Associate Professor Stephen Pape with one of the revolutionary graphing calculators that is changing the way mathematics is taught.

Since the early 1990s, a humble little computing device has caused a quiet revolution in the way mathematics is taught in America’s middle and high schools.

For generations, algebra students painstakingly plotted points to sketch the graph of an equation on graph paper, a process that often produced more eraser marks than answers. With the advent of the graphing calculator – a souped-up version of the hand-held calculator once scorned by mathematics teachers – students are able to plot, adjust and even play with equations with relative ease.

Now a team of education researchers is taking the device to the next level. UF College of Education Associate Professor Stephen Pape and his colleagues are providing algebra teachers around the nation the opportunity to learn how to implement in-class wireless networks linking all their students’ calculators with the teacher’s computer – a network that can turn the once-solitary process of ciphering into a social activity.

“When the teacher can see every student’s answer projected on the screen in real time and provide instant feedback, an algebra class becomes a true learning community,” Pape said. “If 60 percent of my class gets a particular problem wrong, we can stop what we’re doing and
discuss it then and there.”

Pape is one of the lead investigators on a $3 million, four-year U.S. Department of Education study that has placed new calculator-networking technology in the classrooms of approximately 100 algebra teachers and 25 physical science teachers in 28 states. Pape and several faculty members from The Ohio State University (where Pape once taught) and the Better Education Foundation are examining the effect that technology is having on the learning and achievement of more than 10,000 students.

“The graphing calculator has changed the approach to teaching in a lot of Algebra I classrooms, but this technology takes it a step farther,” Pape said.

First introduced in the mid-1980s, the modern-day graphing calculator is a fully programmable handheld computer that allows students to plot equations and show their results instantly, run instructional programs designed to teach specific mathematics skills, and even dabble in programming on their own. At a relatively low cost of $125 per unit, who cares if the little computer looks dorkier than a pocket protector?

Now, enter a device called the Navigator, newly released by calculator-maker Texas Instruments. Navigator is a wireless networking system that allows teachers to see what each student is doing on his or her graphing calculator in real time – and display those results on an overhead projector. The system also allows students to wirelessly download quizzes and other activities.

“The teacher, and the whole class, can see a graph of the students’ responses to a question posed in class. This provides the teacher with far greater knowledge of the class’ understanding of a concept – and the teacher can show every student’s answer plotted out on the same screen,” said Pape. “Only the teacher knows who is getting the answers right and who is getting them wrong.”

The networking technology, which costs about $3,900 per classroom allows a teacher to instantly know when a significant number of students have arrived at an incorrect answer – and it allows students to see that they are not alone in making mistakes in mathematics.

The project is about three-fourths through its four-year run, though Pape says initial results suggest the networked calculators are indeed improving performance in many classrooms.

“Students are more engaged, because their answers will be on the board instantly,” he said. “Even though they can make mistakes anonymously, they still feel pressure to get it right.”

Pape says this sort of classroom networking holds promise for many subjects.

“English teachers and history teachers are now exploring ways to use this system in their classrooms,” he said. “This really is a powerful technology.”

— Tim Lockette

When the University of Florida’s College of Education held its commencement ceremony Aug. 9, the graduates included a handful of expert teachers who are already working in some of the most-challenged schools in South Florida.

They are UF’s first class of education specialist degree (Ed.S.) graduates from Teacher Leadership for School Improvement, or TLSI, a groundbreaking distance education program that allows teachers in high-poverty schools in South Florida to hone their classroom skills with the help of professors at UF, hundreds of miles away.

“We are so excited to see this first group of TLSI students graduate,” said UF Assistant Scholar Alyson Adams, who coordinates the program. “The impact they have already had on their schools is amazing. Almost all of them have already assumed leadership roles in their schools and in their educational communities.”

TLSI is a distance education program that encourages teachers to apply their research skills to the problems in their own classrooms, develop their leadership skills, and become advocates for positive change within their own school systems. Studying online, and also with the assistance of a UF “professor-in-residence” embedded in the classroom, the teachers learn to transform their classrooms into more effective learning environments.

A total of 25 students will graduate from TLSI this semester, including 17 master’s degree recipients and eight candidates for the Ed.S., a professional specialist degree in education that goes beyond the master’s level. Of the eight Ed.S. graduates, one teaches in Miami, and the other seven are teaching in Immokalee, home to a large community of migrant farmworker families.

