Dr. Ann Elisabeth Larson began her career at UofL in 1995 as an assistant professor while continuing her work on a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which she completed in 1998. She has taught as faculty in undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs while at the University and is a former middle and high school teacher in Kansas.
Dr. Larson's scholarly expertise is in curriculum theory/studies, teacher education and teacher development, professional development schools, English education, and social foundations of education. She was a Co-PI of a Title II, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal/state literacy grant, $254,000, for teacher professional development related to urban middle school student achievement and closing the achievement gap in literacy. Dr. Larson has also co-led two national and state accreditations of over 50 education preparation programs and lead efforts to successfully obtain a Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (KDE) Improving Educator Quality (IEQ) $500,000 grant (2013-15) for the College of Education and Human Development, which supports the implementation of a clinical model of teacher preparation at Westport Middle School, JCPS.
In 2014 while serving as Dean, Dr. Larson and others in CEHD were pleased to receive gifts from the Mary K. Oxley Foundation of $5M and University of Louisville Foundation of $2.5M to support a multi-year implementation of CEHD's clinical model of teacher and educational administration preparation in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) through the University’s Signature Partnership Initiative, Office of Community Engagement. She recently co-edited a special theme issue in the Peabody Journal of Education, Vanderbilt University, on "Clinical Partnerships in Teacher Education: Perspectives, Practices, and Outcomes.” Dr. Larson is active nationally in numerous professional associations and co-presents with colleagues and mentors students in these venues. Dr. Larson works closely with the Jefferson County Public Schools and the Ohio Valley Education Cooperative districts and schools in her administrative role as Dean.
Dr. Larson is also a professor in the CEHD's Department of Middle and Secondary Education in Teaching and Learning and has served on numerous boards and committees including the Jefferson County Public Schools Teacher Magnet Career Academy, Greater Louisville, Inc., Every 1 Reads Task Force and Education Committee member, committees of the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB), the Kentucky Department of Education Commissioner’s Accountability Steering Committee, and has worked extensively with student teaching candidates and the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program (KTIP) of EPSB. Dr. Larson serves as a consultant for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification for classroom teachers in Kentucky, as an Advisory Board member of the CEHD's Minority Teacher Recruitment Project, and served as UofL’s Commission on the Status of Women (COSW) Chair from 2012-2014. Dean Larson presently serves on the University of Louisville Community Engagement Partnership Steering Committee with West Louisville, co-chairing the committee with Ralph Fitzpatrick, UofL’s Vice President for Community Engagement, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's (AACTE) Board of Directors and Executive Committee, and is a past-president of the Kentucky Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (KACTE), a state affiliate of AACTE. In 2014, she received the KACTE Award for Distinguished Service to Educator Preparation in Kentucky.