Nearly $3.2 million

in new funding raised for the Neag School in FY24-25.

Alumni Outreach Efforts, 2024-2025

Alumni outreach for the Neag School of Education continued with connecting with alumni to better understand their interests and ideal involvement. From July 2024 to June 2025, Emily Auger Murray, Senior Director of Alumni Relations, completed 31 remote and in-person personal visits. Collaborative work with our development operation focused on building a broad base of Neag School advocates and supporters, strengthening the pathway towards involvement, giving, and support for the Neag School while highlighting the newly publicly launched Because of UConn campaign.

Alumni Events and Program Highlights

The Neag School of Education held the below alumni events focused on engagement and collaboration among different departments and schools.

• Sport Management collaborated on the following alumni engagement opportunities:
  • Sport Management Summer Networking Night
  • Fall virtual Alumni Career Panel
  • 2 Sport Management Alumni Coffee Hours
  • 3 virtual Husky Nutrition & Sport Alumni Events
• For the 3rd year in a row, Music Education and the School of Fine Arts Music Department collaborated on an alumni reception at UConn Hartford following the Eastern Division Conference, with 50 participants.
• An ELP Alumni Social was held at UConn Hartford, in support of The Robert M. Villanova Executive Leadership Fund, with over 50 registrants.

27th Annual Alumni Awards

The Neag School’s 27th Annual Alumni Awards Celebration was held in March 2025 in the Student Union Ballroom and consisted of an awards ceremony that recognized three Neag Alumni Board Scholarship Recipients, one Rogers Award winner and eight Alumni Awardees. This event was attended by over 120 alumni, faculty, staff, family, and friends.

• Outstanding School Educator: Tracey-Ann Lafayette ’15 (CLAS), ’15 (ED), ’16 MA, ’22 6th Year
• Outstanding Professional: Alicia Bowman ’01 (ED), ’02 MA, ’08 6th Year
• Outstanding Early Career Professional: Paul Singleton II ’17 MA, ’24 Ph.D.
• Outstanding School Administrator: Lori Leibowitz ’19 Cert.
• Outstanding School Superintendent: Howard Thiery III ’91 MS, ’07 ELP
• Outstanding Higher Education Professional: Daniel Burkey ’23 MA
• Outstanding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Professional: Fany DeJesús Hannon ’08 MA
• Distinguished Alum: Mark Daigneault ’07 (ED)
• 2025 Rogers Educational Innovation Fund Awardee: Giselle Ziegler ’22 6th Year

2024-2025 Neag School Alumni Board

The Neag School Alumni Board has a history of influencing the School’s outreach in the alumni community and supporting current and future students. Board members who supported all the efforts are listed below.

• 

  Danielle DeRosa ’09, ’16

• Sasha Douglas ’21, ’24
• Sharon Fuller ’83, ’87, ’94
• Ryan Haynes ’20
• Scott Hurwitz ’06, ’07, ’19, ’21
• Carl Johnson ’03, ’04, ’15 (Secretary)
• Bryan Kirby ’18, ’19
• Shay Lewis ’20 (Vice President)
• Faith Celeste McCarthy ’17, ’18
• Stephanie Muehlethaler ’09
• Timothy Neville ’06, ’18 (President)
• Wura Olusekun ’16
• Haralambos (Bobby) Skarvelas ’06, ’07, ’13, ’21
• Jocelyn Tamborello-Noble ’03, ’04, ’09 (Past President)
• Carter Welch ’99, ’11, 12
• Jeffrey Wihbey ’95, ’06, ’16

Alumni Board Scholarship

The Neag Alumni Board Endowed Scholarship, funded by gifts from Neag alumni, supports current Neag School students who are continuing their education.

• Emmanuel Dwamena - Doctoral student in curriculum and instruction/science education
• Caroline Shadman - Master’s student in curriculum and instruction/music education
• Claudia Ventura - Doctoral student in research methods, measurement, and evaluation

Fundraising

Each year, a Strategic Fundraising Plan is developed that outlines funding priorities, which include:

• Undergraduate and Graduate Student Support (e.g., scholarships, 5th year master’s degree, doctoral recruitment, unmet need, etc.)
• Program Support (e.g., teacher education, global education, Breaking Bias & Creating Community, Executive Leadership Program – Villanova fund, etc.)
• Faculty Support (e.g., endowments, research support, etc.)
• Interdisciplinary Collaborations (Feel Your Best Self project, etc.)

