Very likely the last thing the UW College of Education's 2005 graduating class wanted to receive during their commencement ceremony was homework. But this year's Distinguished Alumni Award winner George Sugai (Ph.D. '80) was only too happy to assign a little summer reading.

"On my last day on the UW campus in 1980, I asked (College of Education Professor) Rick Neel for one piece of advice," Sugai recalled. "He told me to read Alice in Wonderland, and he was right."

Dr. Sugai knows well that educators must be prepared for life to get as curious as it did for Alice in Lewis Carroll's famous book. In just the past five years, he has made more than 90 presentations at conferences and has had more than 50 books, journal articles and chapters published. In between, he managed to serve as a professor of special education at the University of Oregon.

He credits having clear goals for his work and his future for helping him stay on track.

"Take advantage of your knowledge and profession," Sugai advises. "Try to always know where you want to be in three to five years—or at least pretend that you do!"

Preparing for the future while being ready for anything is an approach that has served Sugai well. He has worked in schools and clinics around the country. He has studied special needs education in Australia and been a faculty member at three different universities. From 1997-2005, he was a professor at the University of Oregon, serving as co-director of the University's Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. This July he assumed the Endowed Chair in Behavior Disorders and Positive Behavior Support at the University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education.

His new post is a long way, both geographically and professionally, from his first job working as a counselor at the Santa Cruz (California) Easter Seals Society's camp for multiply handicapped children. But an enduring passion for disabled children and a willingness to take a risk gave Sugai a wealth of experience that he believes no amount of training can replicate.

"Graduate students can't trust their training," he says. "They need to practice to build fluency."

Dr. Sugai's counsel on this point is hard won. Sugai realized early on in his career that he was spending too much time trying to teach his students according to his training, rather than working with them to determine how each of them would learn the most. These days he tries always to keep in mind that students are the experts on how they can best be taught, not the teacher. For Sugai, staying attuned to what students do and how they react to different approaches is an educator's best hope for success.

Sugai makes an effort to maintain a steady stream of intellectual resources outside the education profession. He believes educators need to be smart about who they hang around with; that they need to find people who are smarter, braver and more divergent than themselves. And when educators find these people, they need to be smart enough to steal what works.