Rebecca Canges

Rebecca Canges is an associate professor with the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She began her career in education as a one-on-one behavioral interventionist for children with autism. After earning her Education Specialist Teaching Credential, she became a special education middle school teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) in Southern California. During her time as a teacher she was nominated for the Disney American Teacher Award and was the first recipient of the LBUSD District Employee of the month. While working on her Masters in Special Education, Canges focused on research in the area of effective teaching practices for English Language Learners (ELLs).

She worked for many years as the research assistant for Jana Echevarria, Ph.D., and examined the effectiveness of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol Model (SIOP Model) in supporting the educational needs of ELLs in the content area. Later, while working as a full time lecturer in the Special Education Credential program at California State University, Long Beach. Canges earned her doctorate from the University of Southern California in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in teaching in multicultural societies. Her doctoral work focused on methods that general education teachers can implement to support the social success of students with disabilities included in their classroom. Canges has taught at MSU Denver for the past seven years. She was the recipient of the 2016 Teaching Excellence Award from the MSU faculty senate and currently serves as the department chair for Special Education, Early Childhood and Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education.