Center for Children and Youth
The Center for Children and Youth will develop successful students through creative learning.
The Center for Children and Youth is designed to address issues of intellectual growth, social development, literacy, the arts, and techniques for addressing generational or regional poverty issues. This will be accomplished through teacher professional development, pre-service education, research, as well as curriculum development and dissemination.
In 2010, the Center for Children and Youth hosted a national conference in Springdale, Ark., focused on the confluence of literacy and the arts. The conference featured speakers from the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Temple University, the National Council of Teachers of English, and local experts on arts integration approaches to teaching. Later in 2010, Dr. Chris Goering in the Curriculum and Instruction Department was appointed as the center's first director. The center has since expanded its initiatives to include an annual statewide conference on arts integration (ARTful Teaching Conference), ongoing arts integration PD for local educators (the ARTeacher Fellowship program), literacy programs involving local teaching artists (the Arkansas Studio Project), and a recent partnership with Arkansas A+ Schools. The work of the Center for Children and Youth has led to numerous invitations to present at national conferences, as well as the publication of multiple scholarly articles and book chapters.
The director of CCY is Hung Pham. For more information on the Center for Children and Youth activities, email Mr. Pham at ccy@uark.edu or call him at 479-575-5513. Its website is ccy.uark.edu.