During her 44-year career at the University of Miami School of Education and Human Development, Eveleen Lorton delighted in sending colleagues handwritten notes of encouragement and well-wishes.
Laura Kohn-Wood, dean of the school, recently recalled receiving one such note, which she cherishes to this day. “It is the shape of a purple butterfly and in [Lorton’s] recognizable handwriting,” Kohn-Wood said. “It starts off being very complimentary of me—just lifting my spirits—then goes into a reminder of something she needed. To me, it exemplifies what it means to be a tenacious and effective but warm and character-building leader.”
Kohn-Wood’s recollections were part of a ceremony marking the installation of associate professor Remy Dou in the Dr. Eveleen Lorton Endowed Chair for Pedagogical Practice, Innovation, and Leadership.
Funded with a generous bequest from Lorton, who passed away in 2021, the chair that bears her name is the first endowed faculty position in the Department of Teaching and Learning. As Dou remarked at the installation ceremony, carrying Lorton’s legacy into the future is “a tremendous honor and a tremendous responsibility.”
“I’m a bridge between Dr. Lorton’s past accomplishments and her future lives,” Dou continued. “This role represents a commitment to ensure that Dr. Lorton’s values and ethos continue to have an impact on teachers and learners for years to come.”
Lorton was a true pedagogical pioneer. In the 1970s, she was among the first educators to video student teachers in action so they could receive immediate feedback. She also would hand out five-minute microteaching assignments to home in on specific elements of teaching.
Throughout, Lorton’s generous, tenacious spirit uplifted colleagues and, in the words of one colleague, “made students feel as if they could be geniuses and teachers feel like they could do anything.”
In 1984, along with Zelda Glazer, a high school English teacher and director of language arts for Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS), Lorton launched what is now the University’s Glazer and Lorton Writing Institute.
A collaboration between the University and MDCPS, the institute will hold its 41st two-week summer session later this year. Fondly known to its participants by the acronym GLWI (“glee wee”), the institute offers instruction in the teaching of writing with a focus on research-backed methodology, experimentation, and personal exploration to encourage curiosity and nurture critical thinking skills in students.
Lorton also established the Rev. John and Leona Lorton Endowed Scholarship, named for her parents, for students planning careers in teaching, as well as an endowed honorarium awarded annually to a faculty member for outstanding teaching, and made an additional gift to support the work at the Glazer and Lorton Writing Institute.
Dou, the newly installed holder of the Lorton chair, whom Kohn-Wood praised as “an out-of-the-box thinker,” focuses his research on the ways everyday family interactions shape children’s identification with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Dou is the son of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants who, despite not knowing how to navigate the school system, believed fiercely in education as a pathway to dignity and possibility. He went on to become the first in his family to graduate from college and pursued a career teaching high school science because, as he put it, “I wanted to show young kids from communities like the ones that I grew up in that education could open doors for them as well.”
Early in his career, Dou was told by a mentor that reaching the students in the back of his classroom—the ones “who didn’t seem to care”—was the sign of a good teacher.
“That moment really changed me,” he recalled. “It taught me what I believe Dr. Lorton seemed to know instinctively. You can’t be a world-class teacher without world-class relationships, or without an understanding that learning and good teaching are emotional processes. It’s why this chair feels less like an honor bestowed and more like a responsibility accepted.”
Josh Friedman, senior vice president for development and alumni relations, observed that working in a very different era, Lorton “advanced a vision of pedagogy that treated teaching as an intellectual act of leadership.”
“By establishing the Dr. Eveleen Lorton Endowed Chair for Pedagogical Practice, Innovation, and Leadership, the Lorton family has ensured that her legacy is not static,” Friedman said. “It’s active; it’s evolving; and it’s entrusted to a scholar whose work reflects the same bold commitment to teaching and learning that defined her career at the University.”
The installation ceremony ended on a personal, heartfelt note, with her nephew Jon Lorton Smith recalling how Lorton’s parents taught their children how to “love well”—lessons that became Lorton’s lodestar.
“Our Aunt Eveleen loved people well and conveyed this love with her wholehearted interactions. She loved educating students and conveyed this with enthusiastic devotion. She loved the University of Miami and conveyed this as she poured her time and talent into this place,” Smith said.
“Aunt Eveleen,” he added, “closed a letter to a family member with these words, and we believe they are fitting words to each of us today: ‘I am wishing you the best today and every day.’”