Faculty Title Adjunct Faculty Education Ph.D., University of Minnesota Email Address llemanski@mcad.edu Laura Lemanski is an experienced educator and scholar specializing in literature for children and young adults, literacy education, and teaching and learning methodologies. She earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Minnesota, where she focused on harnessing the power of stories to deepen understanding of diverse human experiences. Laura's work is centered on fostering inclusivity through children's and young adult literature and improving students' text access, comprehension, and engagement with disciplinary and multimodal literacies. Laura has presented her work at the national and regional levels, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council of Teacher of English (NCTE) and the Minnesota Center for Reading Research (MCRR). Her current project explores the affordances of stories in understanding and navigating intrapsychic loss and ambiguous grief.