UTeach educator honored for helping improve young students' learning skills

Thursday, Nov 13, 2025 • Greg Pederson : Contact

Leeann Snell-Burke has been making a positive difference in education for decades. A new award honors her for making a difference in the lives of at-risk students.

Snell-Burke, a master teacher in the College of Science’s UTeach Arlington program, received the HOPE Change Champion Award from HOPE Tutoring Center for her work in helping students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at an Arlington elementary school with science and math lessons through inquiry teaching. She was presented with the award at the organization’s annual Night of HOPE gala on October 5.

HOPE Tutoring Center was established in 1996 and is dedicated to helping Arlington ISD students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The program provides volunteer tutors for free, customized tutoring programs to students in grades 2-8 during the school year, and academic summer camps.

“I am very honored to receive such an award for doing something I am passionate about,” Snell-Burke said. “I love being an educator, especially a STEM educator! Seeing the difference UTeach Arlington makes in the lives of these students has been one of the great rewards of my career. HOPE Tutoring is an outstanding organization that meets the needs of the community in so many ways, and it is an honor to serve alongside them.”

The UTeach-HOPE partnership started in 2012 when UTA hosted a summer camp for HOPE students. Snell-Burke was the camp’s science instructor and devised fun and educational activities for the student campers such as timing the flow of traffic on Cooper Street from the UTA bridges to learn how to calculate speed.

“She was instrumental in establishing the camp culture that we’ve cultivated ever since, and many UTeach Arlington students have benefitted from being counselors,” said Greg Hale, UTeach Arlington co-director. “After the camp was well-established, Dr. Snell-Burke forged additional field experience opportunities for UTeach Arlington students with HOPE Tutoring during the academic year. This gift for building partnerships has been one of Dr. Snell-Burke’s greatest contributions to our program.”

In 2022 UTeach Arlington became involved with the elementary school through HOPE Tutoring. With Snell-Burke’s guidance, UTA students in UTeach’s Step 1 course taught the students inquiry math and science over seven semesters. Inquiry teaching is an active learning concept that shifts the focus from a teacher dispensing facts to students exploring questions and problems in order to construct their own knowledge.

In the inquiry model, teachers act as facilitators, guiding students as they ask questions, investigate, and analyze information. It encourages student-driven questions and active participation by students, and helps students learn how to use critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills. It emphasizes the process of discovery, rather than just the final answer.

“You will never be able to convince this educator that young students don’t want to learn. I have witnessed time and time again how successful these at-risk-students have been with learning new content through inquiry,” Snell-Burke said. “I began to keep data from the campus for 5th grade STAAR testing in math and science. Since our UTeach tutoring started, there has been a significant improvement at that campus. Their combined math and science STAAR scores increased from 33 percent to 58 percent.”

Snell-Burke has a 42-year career in education and has taught students from junior high to college. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho in 1983, she worked for 16 years in Mansfield ISD as a middle school life science teacher and high school department chair as well as a varsity soccer and cross-country coach. After spending two years as assistant principal at Azle High School, she moved to Young Junior High in Arlington as assistant principal. She earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University in 2008.

In 2010 UTA launched the UTeach Arlington program and Snell-Burke came aboard as its first science master teacher. UTeach Arlington is based on the original UTeach program at UT Austin and enables students to earn a bachelor’s degree in math or science along with secondary teacher certification within a four-year timeframe.

UTeach provides students with early and intensive field experiences in K-12 schools, the use of experienced master teachers as instructors, mentor teachers and field experience coordinators in local school districts. UTeach Arlington has produced 359 graduates in its 15 years, the majority of whom are teaching in Dallas-Fort Worth area schools.

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