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of our 2024 graduates secured their choice of employment or were accepted into a graduate program to continue their education
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The Living Wall
How Education’s Building and Curriculum are Going Green
BY ORION BUCKINGHAM
In 1963, University of Illinois professor and architect A. Richard Williams designed the College of Education building to reflect the future of learning.
Williams believed that buildings should connect with their environment, and his pioneering “Mid-Continent Modern” style emphasized clean lines, practical design, and working in harmony with nature—an innovative idea at the time that earned him national recognition.
More than 60 years later, Williams’ visionary idea is becoming fully realized. In May 2025, a lush living wall emerged in the building’s south lobby, nestled between its original concrete columns and created to enhance the learning environment.
Lindgren
Hale
Royce
A Seed of an Idea
Samantha Lindgren, assistant professor in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, has been interested in sustainability for as long as she can recall. As a teacher, she focused on environmental problem-solving, and much of her scholarly research is now geared toward climate and environmental education.
Lindgren and Jon Hale, professor in EPOL and Curriculum & Instruction, have frequently partnered on sustainability education work, including developing funding proposals and publishing a paper together on sustainability education.
Seeing an opportunity for more extensive sustainability education offerings at Illinois, Lindgren and Hale applied for campus support to develop an online graduate-level certificate program in justice-oriented sustainability education and new general education classes in sustainability for undergraduates.
Designed for Future Growth
Then, Lindgren and Hale approached Jeffry Royce, the College’s assistant director for facilities at the time, for his help implementing the living wall portion of the project. It was designed collaboratively, with input from a wide array of stakeholders, and harkens back to the painting “Six Thousand Color Sections” that hung in the space since 1992.
The wall features 775 individual nooks, each with its own plant. It is connected to the building’s plumbing system and self-waters. Full-spectrum LED lights now hanging above the wall will ensure the plant’s photosynthetic needs are met.
A Grounded Sense of Wellbeing
Lindgren and Hale point to the installation’s many benefits for the College’s physical environment. The wall itself is educational in its use of green technology and architecture, which provides natural air filtration, thermal stability, and noise absorption to meet green climate standards set in the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). They also point out that green spaces are often referred to as “restorative spaces” that have been shown to have emotional and psychological benefits for people indoors.
“The College of Education is a fitting place to build an innovative space intended for sustainability education,” Lindgren says. “The building was designed as an experimental, open-space concept that mirrored the progressive social and political trends of the time. The period brought renewed research in experiential learning, collaboration, and centering students to advance democratic ideals.
“This green space reinvigorates the College’s historic mission and marks a visible commitment to the progressive social and climate goals advanced by the College, embedded in the iCAP, and championed by current and future Illini.”
Leading the Data Science Revolution
Karle Flanagan co-teaches Data Science Discovery in Foellinger Auditorium during the first day of classes, August 2025.
Flanagan
Education alumna Karle Flanagan and the X + Data Science program are preparing Illinois students to shape the future through data.
BY BRUCE ADAMS, THE GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
A rising senior majoring in computer science, Lauren Hyde, has landed internships at some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
“I think my involvement in [X + Data Science] at Illinois was a huge part of how I ended up at Apple, as well as my internship last summer at PayPal,” Hyde says.
CS/STAT 107 co-instructor Karle Flanagan, Ph.D. ’22 C&I says that the X + DS program offers a unique opportunity for non-CS majors to gain an advantage upon graduation.
“It’s a way to enhance their major, make them more marketable, and give them a deeper understanding of how data and data science can integrate with whatever that X is,” says Flanagan.
“The goal is to have as many of these majors as possible. A lot is going on in the pipeline right now. It’s still the early stages, but the X + DS majors are popular among the students.”
A major reason for the class’s appeal is its project-driven approach. Students use real-world datasets to analyze, discover, and visualize the data’s impact.
CS/STAT 107 will have a record enrollment of nearly 1,200 students this fall, and the interest in data science is coming from Illinois students across many fields of study. The Fall 2024 class was made up of students from over 90 majors, including over 300 from the Division of General Studies.
Maintaining Trust and Inclusiveness While Using AI in the Classroom
Artificial intelligence is here to stay in education—so how can educators use it productively in ethical ways?
BY TOM HANLON
Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope
Generative AI—artificial intelligence that creates new content by learning patterns from existing data—has been used in education since the mid 2010s.
“There has been a lot of misunderstanding around what this new technology means and the impact it will have on education,” says Mary Kalantzis, professor in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership. “People were scared. They were saying ‘teachers will be put out of work.’”
“It’s not about replacing the teacher,” emphasizes Bill Cope, fellow EPOL professor. “It’s about making the teacher so much more effective. Replacing the teacher with AI would be a disaster in ten different ways. Our argument is how do we fold in these important human values in AI as well.”
