The University of St. Thomas’ School of Education and Human Services is continuing its commitment to community engagement and professional development through the Kathrine G. McGovern Educators Institute at the University of St. Thomas (UST). This weeklong annual summer program at UST, was held on June 18 and June 22 –26, and brought educators together to read, create, write, collaborate, and exchange ideas.
The McGovern Educators Institute at UST (MEI@UST) was established as a formal partnership with the School of Education and Human Services (SEHS) in summer 2023, following the Institute’s summer 2022 hosting at the St. Thomas campus. The program is supported by generous funding from the John P. McGovern Foundation, which makes it possible for participating educators to attend free of charge.
The Institute's founder and director, Dr. William "Bill" Monroe, said it is always a pleasure to collaborate with UST.
“The 2026 McGovern Educators Institute at the University of St. Thomas inspired, trained, and motivated educators who personify the value of critical reading, writing, and truly creative thinking,” Dr. Monroe said. “The Institute is based on the tenets and practices of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. It is a model for teacher development that respects educators as the professionals that we need them to be.”
Dr. Anne Gichuri, director of Service-Learning and director of Research & CPE coordination for the UST SEHS, emphasizes the need for this training for our students.
“The McGovern Institute seeks to comprehensively address the decline in reading and writing in the lives of young people due to the deleterious effects of our modern day pervasive ‘screen culture,’” Dr. Gichuri said.
The Institute is designed for teachers, writers, avid readers, community leaders, and volunteers who contribute to the educational community. The goal is to provide consistently customized high-impact in-service professional development for greater Houston-area community college plus Pre-K-12 (P12) public, private, and parochial school educators while encouraging a renewed appreciation and advocacy for rigorous critical reading, writing, and creative thinking.
Since its inception at UST, the Institute has engaged more than 94 educators from a range of public, private, and parochial P12 schools and community colleges. Participants have represented a wide range of teaching experience, academic disciplines, age ranges, ethnic backgrounds, and educational levels of professional service from pre-kindergarten through high school and community college.
The Institute is led by Director Dr. Monroe, who also co-leads the Institute's seminar sections along with Dr. Elizabeth Brown-Guillory and Dr. Robin Davidson. The three seminar leaders bring more than 50 years of collective experience with regional and national teacher institutes.
Specifically, the 2026 Institute featured three seminar sections: “The Life of Poetry,” led by Dr. Davidson; “Voice as Superpower: Women, Resistance, and the Art of Speaking Back,” led by Dr. Brown-Guillory; and “Life Writing: Our Stories, Our Selves,” led by Dr. Monroe.
“The Institute provides a rare learning environment where P12 educators access continuous interactive learning engagements that foster strong community-building, professional networking, discussions of comparable life stories, and exposure to high leverage teaching practices,” Dr. Gichuri said. “Through our collaboration with Dr. Monroe and support from the McGovern Foundation, we continue to foster action-oriented quality assurance enhancements through non-threatening self-reflective assessments of areas in need of improvement within one’s own practice.”
Participants engaged in morning seminars that were followed by interactive group luncheons with guest artists, writers, and scholars and closed each afternoon with creative application collaborative workshops. The weeklong program concluded with participants sharing their creative application presentations of their work with fellow writers and educators. Among participants, many of whom return each summer, there were a few with a range of published works.
The 2026 Institute provided a maximum of 32 SEHS continuing professional education hours that can be used for educator license renewal and school district annual educator evaluations.
UST’s location in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood also provides a central setting for educators from across the region to gather, network, and collaborate.
“Given UST’s success in serving a diverse student body as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and its wonderful downtown Museum District prime location, our Montrose campus is an excellent host for the Institute,” Dr. Gichuri said.
Participants have consistently praised the Institute’s collaborative atmosphere and the opportunity to return to in-service learning alongside fellow educators. Dr. Monroe is enthusiastic about keeping these opportunities, and the Institute's robust relationship with UST's SEHS strong.
“We can already see that our collaboration will keep the McGovern Institute growing and flourishing and provide a beneficial partnership for the School of Education and Human Services,” he said. “Together we are reaffirming that teachers are in essence professionals, like doctors, nurses, attorneys, accountants, and engineers.”
Dr. Ana-Lisa Gonzalez, dean at the UST School of Education and Human Services said the SEHS faculty and staff continue to be blessed to support and provide continuing professional education certificates to the McGovern Educators Institute at University of St. Thomas
“The Institute provides stellar professional development and attracts top educators from public, private, and parochial P12 campuses across the greater Houston metropolitan and surrounding areas,” she said.
We look forward to growing our robust continued partnership, as the Institute is very far reaching in its in-service support of best practices for an exponential cross-section of educators year after year.”
For educators, the benefits extend beyond the Institute itself, as participants return to their P12 classrooms with new literature, teaching strategies, and customized innovative ideas for engaging students.
Maria Illich, 5th-8th grade English teacher at St. Francis de Sales Catholic School, said the institute hosted by the McGovern family and UST has made her teacher training a joy and something she looks forward to every year.
“The strategies we learned and practiced using authentic, diverse texts will be easy to implement in my classroom,” she said. “For example, having students look at a work of art and then write about it is a great way to introduce them to art and the practice of ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is when you look at a piece of art and then write a poem or story based on the work of art.”
Dr. Gichuri said the continuing professional education offered through the School of Education and Human Services is part of UST’s broader commitment to serving the greater Houston-area community.
“In addition to our summer McGovern Educators Institute, the School of Education and Human Services is advancing UST’s sustained community engagement and impact through high-quality diversified P12 in-service continuing professional education workshops year-round, with a broad range of local and national partners, on timely topics such as generative AI classroom integrations and digital citizenship skills-oriented frameworks,” she said.
The School of Education and Human Services also plans to expand its community engagement service-learning opportunities, interdisciplinary volunteer onboarding and workforce preparedness sessions for current students, as well as in-service professional development workshops for local and overseas P12 teachers.
Through the summer McGovern Educators Institute and other year-round professional development offerings, UST’s School of Education and Human Services continues to build connections among educators, students, faculty, alumni, and the broader Houston community while supporting teachers in their work of advancing students' ability to critically and creatively read, write, think, and engage with the world around them.