Alumni of the UConn’s Neag School of Education are a major factor in the education system statewide. There are currently more than 3,000 Neag alumni working in Connecticut schools as teachers and administrators; and during the 2009-10 school year, 165 of the 166 school districts in the state employed Neag alumni.

Mary Yakimowski, Neag’s assessment director, and graduate students have been analyzing the employment patterns of the School’s graduates, over the period 1986 to 2008. The demographics tracked annually include where Neag graduates are working; a break down by gender and race/ethnicity; and which districts employ the most graduates from each field or concentration. The statistics show that only one Connecticut school district, Derby, did not employ a Neag graduate in 2009-2010.

Yakimowski and her team of graduate students collaborated with the University Libraries’ Mapping and Geographic Information Center, learning how to display the information visually. Using special mapping software, they were able to generate maps illustrating how many alumni are employed during the school year by district.

Says Yakimowski, “Hopefully what we have learned – where our graduates are working – will be a stepping stone to assessing the impact Neag graduates have on their students.”

John Harris is a graduate student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.