University of Northern Colorado’s Award-Winning Center for Urban Education

Webinar Slides

AACTE celebrates the University of Northern Colorado’s (UNCO) Center for Urban Education (CUE) as the 2024 Increasing Educator Diversity: Promising Practice Award recipient.  The inaugural award, overseen by AACTE’s Programmatic Advisory Committee on Educator Diversity, recognizes a promising practice from a school, college, or department of education demonstrating outcomes and advocacy related to various activities, practices, programs, pedagogies, systems, and/or policies that lead to or is likely to lead to an increase in educator diversity.

The CUE at UNCO works to prepare teachers from traditionally underrepresented communities and offers teacher preparation programs leading to Colorado licensure in early childhood education, elementary education (with a CLD endorsement), and special education. Since 2000, the CUE has focused on preparing teachers who are culturally, racially, and linguistically responsive to build a workforce that mirrors the demographics of the learners in Denver. With over 70% of its teacher candidates being individuals of color, the center equips educators to make a meaningful impact in diverse urban settings.

Speakers:

Rosanne Fulton, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Urban Education

University of Northern Colorado

Rosanne Fulton, Ph.D., has more than 40 years of experience in public education. She served as chief equity and engagement officer in Aurora Public Schools; executive director of Curriculum and Instruction in the Denver Public Schools; director of schools in the Douglas County School District, and; K-8 principal in the Mapleton School District.

At the beginning of her career, she taught middle and high school mathematics for 11 years. Additionally, she taught mathematics and teacher preparation courses at four different universities and colleges in Colorado including Colorado Schools of Mines, Metropolitan State University, University of Colorado Boulder and University of Colorado Denver. For nine years, she taught introductory and college algebra at Aurora Community College. In addition to her work in Colorado, she served as the assistant superintendent for K-12 Teaching and Learning in the Tacoma Public Schools in Washington State.

For the past 10 years, she has served as the director of the Center for Urban Education at UNCO. The center is located in the Denver metropolitan area and prepares teachers for early childhood, elementary, and special education classrooms in urban schools. Fulton has devoted her career to addressing educational equity and meeting the needs of all students.  In each of these leadership roles, she has taught people of all ages and supervised central office leaders, principals, content specialists, school-based instructional coaches, teachers, and classified staff.

Joanna Ross, Ph.D. Candidate

Assistant Director, Center for Urban Education

University of Northern Colorado

Joanna Ross is the assistant director of UNCO’s CUE at the Lowry campus in Denver. Originally from New York City, she attributes her childhood experiences and exposure to diverse people to her dedication to culturally responsive education. Before her current position, she was a public school teacher in Florida and Colorado (Denver) for twelve years. CUE’s work is essential to the paraprofessional-to-teacher pipeline, she takes great pride in serving the CUE students.

She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Florida and is working on her doctorate through the UNCO’s Educational Studies program. She was drawn to the EDD program because of the emphasis on educational reform and social justice.