For Alicia Rosales—herself a former migrant from a single-parent family with seven children—the Aug. 9 commencement will be a milestone in a long educational journey. When Rosales was a child in Immokalee, students with Latino names were automatically enrolled in a separate set of courses designed for second-language learners of English—with no testing to determine their actual learning needs.

“Of course, it was a disaster,” she said.

As an adult, Rosales would go on to work for Collier County schools herself, holding various staff positions before becoming an elementary school teacher. She says the research skills she picked up as a TLSI student have helped her become a better advocate for her students. When her school proposed that courses be rescheduled in a way that cut into her students’ time for literacy instruction, she conducted research to help her make the case against the change.

“This class taught me that if we don’t speak up for social injustices against our children, who will?” Rosales said.

Immokalee High School reading coach Shirley Rainwaters, in her TLSI studies, learned to use ethnography—a method that turns students into amateur anthropologists, studying their own communities—to find out what her students knew about the world, and wanted to know. She used that information to build a social studies curriculum around her students’ needs. Rainwaters, who chose TLSI because the nearest university is 35 miles from her home, said she enjoyed the program’s combination of online instruction and face-to-face learning with a professor-in-residence.

“I believe the online format leads to richer conversations among the students in the class because you give more thought to a written response than a verbal one,” she said. “The professor-in-residence builds community among teachers from different schools.”

Even with the convenience of the online format, juggling a schoolteacher’s responsibilities with the demands of graduate school can be tough. Like most education majors, the TLSI students found that it helped to keep their eye on the end result of their efforts—improving the lives of students.

“Each day, I greet the familiar faces of parents bringing their precious children to school, humbly respecting the sacrifices they have made in order for their children to occupy a seat in my classroom,” said Donna McAvoy, who teaches at Lake Trafford Elementary, which has the largest percentage of immigrant students of any school east of the Mississippi River.

“Their investment in their children’s future strengthens my resolve on a daily basis,” she said.

For more information on TLSI, contact Alyson Adams, at UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning, at 352-392-0726 ext. 295.

Would it bother you to know that your physician smokes cigars and likes to do “keg stands”? That your gynecologist was a member of a group called “I Hate Medical School”? That your urologist is a fan of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”?

That is exactly the sort of information many people share on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. According to a new University of Florida study, many medical students are sharing far too much.

“College has traditionally been a time in life when non-normative behaviors are considered OK,” said Dr. Lindsay Acheson Thompson, an assistant professor of general pediatrics at UF’s College of Medicine. “I’m not sure I would want to have a permanent, public record of everything I did 10 years ago, but many of our students are creating just such a record, and they need to understand the problems this may cause.”

Dawson

Thompson and several researchers from the UF’s colleges of Education and Medicine did a review of the Facebook sites of 362 UF medical students and residents and found that a significant portion of them were publicizing personal information most physicians would never share with their patients.

The study was published this week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The researchers looked up more than 800 medical students by name on Facebook, finding that 44 percent of them (for a total of 362) had profiles on the social networking service.
Only 37 percent of those students had made their Facebook entries private — the most obvious safeguard against revealing too much personal information on the Web.

The Facebooking students seemed to be aware of the personal safety issues inherent in social networking: only 6 percent revealed a home address. However, students were looser with lifestyle information including sexual orientation (revealed by more than half of Facebook-using students), relationship status (revealed by 58 percent of students) and political opinions or positions (revealed by half of students).

But the numbers tell only part of the story. The researchers randomly selected 10 Facebook profiles for a more in-depth analysis, looking for hard-to-quantify items that patients or colleagues might find objectionable. Seven of the 10 included photographs in which the subject was drinking alcohol, and some form of excessive or hazardous drinking was implied in as many as half of those photos.

Three of the 10 students in the sample had joined groups that could be interpreted as sexist (“Physicians looking for trophy wives in training”) or racially charged (“I should have gone to a blacker college”).

Facebook is full of bluster and trash talk, and college-age users may feel that these items are not to be taken seriously. Yet patients and future employers, the researchers say, may not have quite so strong a taste for irony.

“Doctors are held to a higher standard,” Thompson said. “There are stated codes of behavior that are pretty straightforward, and those standards encourage the development of a professional persona.”

