Executive Director
Engagement and Faculty Development
Dr. Leslie J. Couse is Executive Director of Engagement and Faculty Development at the University of New Hampshire, where she leads programs in faculty development to promote academic success and faculty leadership development. Included within the office is the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Learning which promotes pedagogical practices that enhance student learning.
These semester-long interdisciplinary learning communities of faculty include the Research and Engagement Academy, the UNH Writing Academy, and Pathway to Professorship. Committed to strengthening higher education, she is co-chair of the new President's Leadership Academy, and Advancing Academic Leaders, where she draws on her expertise as a former department chair, professor of education, and non-profit leader.
Advancing engagement, Dr. Couse serves as an ambassador and leader in the Faculty Engagement with Alumni program. In addition, she provides leadership in the evaluation of the impact of the Office’s faculty development programs to enable data-informed decisions that enhance engagement and program development to serve the current and future needs of the faculty.
Dr. Couse pursues externally-funded scholarship focused on improving teacher education through interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement. With other researchers, she is exploring rural place-conscious teacher education in the Teacher Residency for Rural Education program. Dr. Couse is co-editor of The Handbook of Early Childhood Teacher Education (Routledge, 2016).
In 2016, she was named the Kimball Faculty Fellow, the highest award given to a member of the Education Department for exemplary leadership in education, and received a UNH Teaching Excellence Award in 2013. Dr. Couse was awarded her Ph.D. in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University, a Masters of Public Administration from Russell Sage College and a Master of Science in Education from State University of New York at Brockport. She completed her undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Cortland.
 |
Leslie Couse named Executive Director
307A Thompson Hall
(603) 862-0638
Leslie.Couse@unh.edu
Professor and Past Chair, Department of Education
