UALR Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Zulma Toro-Ramos recently announced the retirement of Dr. Angela Maynard Sewall, dean of the College of Education.

Dr. Gail D. Hughes, UALR associate professor of educational leadership, has been selected as interim dean.

Dr. Sewall has served for the past 16 years as dean. She came to UALR in 1992 having previously worked as a high school teacher, director of guidance, principal, and associate superintendent for school operations in the Little Rock School District.

While at UALR, Sewall helped create the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, one of the first two doctoral programs on campus. During her tenure, every program in the college that could achieve national recognition successfully reached that quality benchmark, according to Dr. Toro.

Sewall has served in leadership roles in multiple state and national organizations including the Arkansas Leadership Academy, the state Professional Licensure Board, the Teacher Education Council of State Colleges and Universities, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

She also serves as a member of the newly formed Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) Commission working with university accreditation of school personnel preparation programs.

In addition, her work has been recognized nationally with the awarding of the Reading Recovery Teacher Leader Award, the Project Innovation Award from Education for her writings on assessment, and most recently, with the Edward Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contributions for Teacher Education from AACTE.