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By Harika Rao '11,'15Published Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012
Lavinia H. Draper '10 graduated from Lynn University’s College of Education with a Ph.D. in global leadership.
She recently received the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching, which is one of the most prestigious and selective scholarship programs operating world-wide in over 150 countries with more than 300,000 alumni. The Fulbright Program offers grants to study, teach and conduct research for U.S. citizens to go abroad and non-U.S. citizens to come to the United States.
Lavinia has been teaching at U.B. Kinsey/Palmview Elementary School of Arts, an award-winning Title 1 magnet school of the arts in West Palm Beach, Fla. for the past 15 years. At New York University she studied how to use the arts to improve learning. She received her master’s degree at Florida Atlantic University in multicultural education. Her Ph.D. dissertation topic explored the relationship between teachers’ creativity and its impact on learning.
In her research, Lavinia’s speciality is incorporating the arts into curriculum to engage students in the learning process and raise state standardized test scores in reading and writing. “As a Fulbright scholar, I will be able to build upon the finding of my research supporting the positive impact that the arts have on learning,” says Lavinia.
Lavinia has won numerous awards throughout her teaching career. She received the Palm Beach County Literacy Award in 2006 for her work in preparing students to pass the state standardized test. In 2011 she earned the Palm Beach County Elementary Social Studies Teacher Award and in the Northern Palm Beach County Chamber of Commerce Educator of the Year Award in 2012.