Alumna Credits The School of Education with ‘Opening Doors’ to Opportunities

Alison Matthews ’22Ed.D., has been a business teacher in the Harborfields Central School District since 2001 and is now the Work-Based Learning Coordinator/Business Department Coordinator at Harborfields High School. Throughout her career, she has practiced real-world, project-based teaching, allowing students to learn through individual synthesis and analysis.

As the daughter of an immigrant family from Guyana, the importance of education was instilled in Dr. Matthews from a young age, and a career in teaching felt like the natural path. In 2013, she earned a certification in work-based learning, and in 2022, she earned her Doctor of Education in Instructional Leadership from The School of Education at St. John’s University. 

“The School of Education has impacted my professional journey throughout my career in the Harborfields Central School District in many ways,” she said. “The education I received strengthened my leadership skills and expanded my professional credibility. It has opened doors to mentoring, curriculum development, and instructional leadership roles, while also allowing me to contribute to Career and Technical Education (CTE) professional organizations and create business education programs and CTE pathways at Harborfields.”

As Harborfields’ Work-Based Learning Coordinator, Dr. Matthews places students in internships at various places including Drake Media Studios in Melville, NY; St. Catherine of Siena Hospital in Smithtown, NY; and Kumon learning center in Huntington, NY.  She is also the work-based learning coordinator and business department coordinator for Harborfields High School, and K-12 CTE Coordinator for the whole district.

In this role, she also launched the Career Readiness Network. The program now includes four New York State Education Department-recognized CTE pathways for students starting their junior year: Business and Entrepreneurship; Education and Child Development; Media Production; and Marketing.

Dr. Matthews was Harborfields teacher of the year in 2023 and was recently named the 2025 Business Teacher of the Year by Long Island Business Teachers’ Association.