking, multiplication, and division for students in general education classrooms that will support and challenge their current and future mathematical understandings bolstered by the infusion of mathematical practices, 21st century skills, and the availability of tiered lessons to differentiate the teaching and learning approaches.
Research interests include effective identification system; systems and models for designing and implementing gifted and talented program; professional learning; program evaluation.
Email: ejean.gubbins@uconn.edu
Dr. Jann Leppien
Jann Leppien is the Margo Long Endowed Chair in Gifted Education and Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Whitworth University. Whitworth's Center for Gifted Education supports policies that encourage the diverse expressions of gifts and talents and offers a Gifted Education Specialty Endorsement and Master of Arts in Teaching: Emphasis in Gifted and Talented programs. She is the co-author of The Multiple Menu Model: A Practical Guide for Developing Differentiated Curriculum, and The Parallel Curriculum: A Design to Develop High Potential and Challenge High-Ability Students. She has served on the board of the National Association for Gifted Children and currently serves on the Gifted Advisory Board for Washington and the 2e Center for Research and Professional Development for 2e students. She is also the president of Edufest, a summer teaching and learning institute in gifted education (www.edufest.org). She also provides professional development in the areas of identification of highly capable students, comprehensive program services, and advanced curriculum design for advanced learners.
Email: jann.leppien@uconn.edu
Dr. Meredith Greene Burton
Meredith Greene Burton earned her doctorate in Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, specializing in the social and emotional components of Gifted Education and Talent Development. While a graduate assistant, with online learning in its infancy, she developed two online courses for the Master's of Gifted Education program and has been teaching them ever since. She has many published articles and continues to write, review, and consult internationally. Meredith was a public school educator for 33 years, with many different positions including middle school and high school teacher, principal, regional consultant, and school Gifted Education coordinator. Meredith lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.