UF professor receives alumni award for higher-ed teaching
Posted July 22 ,2010
Dorene Ross
Professor Dorene Ross, co-holder of a prestigious endowed professorship in UF’s College of Education, has received the inaugural 2010 Outstanding Higher Education Faculty Award for alumni from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. She received her doctorate in early childhood education in 1978 from U.Va.
Ross joined the Florida faculty in 1979 and is the current Irving and Rose Fien Professor of Education at UF. Her research focuses on improving educational outcomes for children and youth living in poverty and children otherwise disadvantaged by cultural or linguistic barriers or disabilities. She also has studied and published in the areas of teacher socialization for high-poverty schools, inclusive teacher education and whole school reform.
UF previously recognized her work with an Undergraduate Teacher of the Year Award, a Teaching Improvement Program Award and the education college’s Scholarship of Engagement Faculty Award.
A co-creator of UF's five-year ProTeach teacher-preparation program, Rossis well-known for her efforts to bring quality teaching to students living in poverty. She has worked as a “professor-in-residence” at two east Gainesville elementary schools, helping the high-poverty schools change their cultures and the teachers to develop self-evaluation methods to improve their teaching practice.
Over the past four years, she helped develop a school improvement model that is now being used in several dozen elementary schools in five Florida school districts. The strategy focuses on improving outcomes for children through teacher and principal development using coaching, collegial collaboration and inquiry to enhance the capacity of district, school and teacher leaders.
She also is part of the leadership team that initiated systemic reform efforts in elementary schools in Miami, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Ross and her UF co-researchers last year published a guide of best teaching practices–compiled from nearly 100 award-winning Florida teachers—called “Secrets of Successful Teaching,” under a grant from the Tallahassee-based Excellence in Education Foundation.
