Photo caption: Lauren Margulieux, associate professor and director of the college's Snap Inc. Center for Computer & Teacher Education, gives a presentation on artificial intelligence to CEHD students.
story by Claire Miller
The International Society for Technology in Education and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ISTE+ASCD) named Georgia State University’s College of Education & Human Development (CEHD) the 2025 winner of the ISTE+ASCD Distinguished Educator Preparation Program Award.
This award celebrates educator preparation programs that demonstrate innovative uses of technology to prepare future teachers.
“The College of Education & Human Development has been conducting cross-department and cross-disciplinary research collectively among 16 faculty regarding effective use of technology in teacher preparation. This has impacted at least 775 teachers in the field and growing,” said CEHD Professor Sue Kasun, who also serves as a faculty fellow in the college’s Snap Inc. Center for Computer & Teacher Education. “Some of the research we’ve been doing indicates that there are exciting approaches to this work that are tempered with limitations, cautions and swiftly changing dynamics among available technologies.”
The Snap Inc. Center created its faculty fellowship program to help CEHD faculty members co-design computing activities for use in educator preparation programs across disciplines. The center also established a mini-grant program to support teacher education faculty in redesigning courses or making changes to academic programs related to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. In addition, three of its faculty fellows were selected for ISTE's 2024-2025 AI Explorations for Educator Preparation Programs.
Several departments in the college have made strides in incorporating technology into academics. For example, students in the college’s Department of Middle and Secondary Education learn about GenAI and read the latest research on how it’s used in educational settings. From there, students are given opportunities to try using GenAI in developing lessons plans, and then critically analyze how this technology worked.
“These components of instruction have been added both because we are curious about how GenAI can be productive in education and because educators will necessarily engage their K-12 students’ usage in and out of school to complete assignments,” Kasun said. “What we attempt to do is bridge understanding so our students know how the tools can be used critically and develop a better sense of digital and media literacy and their roles as digital citizens.”
Faculty members across the college have also received funding from Google, the National Science Foundation and other funders to study how best to teach and use computing activities to improve learning in both computer science and non-computer science classrooms.
These innovations keep both CEHD faculty and students abreast of new technologies and how they can be used to best support K-12 students’ academic success.
“I think the college was particularly competitive for this award because we integrate rigorous and innovative technology in our teacher preparation programs while serving teachers in urban and high-needs schools,” said Lauren Margulieux, associate professor and director of the Snap Inc. Center. “Our work brings innovative technology to teachers and students who typically have less access to tech and come from underserved communities, helping to bridge the equity gap.”
Kasun and Carla Tanguay, CEHD assistant dean for educator preparation and accreditation, will formally accept the ISTE+ASCD Distinguished Educator Preparation Program Award at the ISTELive and ASCD Annual Conference, where they will also give an invited presentation about what other university teacher education programs can learn from the college.
For more information about the award, visit https://iste.org/news/iste-ascd-reveals-2025-honorees-for-innovation-and-excellence-in-education.