Cope and Kalantzis have been tireless in their investigations in leveraging AI to the advantage of both teachers and students and in spreading the word about how AI can be effectively used in the classroom. Their recent book Trust and Inclusion in AI-Mediated Education: Where Human Learning Meets Learning Machines is a collective effort from members of their international Cyber-Social Learning Lab, as well as several fellow College of Education faculty members.
“Learners have to be able to trust that their voice matters, that it will be dealt with in the new framework, with the AI responding appropriately to them,” Kalantzis says. “They have to trust that they are included as equal in their difference but with common goals of achievement. So, how does this new technology allow us to deal with that diversity, to allow voice and agency to come through for a classroom of thirty kids?”
The goal, she says, is to find the practical ways in which teachers can use AI to help every student achieve their goals.
“Educators are going to be needed more than ever to be engaged in this cyber-social relationship,” Cope says. “The role of the teacher, the role of pedagogy, the role of design, of integrating the cyber and the social and how to evaluate it, becomes even more important and more imperative. We have to train our educators differently and continue to be learning.”
Preparing Schools to Successfully Transition Students with Disabilities to Work
High school students with disabilities have long had challenges when making the transition from school to work. The Illinois Center for Transition and Work is focused on making their path smoother and outcomes better.
BY TOM HANLON
Dymond
23,678
Transition-aged students with disabilities in Illinois that ICTW served in 2024
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in 2024 for youth (ages 16-19) with a disability was essentially double that of same-aged youth with no disability: 23.9% to 12.3%.
Stacy Dymond and her staff at the Illinois Center for Transition and Work (ICTW) are working hard to get those percentages more in alignment with each other in the state of Illinois.
“Our goal is to provide services for transition personnel—special educators, related services providers, and administrators,” says Dymond, director of ICTW and a professor of Special Education. “Ultimately, we want to improve employment outcomes for students with disabilities when they exit school. That is our driving mission.”
To that end, ICTW, which began in 2020, has conducted effective outreach and training throughout the state’s six regions, offering an annual symposium, regional workshops, and Targeted Technical Assistance activities where schools can apply to work with the center to create the changes the school desires in helping youth with disabilities make a successful transition from school to work.
In 2022, ICTW served 3,668 school personnel. That number increased to 9,604 in 2023 and to 23,678 last year.
That outreach, training, and impact is critical, because before ICTW debuted during the height of the pandemic, no program or center existed in Illinois to support school personnel in understanding how to help and prepare students with disabilities for the workforce.
“We strive for a balance between research and practice,” Dymond notes. “We bring together educators and vocational rehabilitation providers and help them prepare students for competitive, integrated employment. We look at the research and help them put it into practice.”
Witt
IGlobal Earns 2025 Senator Paul Simon Spotlight Award
Illinois is one of three universities, nationwide, to be honored with this annual award from NAFSA.
The IGlobal program, housed in the College of Education’s Office of International Programs, was honored with the Sen. Paul Simon Spotlight Award for Campus Internationalization at the 2025 NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference.
IGlobal provides online global fieldwork for the College’s preservice teachers and professional development for in-service teachers around the world. The program engages preservice teacher undergraduates to lead middle school students around the globe in online learning. Illinois students collaborate with partner classrooms, to lead one-hour online sessions over eight weeks with middle school students covering United Nations Sustainable Development Goals topics.
“At Illinois, we are fortunate to have such valuable global learning opportunities for local schools and schools around the world, aimed at creating a globally competent society—a vision that our Senator Simon also shared,” says Allison Witt, director of the Office of International Programs. “We’re very proud of this award, and most especially of the undergraduate and graduate students who bring their creativity, dedication, enthusiasm, and teaching skills directly to the world through IGlobal. Thank you to our interdisciplinary colleagues across campus and abroad who support the program with their passion and expertise.”
“IGlobal connects prospective educators with students and educators around the world in ways that help them all learn what it means to live in a global society,” says Dean Chrystalla Mouza. “The program provides virtual international teaching and learning experiences that otherwise might not be accessible or sustainable and is an excellent example of Illinois leadership and innovation shining through our collective work.”
Thailand Teach Abroad Strengthens Connections
Left to Right: Nannaphat Saenghong; Janejira Arsarkij, Assistant to the Dean; Tipparat Noparit, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai University; Allison Witt and Jacob Minniear from the College of Education Office of International Programs, on a recent trip to Thailand.
This summer, three Education students participated in the College’s pilot summer teaching internship program in Thailand. The group met with Governor of Bangkok Chadchart Sittipunt, Ph.D. ENG ’87. They also toured Chiang Mai University and met Nannaphat Saenghong, Ph.D. ’15 EPOL, an advisee of Dean Emeritus James D. Anderson. In future programs, Saenghong will host Illinois students in her classes and supervise their training with the local schools.
“It is impressive to see the value and impact of an Illinois degree even on the other side of the world,” says Allison Witt. “Their connection to Illinois serves as a bridge to our current students for accessing Thailand’s unique and dynamic culture. Their warm welcome and support provides a foundation to develop this and other partnerships.”