Dr. Aaron Lieberman, an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at LIU Brooklyn, has just been named “Educator of the Year” by Education Update, an award-winning newspaper based in New York with a circulation of 100,000 readers including teachers, principals, and superintendents in public and private schools among other “decision-makers in education.”
Learning about the honor caught Dr. Lieberman by surprise, he admitted.
Over the spring semester Dr. Lieberman had collaborated on a book called “Tools to Help Your Children Learn Math” with Dr. Alfred Posamentier, LIU Post Professor Gavrielle Levine and Danielle Sauro. At the end of this project, Dr. Posamentier, who serves as the executive director for International and Funded Programs at Long Island University, informed Dr. Lieberman that he was going to submit his name for the award.
“I thought it was a kind and thoughtful act and I subsequently submitted the required information to the newspaper, but I didn’t think anything more of it until I received an email informing me that I’d been honored with the award!” Lieberman said.
The event took place on June 22 at the Harvard Club. “I do photographer as a hobby and I’d shot a wedding at that venue years ago,” he recalled. “What a beautiful place!”
All modesty aside, Lieberman has been rightly recognized previously for his professorial prowess when he had been selected to receive Long Island University’s “Newton Award of Teaching Excellence.”
With a clinical background, Dr. Lieberman practiced his profession in a private clinical practice and working at the Committee for Special Education in the New York City public school system, among other professional activities.
Dr. Lieberman started at LIU Brooklyn as an adjunct in 1982 and began teaching full time in 1997. Over the years, Dr. Lieberman has served as the coordinator of LIU’s graduate programs for his department at the Brooklyn Campus, Westchester Campus, and Rockland Campus.
This past April he was presented a Service Award from LIU to commemorate his years spent in the classroom.
“Teaching is my passion,” he said. “You see the light going on in someone’s eyes when they get it—that ‘ahah!’ moment—it’s a beautiful thing and what I strive for.”
Lieberman’s scholarship has focused on Interprofessional Education and Interprofessional Practice (IPP/IPE), which emphasizes integration of the knowledge and the skill set of related professions toward holistic service provision and training. He has also worked closely with speech language pathologists. His manuscript on emotional and behavioral issues in communication disorders was recently published in the American Journal of Speech Language Pathology.
His roots run deep at LIU. His father, Dr. Morris B. Lieberman, had graduated from the Clinical Psychology Program at LIU, had taught at the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy when it was a part of LIU, and had taught for many years in the psychology program and counseling psychology programs at the Brooklyn campus. His mother, Bilha Lieberman, was a graduate of the Guidance and Counseling program (as it was then called) at LIU Brooklyn. His brother, Shiloh Lieberman, who graduated from LIU Brooklyn with a B.S. as a pre-med student, was an active member of the Honor’s Program on campus and an editor of the school paper, “Seawanhaka.”
“I have a lot of connections with LIU,” Dr. Lieberman said. And many LIU students are no doubt grateful for all the ones he’s made with them in the classroom.
