Penelope L. Lisi Central Connecticut State University, USA
Penelope L. Lisi is professor emerita at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Between 1994 and 2018, she taught in CCSU’s graduate-level programs in educational leadership, served as director of the doctoral program between 2014 and 2018, and taught in CCSU’s master’s degree program in Montego Bay, Jamaica, for 20 years. In her faculty position at CCSU, Dr. Lisi served for 20 years as director of the Center for Multicultural Research and Education. As director, she implemented professional development projects to support faculty in addressing equity issues in the university classroom. She directed the Diversity in Teaching Network (DITN), a federally funded three-year project to recruit diverse students into CCSU’s teacher preparation program. The Center for Multicultural Research and Education was a primary sponsor of and collaborator for the annual New England Conference for Multicultural Education (NECME) for 18 years.
Dr. Lisi’s scholarly work has focused on leadership for social justice, leadership for teaching and learning, and leadership in international school settings. In 2000, Dr. Lisi received a Fulbright Scholar Award to the University of Iceland. Over the next 16 years, she received 12 research grants and made more than 25 trips to Iceland to investigate educational leadership in a changing environment. Dr. Lisi has delivered more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in the United States, Ireland, Cuba, England, Finland, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland, Jamaica, Iceland, and Ukraine. Since 2005, she has been an adjunct professor for The College of New Jersey’s Global Studies Program in Palma de Mallorca.
Prior to her work at CCSU, Dr. Lisi taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in the United States and for three years in international schools in Norway and Denmark. For five years, she served as executive director of the Connecticut State University Center for Educational Excellence, a systemwide faculty development resource. A primary outcome was the initiation, development, and implementation of Project IMPACT, a professional development project to support faculty on the four state university campuses in transforming university-level courses to include diverse perspectives and content. Dr. Lisi received her bachelor’s degree in education and French at DePauw University, her master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and her doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Between 1998 and 2018, Dr. Lisi served as senior editor of Multicultural Perspectives for the National Association for Multicultural Education and currently serves on the editorial board for that organization. Her textbook, coauthored with Dr. William A. Howe, Becoming a Multicultural Educator: Developing Awareness, Gaining Skills, and Taking Action (4th ed., 2023, SAGE) won the 2013 Philip C. Chinn Multicultural Book Award from NAME.