Dr. David Hernández-Saca moved to the U.S. from El Salvador when he was two years old to escape El Salvador’s Civil War. His family moved around Arizona and Southern California for a couple years, which Hernandez-Saca does not remember well because he suffered from seizures and compulsions and was frequently hospitalized.
Dr. Benjamin Forsyth’s background experiences are somewhat unconventional for a professor of education at a mid-size Iowa university: after growing up on the east coast, he played football at an Indiana college, had a two-year stint living in the Netherlands, finished his physics degree at Brigham-Young University in Idaho, spent two years teaching high school physics, and then studied educational psychology in the Midwest.
John Speer, chief administrator with the Grant Wood Area Education Agency in Cedar Rapids, has received the 2023 UNI Educational Leadership Legacy Award.
Mary Ann Bolton, class of 1970, never forgot the positive impact of her experience at UNI. After a long and impactful career in librarianship and many endeavors into supporting libraries, she looked back to her academic roots to explore a way to give back. In 2017, she worked with the library to establish an endowment with a specific interest in using her gift to support and recognize undergraduate students’ research projects.
At UNI, teacher education students learn to appreciate the work of teachers more than the average person when they get in the classroom and start teaching.
