Michelle Donice (PhD 2005, Higher Education Administration) teaches English and creative writing in Florida. “Teaching is Michelle’s dream job, and she loves discussing literature and teaching students how to express themselves through writing,” according to Michelle’s blog.
COE alum Carlee Escue (MEd ’07, PhD ’10, educational leadership) was appointed assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Cincinnati for the start of the 2010-2011 school year. She minored in research and evaluation methodology. To read more in the UC Educator, click here. To view Escue’s experience, awards and publications, click here.
Melissa Miller (BAE ’93, MED ’03, PHD ’07) was chosen for the Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction and Mentoring. Miller is an assistant professor of special education and coordinator of the special education-general curriculum program at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
Miller is a triple EduGator receiving three degrees majoring in special education. Her experience includes teaching at an Ocala school for 8 years and serving as a research assistant at UF.
For a full article, click here and go to page four.
Therese Dozier finds life’s purpose in teaching
By Desiree Pena
COE student-intern writer
Few can fathom the tragic circumstances surrounding Therese Knecht Dozier’s (M.ED, 1977) early childhood-and how she overcame them to become a nationally recognized educator.
She was born in Saigon in 1952 to a Vietnamese woman and German soldier who had once served Hitler during World War II. He escaped the German army and fled to French Indochina under a false identity, where he married Therese’s mother. Before Dozier’s second birthday, her mother died and her father sold Therese and her brother to a Chinese businessman. When authorities found the children, they were placed in a French orphanage where U.S. Army advisor Lawrence Knecht and his wife, Anne, adopted them in 1954. She describes this as the point at which her life “took a wonderful turn.”
“I am very conscious that my life would be totally different, in fact that I might not even be alive today, had I not been adopted. So I believe I am here for a purpose, and that I am fulfilling that purpose through my work in education,” Dozier said.
She and her brother were the first Vietnamese children adopted by U.S. citizens. Dozier’s turbulent past, though, has given her a chance to improve others’ lives rather than cloud her own.
The Knechts brought the children to Florida, where the young girl grew up as Therese “Terry” Knecht and graduated first in her class at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda.
In 1974, she received UF’s Outstanding Scholar Award with a 4.0 grade point average. Three years later, she completed her master’s degree in education at UF and in 1985 she was named the U.S. National Teacher of the Year. She also served as special advisor to U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley from 1993 to 2001. Dozier is currently the director of the Center for Teacher Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, which promotes teacher leadership to improve teaching and learning.
“My two most significant achievements were to be named Teacher of the Year and my service as the first classroom teacher to advise a U.S. Secretary of Education. In that role I led the Clinton Administration’s efforts to elevate the importance of teachers and teaching, including passage of Title II of the 1998 Higher Education Act, which resulted in the largest federal investment in teacher education in almost 30 years,” she said.
Knecht has traveled extensively around the globe and taught in Singapore where she worked with students from 45 different countries. Her lifelong achievements were acknowledged by UF in 1986 when she received the Distinguished Alumni of the University of Florida Award. In 1997 she was named as one of UF’s 47 Women of Distinction, which recognizes successful alumnae.
“Much of my outlook on life is an outgrowth of my education. So in a very real sense, becoming a teacher was my way of repaying a debt to the society that has given me so much. And of all the wonderful things I have enjoyed as an American, it is my education that I prize the most,” said Dozier.
Philip Poekert (PhD ’08)
Ph.D., curriculum and instruction, 2008, University of Florida College of Education
Poekert, a 2008 doctoral graduate of UF’s College of Education, is a clinical assistant professor in the college’s school of teaching and learning and a UF Lastinger for Learning professor-in-residence in Miami. He began his teaching career in the South Bronx as a Teach for America instructor, but today he is a leader in two UF programs in south Florida that are on the cutting edge of education reform.
