The NSC School of Education combines the best of a research institution and a liberal arts college into an extraordinary center of creativity, inquiry and discovery.
Educators in the School of Education are highly sought after in their fields for their depth of knowledge and their experience in a wide range of subjects. Here is just a small sample of the scholarly work from our faculty members.
- Dr. Jim LaBuda, Assistant Professor of Education, recently presented at the National Student Teacher Supervision Conference on the campus of Slippery Rock University. His first presentation was entitled, “Framework for Teaching: Putting the Square Peg in the Round Hole,” focused on the connections student teachers make within Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. The second presentation, “Interviewing: The 2 Minute Drill,” presented strategies for preparing student teachers for employment interviews. He also co-authored an article with Clairin DeMartini, fellow NSC faculty member, which was published in The Field Experience Journal, Spring 2009, entitled “Mentoring Pre-Service teachers through Meaningful Field Experiences: A College Directed Literacy Center and School-Based Coursework.” Dr. LaBuda is a peer reviewer for The Field Experience Journal and will also serve as a proposal reviewer for the 2010 National Student Teacher Supervision Conference. He has also served as a NeCoTIP grant project director, NeCoTIP grant evaluator and served as a peer reviewer for NeCoTIP applications for the State of Nevada.
- Dr. Larry Rudd, Assistant Professor in the School of Education, is currently involved in the educational component of the state-wide EPSCoR-funded grant titled: Nevada Infrastructure for Climate Change Science, Education, and Outreach. As part of the first year of the EPSCoR grant in the summer of 2009, Dr. Rudd developed and taught a unique graduate-level class, Climate Change Science for Educators, to Clark County School District (CCSD) middle-school science teachers. Dr. Rudd also works with CCSD secondary science teachers in a field-oriented summer workshop, Invigorating High School and Middle School Earth Science Through Inquiry and Student Research. In this NeCoTIP-funded workshop participating teachers learn about the geology of southern Nevada and then apply their knowledge by developing inquiry-based lessons on local geology for use in their classrooms. Dr. Rudd presented results from the first two summer workshops on southern Nevada Geology at conferences on the local, regional, and national level. Dr. Rudd is also involved in fundamental scientific research into landslide hazards in arid lands. He recently co-authored a study of debris-flow activity on the Colorado Plateau, Holocene debris flows on the Colorado Plateau: The influence of clay mineralogy and chemistry, which was published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. Dr. Rudd continues his research interests in both education and geoscience as a co investigator in recent research-based proposals to NASA and the National Science Foundation.
- Dr. Graziano has delivered numerous presentations at regional, national, and international conferences sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS), National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), Hawaii International Conference on Education, and California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE). Dr. Graziano has published several book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles in Teaching Education, Issues in Teacher Education, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling. His work in the classroom and community has also been featured in newspaper and magazine articles, including the Henderson Home News, El Mundo Newspaper, and Meet the Neighbor in the Las Vegas Zip Code Magazine. Dr. Graziano has received several awards including NSC’s 2006 Teaching Excellence Award, the 2006 City of Henderson and Henderson Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Teaching Award, the 2007 National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) Excellence Award, and NSC’s 2008 Economic Development Award.
- Dr. Rho Hudson is an Associate Professor of Education and Director of the NSC Resource Center for Students with Disabilities has twice copresented on assessment practices at the Northern NV Assessment Conference, as well as reviewed the current edition of Assessment in Special Education, a Practical Approach. She has been a proposal reviewer for AACTE’s 61st and 62nd Annual Meeting and Exhibits as well as the coauthor of one NeCoTIP grant (2004) and evaluator of a second NeCoTIP grant (2008). Rho is the co-developer of two tutoring centers through a partnership between the Las Vegas Housing Authority and the NSC School of Education. These tutoring centers are located in public housing and offer after-school and summer enrichment programs to at-risk students in grades K-5. She also has a bimonthly program, called VE-HICLE, which pairs a member of NSC faculty and staff with a vocational education student from Foothill High School, to provide the students with supervised work experience and an opportunity to improve their communication and social skills. Additionally, she has been on the board of the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas since 2002.
- Dr. Richard Moore is beginning to enjoy the world of writing and in the past three years tries to save 3-4 hours every day to hone his storytelling skills. He has written a number of books which are used in his classes. They include: a book on Leadership, Managing Change; two books that introducing students to general economic ideas - MicroEconomics and MegaEconomic; one book which helps students learn how much different occupations pay, Pay for Work; and one book which tries to make sense of the current financial crisis, The Money Lenders. He is often in a confused state of mind as he tries to rethink ideas, experience feelings, and savor the daily drama of life.
- Grace S. Thomson, Business Lecturer, is a long-time economic development researcher who discovered her passion for rural development after seven years’ work in the small village of Babahoyo, coastal Ecuador, South America. Grace’s love for quantitative models, econometrics and human development has driven her scholarly and practitioner’s interest. Her research on predictive models of agricultural prices, production costs, and rural household savings have been presented in diverse venues in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Germany, and assisted the government of Ecuador in policy-making. Her analyses of the role of rural finances in regional economic development were published by the USAID Scholars case study report in 1991. Grace’s involvement in higher education in Latin America for more than 20 years broadened the scope of her scholarship towards organizational development, transformational leadership, diversity, and fundraising. Her research is published in online journals such as Selected Works of Berkeley Electronic Press, maintaining a monthly readership of 600 full-text downloads.
