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. By fourth grade, while living in the California Bay Area, his seizures had slowed down and he stopped taking the anti-seizure medicine, which he said allowed him “to be aware and cognizant and build relationships and be more communicative.” This journey of immigration.
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.
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.
