College of Education Speaker Series to Present Sonia Nieto
Kutztown, PA (04/14/2017) — Dr. Sonia Nieto, professor emerita of Language, Literacy and Culture at the College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst, will present "Lessons from a Life in Public Education," Monday, April 17, at 5 p.m. in Boehm Hall room 145. She will also host an informal discussion Tuesday, April 18, at 11 a.m. in Beekey Hall room 218. The events are free and open to the public.
Nieto has devoted her professional life to questions of diversity, equity and social justice in education. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she began her teaching career in 1966 in an intermediate school in Brooklyn, later moving to P.S. 25 in the Bronx, the first fully bilingual school in the Northeast. Her university career started in the Puerto Rican Studies Department at Brooklyn College.
Nieto and her family moved to Massachusetts in 1975, where she completed her doctoral degree at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, returning a year later to begin her long academic career there. She taught pre-service and practicing teachers, and doctoral students for 26 years before retiring in 2006.
Among her numerous publications is "Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education" (now in its 6th edition, 2012), which was selected when it was first published (1992) as one of the 100 books that helped define the field of education in the 20th century. Dr. Nieto has received many awards for her scholarly work, activism, and advocacy, including six honorary doctorates and election as a Laureate of Kappa Delta Pi (2001), a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2011), and a member of the National Academy of Education (2015).