Omaha teacher recipient of CEHS McAuliffe Award

06 Mar 2015     By Gregg Wright, emeritus professor, Center on Children, Families and the Law

Christa McAuliffe was a social studies teacher. So you don’t have to teach rocketry or launch a high school Air and Space Academy to win the Christa McAuliffe Prize. But that’s just how LeeAnn Vaughan has done it, with courage and excellence.

The award, sponsored annually by the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, was presented March 8 at banquet in Vaughan's honor.

Vaughan didn’t always know that she wanted to be a teacher. Instead of going to college, she got married, raised a family, learned accounting and started up a tax preparation business.

And when Vaughan decided to go to college in her thirties, business courses seemed like the logical choice. But as she helped her fellow business students in study sessions, they kept telling her, “You are a great teacher — you should teach!” And so she did. She moved to the College of Education at the University of Nebraska Omaha where she found that she loved teaching, and began a new chapter in her life.

Developing the Omaha Burke High School Air and Space Academy wasn’t the first time Vaughan changed the shape of the education system in which she taught. When she first started teaching biology, she kept hearing the word “Biotechnology.” She decided she needed to know and understand what everyone was talking about. So she read everything she could find on the subject, took courses and visited biotech companies both regionally and nationally. She got a grant to develop a biotechnology curriculum at Omaha North high school and she did it well — recognized as the National Biotech Educator of the Year by a biotechnology industry group interested in preparing students in this fast growing field.

Vaughan was then asked by school administrators to leave her successful biotechnology program and go to the Henry Doorly Zoo to help expand the educational programs offered there by Omaha Public Schools. Vaughan rose to the challenge. Over four years, she visited schools throughout the district to explain the program and encourage students to apply. She worked to make sure that more than just GPA was used to choose students admitted to the programs and looked for better ways to measure the passion and spark that might identify the students who would be most successful. “You can’t measure a kid with numbers,” she said. She developed connections with veterinarians throughout the community who provided experiences that connect the student’s school learning to the real world. She built another successful program.

Vaughan’s latest venture, or perhaps adventure is a more appropriate word, is the development of the Air and Space Academy at Burke High School. Students who enter the academy experience a coordinated series of classes that help them learn the information required during high school while studying the interconnecting areas of powered flight and space flight. While in the Academy, students have the opportunity to learn about operations at Eppley Airfield, take part in a Civil Air Patrol chapter based at the high school, and pass the written component of the pilot’s license examination. The rocketry class that Vaughan teaches covers not only the principles of thrust and satellite orbits, but the organization and teamwork needed to accomplish complex aerospace engineering projects.

The drive to understand her subject that led her to biotechnology firms around the country also led her to a summer working with the Operations Management Team at Eppley Airfield, to membership in the Civil Air Patrol, and to a flight on board NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)— into the stratosphere. Vaughan is driven to learn about her subject and to teach from her experience. And yet she tells her students, “I am not your teacher. I am your facilitator, and I want to be your mentor.”

Not surprisingly, Vaughan’s organizational and developmental abilities have provided opportunities for her to leave the classroom and spend her time in administration. But she came to the realization that “I need the kids as much as they need me.” She knows she needs to be in the classroom.

Unlike many teachers, one of Vaughan’s favorite assignments is supervising study hall. Here she can watch and help students with the full range of abilities struggle and then grasp an idea. Every day she finds moments when tears fill her eyes when she sees a student’s efforts to grasp the subject and their joy at accomplishing a breakthrough. “When they see that you care, it really makes a difference.”

Courage in education takes many forms. LeeAnn Vaughan shows courage through her drive to experience her subject first hand and her willingness to risk failure in the development of one new program after another to meet the changing needs of her students. She is an excellent representative of the many courageous teachers in Nebraska.