Lizette M. Washington has been named director of the Center for Minority Teacher Development and Training At Dowling College, one of only a few organizations in the nation dedicated exclusively to attracting minority students from disadvantaged circumstances to become teachers.

Washington comes to Dowling from the South Huntington Union Free School, where she was the District Attendance Teacher, taught a third grade special education class at Countrywood Elementary School, and was an Inclusion Program Teacher for Social Studies at Walt Whitman High School. She has also served as Long Island Attendance Teachers Association President, and is a member of the New York State Attendance Teachers Association and State Education Department Commissioner's Advisory Council on School Attendance.

Active in numerous programs in the South Huntington School District, Washington coordinated such activities as the Senior Citizens Brunch and Multicultural Festival, and was District Coordinator for the Liberty Partnerships Program and ACES Program. She also serves as Coordinator of Art for the After School Program at the Heckscher Museum for grades 3 to 5 and as "Teens on the Job" School Coordinator for the Job Shadow Program, managed through One to One Long Island.

A presidential intern for the Jimmy Carter administration while earning her B.A. in sociology and B.S.W. in Social Work at Xavier University, Washington went on to earn an M.A. in Urban Studies at Trinity University as a Breckenridge Fellow, and studied Education at both Dowling College and the College of New Rochelle.

Washington is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (Sigma Psi Omega Chapter) and the Eastern Shore Chapter of the Links, Inc. Winner of an Outstanding Community Service Award from the NAACP, she is Vice President of the Suffolk County Chapter of the International Association of Minister's Wives and Minister's Widows and a United Nations NGO Representative for UNICEF.

In April, Dowling received $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Education in support of the Center for Minority Teacher Development and Training, which will operate at both Dowling's Oakdale and Brookhaven campuses. The initiative addresses the systemic and growing problem of providing skilled, technologically educated teachers to meet the national shortfall of teachers in all areas of education among economically disadvantaged communities and their public schools.

The Center is supported through a partnership with The Urban League of Long Island, Inc., Adelante of Suffolk County, Inc. and other organizations, which will work in locally under-served school districts to identify potential students for the program.