Faculty member recognized for contributions to gifted education

A College of Education faculty member has been recognized by a statewide organization for her work in promoting equity in gifted education.

Meg Easom Hines, a lecturer in the department of educational psychology specializing in gifted and creative education, recently received the Mary Frasier Equity and Excellence Award from the Georgia Association for Gifted Children. The award was given during the organization's annual convention last month in Athens.

The award recognizes practices that promote equitable identification procedures and/or providing high-quality services to gifted students from underrepresented groups. For several years now, Hines has been part of a UGA team working with teachers at Athens' Stroud Elementary School to expand the school's gifted program.

Hines is co-director of Project U-SPARC, which helps design programs and services around creativity for low-income and culturally diverse students.

Hines also created Stroud Elementary's Community Problem Solving team, which traveled to an international competition last year after the students won at the state level. The team is returning to the international competition this year after again winning first place in the Georgia Future Problem Solving Bowl. The team members will compete in Wisconsin with their project, aimed to improve the watershed environment around their school by building a rain garden and conducting a clean-up along a creek near the school.

Hines' collaborator on projects at Stroud, professor Tarek C. Grantham, received the award in 2012. The award's namesake, Mary Frasier, was a UGA faculty member who was a nationally recognized scholar and researcher in gifted education and founder of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development in the College of Education.