Poekert, 31, directs Ready Schools Miami, which partners UF’s Lastinger Center with Miami-Dade County schools and local community groups to ensure at-risk children enter school healthy and ready to learn. He also coordinates the center’s Florida Master Teacher Initiative, an on-the-job professional development and advanced degree program in education for teachers in Miami‐Dade and across the state. Poekert recently co-authored a successful $6 million federal grant to expand the Master Teacher initiative, offering a new degree track in early childhood education. His group was one of 49 winning applicants, beating out more than 1,600 others nationwide for a share of the stimulus funds.
“This is the area where we can generate the highest return,” Poekert said. “We can literally change the trajectory of children’s lives,” said Poekert, who previously taught in public schools in Oakland, Los Angeles and West Palm Beach before pursuing his UF doctoral degree.
The National School Reform Faculty organization recognizes Poekert as a national facilitator. His research includes evaluation studies of the impact of collaborative professional development on the instructional practice at the early childhood and elementary level. He has published in several national and international journals, including Teacher Education Quarterly and Professional Development in Education.
When James Wattenbarger started school at Palm Beach Junior College in the 1930s, community and junior colleges were rare institutions, groping for a role in the academic world.
By the time Wattenbarger retired, two-year colleges were within driving distance of everyone in Florida, training thousands of Floridians for jobs and launching countless college careers – and Wattenbarger himself was the architect of that change.
Wattenbarger, UF alumnus and former COE professor, died Aug. 10 in Atlanta. He was 84.
“He created a community college system that has become a model for the rest of the country,” said Linda Serra-Hagedorn, chair of COE’s department of educational administration and policy. “Florida has one of the most successful systems in the U.S., and this is largely due to his influence.”
A Tennessee native, Wattenbarger grew up in West Palm Beach, and graduated from Palm Beach Junior College in 1941, completing his bachelor’s degree in education at UF in 1943. He served as a navigator in the Air Force — earning an Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross – before returning to graduate school at UF.
While in graduate school, Wattenbarger was tapped to provide research for a report for the legislature on the state of Florida’s junior colleges – a handful of schools that were either privately-owned or affiliated closely with a public high school. Motivated by his own positive experiences in Palm Beach, Wattenbarger took to the task eagerly.
His work on junior colleges grew into a dissertation, in which he outlined his vision for a modernized community college system, in which higher education was open to everyone, regardless of age, social class, or location. Wattenbarger proposed the establishment of community colleges within commuting distance of every Floridian, with open enrollment and flexible schedules.
The idea appealed to leaders in state education, so much so that in the early 1950s Florida began to rebuild its community college system around Wattenbarger’s vision. In 1955, Wattenbarger – then serving as a professor at the COE – was called on to head a new council dedicated to restructuring community colleges. Two years later, he became head of the new Division of Community Colleges, a title he held until 1966.
By the time Wattenbarger returned to UF, the community college system had built 16 news schools, and was in the process of merging the historically black and historically white schools that had been built during the segregation era. It was well on its way to becoming the school system we know today – which educates nearly 1 million students in degree and non-degree programs.
He remained a major presence in the community college movement after his return to UF. He chaired UF’s Department of Educational Administration and Policy and directed the Institute of Higher Education, teaching the next generation of community college leaders.
As other states began to look to Florida as a model, Wattenbarger helped them set up their own community college systems. In all, he served as a consultant or otherwise played a role in the development of community college systems in 34 states.
Wattenbarger remained in Gainesville after his retirement from UF in 1992. In 1996, Santa Fe Community College paid tribute to him by naming its student services building in his honor.
“One can only speculate about how many hundreds of thousands of students there are at UF, in other Florida institutions, and around the nation who owe their start in higher education to Wattenbager’s dream of making college truly a populist, democratic possibility,” wrote Richard Scher, a UF professor of political science, in a remembrance of Wattenbarger in the Aug. 18 Gainesville Sun.
In lieu of flowers, his family is asking people to send donations to the James L. Wattenbarger Fellowship Fund, which is for graduate students in higher education administration. Contributions can be made online or by check to: University of Florida Foundation, PO Box 14425, Gainesville, FL 32604. On the memo line, write “Wattenbarger Endowed Fellowship (Fund #11967).”
