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About
Fall Open House
Join us for our last Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
About
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Academics
Fall Open House
Join us for our last Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Academics
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Admission & Financial Aid
Fall Open House
Join us for our last Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Admission & Financial Aid
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Student Life
Fall Open House
Join us for our last Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Student Life
- Athletics
Dr. Laura Shelton
Assistant Professor of STEM Education
Bio
Dr. Shelton is a maker and a community-engaged scholar. As a former elementary teacher, Dr. Shelton’s teaching focuses on ways to incorporate community assets and issues relating to social justice into curriculum development in STEM and beyond. Her scholarship1 has two primary areas of focus: STEM education and the acculturation process for preservice elementary teachers.
Education
PhD, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, 2025 Graduate Certificate, Women’s Studies
MAT, Elementary Education, University of North Carolina – Greensboro, 2016
BA, Theatre Performance, Greensboro College, 2010
Research Interests / Areas of Focus
Data science education, climate change education, maker education, design-based research, arts-based research, zines, professionalism, teacher preparation, critical pedagogy, LGBTQ issues in education
Selected Publications
Shelton, L. (2024) Expanding intersectional queer history in the elementary grades. In L. Christensen & T. Marshall (Eds.) Transgender Justice in Schools. Rethinking Schools.
Shelton, L., & Alarcón, J.D. (2020). Unpacking the messiness in critical elementary education: A new teacher’s reflection. In B. Evans-Santiago (Ed.), Mistakes We Have Made: Implications for Social Justice Educators. Myers Education Press.
Alarcón, J.D., Francisco, B., Nix-Stevenson, D., & Shelton, L. (2021) Understanding water as social, political, and natural: Enacting integrated multicultural literacy as transformative teaching and learning. Volume 2: Multicultural Curriculum Transformation in Literacy and Language Arts. Foundations of Multicultural Education Series.
Selected Presentations
Shelton, L. (April, 2025) Towards an Art-Integrated Dialogic Spiral: Humanizing Research with Diverse Preservice Elementary Teachers. [Conference presentation]. American Educational Research Association. Denver, CO, United States.
Shelton, L. & Weiland, T. (April, 2025) “I See Data Everywhere!”: Using Community Asset Mapping To Develop Critical Place-Based Statistics Curricula. [Conference presentation]. American Educational Research Association. Denver, CO, United States.
Shelton, L. (November, 2024). “Leave politics out of it”: Preservice elementary teachers’ conceptions of politics in the classroom. [Conference presentation]. American Educational Studies Association. Greenville, SC, United States.
Shelton, L. (November, 2023). A genealogical exploration of gender, sexuality, and professionalism in teacher education. Round Table Session [Conference presentation]. American Educational Studies Association, Louisville, KY, United States.
Shelton, L., Ngyuen, K., Izaguirre, A., Alarcón, J., Arbona, C., Olvera, N. (January, 2023). From BOUNCE to CYEMOVN: Curriculum design that integrates STEM, culture, food, and movement [Conference presentation]. Hawaii International Conference for Education, Honolulu, HI, United States.
Awards and Honors
Winner, Gayest and Greatest: Favorite Female LGBTQ Post-Secondary Educator/Teacher, Outsmart Magazine (Fall 2024)
