University of Connecticut |
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Keynote SpeakerSonia Nieto
Dr. Nieto’s scholarly work has focused on multicultural and bilingual education, curriculum reform, teacher education, Puerto Rican children’s literature, and the education of Latinos, immigrants, and other culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on these themes, and her articles have appeared in such journals as Educational Leadership, The New Educator, The Harvard Educational Review, and Multicultural Education. Dr. Nieto has served on many local, regional, national and international commissions, panels, and advisory boards that focus on educational equity for all students. She has received many awards for her research and advocacy, including the Educator of the Year Award from NAME, the National Association for Multicultural Education (1997), the 2005 Outstanding Educator from the National Council of Teachers of English and, most recently, the 2006 Enrique T. Trueba Lifetime Achievement Award for Scholarship, Mentorship, and Service, as well as two awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) at the 2006 annual meeting. She has received two honorary doctorates, one in Humane Letters from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1999), and the other in Intercultural Relations from Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts (2004). She is married to Angel Nieto, a former teacher and author of children’s books, and they have two daughters and ten grandchildren.
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Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she attended the New York City public schools and, later, St. John’s University, where she received a B.S. in Elementary Education. She then attended the New York University Graduate Program in Spain where she was awarded an M.A. in Spanish and Hispanic Literature. A junior high school teacher of English and Spanish in Ocean Hill Brownsville, Brooklyn, she then became a fourth grade teacher at P.S. 25 in the Bronx, the first completely bilingual school in the Northeast. In 1975, she received her Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts, with specializations in curriculum studies and multicultural and bilingual education.