News

Dr. Pedro Noguera to speak at ISU

(April 7, 2008) Illinois State University and the College of Education's Diversity Committee are proud to announce that Dr. Pedro Noguera will be presenting a public lecture at Illinois State on April 9 at 7:00 p.m.

Noguera, an urban sociologist, is currently a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education and the director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. His presentation, titled "What It Takes to Leave No Child Behind: Creating Conditions that Promote Academic Achievement and Child Development," is expected to be inspiring and informative.

"He'll speak to the challenges of educating all students well in a democratic society, where we're falling short and how we can do better," said Greg Michie, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Illinois State, recently co-edited a book with Noguera. "He's a really engaging speaker and I expect it to be a great presentation."

Noguera, a former tenured faculty member at both the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at the University of California, Berkley, has been published over 150 times in academic journals. Most of his work concentrates on how schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment.

His lecture at Illinois State will be consistent with his work, but will be accessible to a wide audience. The monologue should relate to anybody who has a stake in public education.

"I think he'll particularly appeal to students and faculty who are interested in issues of diversity and urban education issues," Michie said. "I think the issues he will speak to will be relevant to a broad audience across campus."

A couple of the better known books Noguera has published are City Schools and the American Dream (2003) and Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation's Schools (2006). Much of his literature has been published in major research journals, some of which is available online at In Motion Magazine.

The lecture, which is sponsored by Urban Needs in Teacher Education (UNITE), the Student Association for Bilingual Education (SABE) , and the College of Education's Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline, is free to attend and will be held in the Caterpillar Auditorium in the College of Business on Illinois State's campus.