SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2024: Potsdam – Laura Carbone

Laura Carbone is a passionate advocate and educator across the P-12 educational pathway. She has two amazing children that are at the center of goals to promote innovative programs and practices that will enhance the lives of students and educators every day.

Laura is currently the Director of Operations and Management for the SUNY Potsdam Watertown Extension Center over multiple joint four-year undergraduate programs with their amazing host campus partner, Jefferson Community College. Additionally, she is the Coordinator for the Certificate of Advanced Studies Educational Leadership School Building /School District Leader & the Inclusive and Special Education Advanced Studies programs, and MSED Inclusive and Special Education program coordinator. She was a former school district administrator for over 10 years in special education and academic interventions and prior to that she was a teacher both in  sixth grade, in an integrated co-teaching classroom,  and high school global history.

She graduated St. Lawrence University with a CAS in Educational Leadership, SUNY Potsdam with an MSED in Inclusive Special Education and a BA in Early Childhood/Childhood and History Education. Her areas of certification include, School District Leadership, Special Education N-12, B-6 Childhood, and History 7-12.

She has been an adjunct instructor for SUNY Potsdam since 2009, teaching a variety of courses in both the special education and educational leadership program pathways. Her online experience has been focused in the area of special education. Whether designing, instructing, or facilitating online learning with students and program faculty; her primary goal is to always emphasize the importance of sustained collaboration to maximize learner engagement and success.

All of her courses are centered around building and sustaining professional learning communities, applying UDL (Universal Design on Learning) concepts, and Constructivist Design (beginning with the end in mind approaches for task completion), wherein students have optimal learning opportunities in a scaffolded manner which intrinsically promotes synthesis and application of best practices in educational research and strategies. She is thrilled with the addition of the Lean In model of professional inquiry circles, by Sheryl Sandberg, to her online teaching pedagogy to enhance the synthesis, application and generalization of pedagogy skills to further enhance the networking of professionals in the online format.

Additionally, she is extremely proud to have worked weekly the last two years with her highly dedicated SUNY Potsdam MSED SPED program team and CCI technology, to develop a fully online graduate program that embodies adult learning theory supporting both the academic and social emotional learning of the Post-COVID Era higher education student. She is thrilled with it’s alignment with both it’s online design and alignment with the new Council of Exceptional Children Standards as a model program.

Laura is deeply honored to be presented with the Ambassador recognition for online learning and looks forward to continued learning, growing, and professional networking in the online community.