Working collaboratively with the UConn Foundation’s Neag School Senior Director of Development, we implemented a multi-pronged strategic approach to engage multiple stakeholders in the Neag School’s fundraising efforts as part of our FY25 Strategic Plan. In partnership with Dean Irizarry, we secured a transformative $1.5 million gift to support a groundbreaking initiative, the Morris and Judy Sarna Breaking Bias and Creating Community Program. It’s the largest single gift from a private donor that the School has received in the past 25 years. This year also marked a productive year for the Dean’s Board of Advocates and a very successful UConn Gives campaign. Collectively, these efforts resulted in the generation of $3,198,978 of new funding for the Neag School, exceeding the $2.75 million fundraising goal for the year.

Development Efforts

Marcy Jarzabek, Senior Director of Development, led the implementation of our FY25 Strategic Fundraising Plan in partnership with Em Murray. Much of her time was spent engaging alumni, donors, private foundations, and corporations to determine specific areas of interest in which to partner. Marcy conducted a total of 131 donor visits, including 28 qualification visits and completed more than 400 substantive interactions with alumni and donors including email and phone conversations.

Marcy partnered with Dean Irizarry on 75 alumni and donor visits including meetings with foundations. Dean Irizarry demonstrated his commitment to engagement and building the donor pipeline by traveling to meet with Neag alumni and donors in several regions including NC and FL. Dean Irizarry cultivated and stewarded donor relationships by hosting donors in the provost’s suite at football games and several UConn basketball games (CT & NC). The development team in partnership with Dean Irizarry and faculty produced funding proposals for individual donors and to secure grant funding. This resulted in the solicitation of several gifts to help launch new programs including the Morris and Judy Sarna Breaking Bias and Creating Community Program.

Advancement Team

The goal of the Neag School’s Advancement Team is to support the mission of the Neag School and its Development, Alumni Relations, and Communications Divisions. The members of the Advancement Team work individually with the dean in areas of responsibility and collaboratively as a unit in consultation with the dean. In FY25, the members of the Advancement Team included:

• Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Emily Auger Murray
• Senior Director of Development, Marcy Jarzabek
• Director of Communications and Digital Strategy, Mikala Kane
• Senior Publicity & Marketing Specialist, Shawn Kornegay
• Dean’s Assistant, Katie Gelsomini

Working collaboratively with the dean and UConn Foundation, the Neag School Advancement Team:

• Leverages their individualized areas of expertise to maximize the dean’s ability to engage in high-value advancement efforts and promote the Neag School’s mission and funding priorities.
• Identifies programming and events to support the advancement mission of the Neag School:
  • The team partnered with University Events to host the annual fall scholarship celebration event in-person in early November at the Student Union. It was well attended, and the featured donor speaker was Scott Brown, a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
  • The Neag School in partnership with the UConn Foundation hosted a donor event at UConn Stamford on Jan. 16 to launch the Morris and Judy Sarna Breaking Bias and Creating Community Program. The event was attended by family and friends of the Sarna family with over 50 guests attending.

UConn Gives 2025

In conjunction with advancement team members in each academic unit, the UConn Foundation conducted the 2025 annual UConn Gives on April 21-22, 2025, and raised $5.4 million! The Neag School launched an internal competition and yielded fantastic results with $42,000 raised from 550 donors. Neag’s Husky Nutrition & Sport fund came in first place among all participating projects university wide with the highest donor count.

• UConn Husky Nutrition & Sport – $16,425 from 394 donors, including a $1,000 matching gift from Heather McDonald ’23 Ed.D., plus $10,000 from the President’s and Provost’s Project Leaderboard Challenge
• Dr. Sue Saunders Higher Education & Student Affairs (HESA) Professional Development Fund – $2,550 from 84 donors, including a $500 matching gift from Saunders
• Neag School Dean’s Fund – $1,242 from 12 donors, plus $5,000 from the President’s and Provost’s Unit Leaderboard Challenge

2024-2025 Dean's Board of Advocates