Laura E. Meyers, Ph.D.

Dr. Laura E. Meyers joined the Department in 2004. Her teaching career started in Charleston, South Carolina in a fourth grade, urban classroom.  Currently, Dr. Meyers works with pre-service teachers and instructs a variety of courses in the Department across various program areas. Course subjects include social studies, literacy, cross-cultural immersion, scholarly writing, and curriculum integration, among others. In 2007 Dr. Meyers was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award by the College of Education at Georgia State University. She continued to earn recognition for her teaching and was awarded the Outstanding Social Studies Educator of the Year by the Georgia Council for the Social Studies in 2008.

Dr. Meyers designed a study abroad program that takes place in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and is now the Department’s co-director of international programs. Her other service-oriented work includes hosting annual conferences for Georgia State University’s student organization of the Georgia Association of Educators. These conferences encourage pre-service practitioners to enjoy a taste of professional development and pursue similar workshops in the future, once in their own classrooms. Additionally, Dr. Meyers and her therapy dog Sullivan work with local elementary schools in animal-assisted therapy projects. Sullivan is used as a motivational and educational tool. Inevitably, students light up immediately when Sullivan walks into the classroom!  He is an excellent listener when students are practicing reading their own writing or published books aloud (connections to literacy). Also, Sullivan stands still to be measured when young students are co-designing a new dog house to scale (connections to math) and determining what Sullivan may need versus want to have in his ideal backyard (connections to social studies). To learn more about “pet partners” and find teams in your city, visit: http://www.deltasociety.org/ .

Dr. Meyers has published in Social Studies and the Young Learner, Phi Delta Kappan, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and Children’s Literature in Education.