President Leo M. Lambert has appointed Deborah Thurlow Long, associate professor of education, to a two-year term as Faculty Administrative Fellow and Assistant to the President. She will begin her duties June 1.
Long will participate in President Lambert’s senior staff meetings and lead significant projects related to serving at-risk youth in the community. She will also continue to teach in the School of Education.
Currently chair of the education department and coordinator of the elementary education program, Deborah Long came to Elon in 1996. Her areas of expertise include curriculum development and instructional design, and her publications and professional presentations address teacher cognition, curriculum development, problem-based learning, content integration, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Long has been a member of and chaired Elon’s Carnegie Committee for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Her international work includes presenting at conferences and conducting workshops in Canada, the Czech Republic, and Tajikistan.
Long has a long history of working with at-risk students. She served in the Teacher Corps from 1971 to 1973 and has integrated service-learning projects in Title I schools in the Alamance-Burlington School System. She has been active with Alamance County Habitat for Humanity since 1999 and has served as president of the Habitat board. From 2003 to 2006 she was project evaluator for the 21st Century Community Learning Center Grant, a federally funded grant awarded to the Alamance-Burlington School System, which provided after-school and enrichment programs for at-risk students.
Long taught for nine years at Lyon College, Batesville, Ark., and was an elementary school teacher in the Durham City School System from 1973 to 1976. She has a bachelor’s degree from Colby College, Waterville, Maine, a master’s degree from Virginia State College, Petersburg, Va., and a doctorate from the University of Memphis in curriculum, instruction, and educational leadership.