The medical profession isn’t the only career that requires young people to develop a professional identity. The medical school study was modeled closely on an earlier study that looked at the Facebook use of future elementary-school teachers studying in a college of education. Generally, the education majors’ postings were relatively tame, but the study found that many future teachers shared information to an unsafe degree. For instance, almost half of those with public accounts posted their home address on Facebook.

Associate professor Kara Dawson — one of several College of Education researchers who worked on both studies — says the goal of this line of research is not to discourage Facebook use but to make students aware of the demands of a professional persona. There is some evidence that students do begin to understand the impact of Facebook as they approach graduation. The study found that while 64 percent of medical students had public Facebook accounts, only 12 percent of resident physicians did.

The researchers say they have ample anecdotal evidence to show that medical schools across the nation have a similar problem.

“When we presented this at the Pediatric Academic Societies in May, we were overwhelmed with requests from pediatric program directors who wanted to know how to get their students to be more careful on Facebook,” said co-author Erik Black, a doctoral student and fellow at the College of Education. “This is a global problem, and ours is one of the first studies to address the problem head-on.”

The researchers note that awareness of this problem is rapidly growing, and many UF medical students have cleaned up their online presence significantly in the 12 months since the data for the study were collected. The researchers would like to take this awareness a step further, encouraging students to use social networking sites to enhance their professional identity.

“Social networking is a powerful tool,” Dawson said. “Both teachers and doctors can use networking to their advantage — but they need to create sites that reflect their professional identity.”

UF Educational Psychology Professor John Kranzler, a former associate dean at the University of Florida College of Education, is returning to executive staff as the college’s new Interim Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development.

Kranzler

Kranzler, who started a one-year appointment in the position on July 1, will direct the college’s Office of Educational Research, which is charged with supporting and developing sponsored research at the college. In addition to the traditional responsibilities of his position—which include oversight of the college’s tenure process and faculty mentoring—he will also manage the tasks that were previously associated with the college’s Office of Graduate Studies. The Office of Educational Research and the Office of Graduate Studies were merged due to budget cuts in May.

A member of UF’s educational psychology faculty since 1990, Kranzler is author of the textbook Statistics for the Terrified and has written a number of refereed articles on the nature, development, and assessment of human cognitive abilities. From 2003 to 2005, he served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Research and Technology, a position similar to the one he holds now. For the past two years, Kranzler has directed the college’s School Psychology program.

Kranzler succeeds Professor Paul Sindelar, who is returning to his teaching and research in special education.

Students who identify themselves as “very religious” often have better educational outcomes than their less religious counterparts, according to a study by Research Director Ana Puig and Associate Professor Mary Ann Clark.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Adolescents who consider themselves “very religious” are generally more likely to finish college than their less devout counterparts, according to a University of Florida study.

But before you write off a nonreligious teen as one not bound for college, take note: Researchers still aren’t sure why “religiosity” and college graduation are connected.

“For most religious communities represented in our study, there is a strong correlation between religiosity and degree attainment,” said Ana Puig, research director and affiliate faculty member in counselor education at UF’s College of Education. “However, correlation does not mean causality.”

Puig and UF counselor education professor Mary Ann Clark joined UF alumnus Sang Min Lee in an analysis of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, a massive, federally funded study of student outcomes that began 20 years ago. Lee, who is now a professor at Korea University, was the principal investigator on the project.

The study, which appeared late last year in the journal Counseling and Values, won the Biggs-Pine Award for Writing Excellence this spring from the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling.

The researchers used data from a survey of 11,551 eighth-grade students in 1988—a survey that asked a number of lifestyle-related questions, including questions about religious faith—and compared it with information collected from the same students eight years after they graduated from high school.

They found that among most religions or denominations, students who self-identified as “very religious” in eighth grade were far more likely to have, or be on their way to getting, a college degree—when compared with students who said they belonged to a religious faith, but identified as “not religious” or “somewhat religious.”

The effect was most pronounced in the Muslim community, with “very religious” Muslim students nearly four times as likely to attain a degree as “nonreligious” Muslims. All other groups in the study showed a statistically significant increase in degree attainment among “very religious” students.

The effect was negligible or nonexistent in groups with high across-the-board degree attainment, including Jewish students, Episcopalians and students who identified as belonging to the broad group of “Eastern religions.”

When the results were broken down by ethnicity, the researchers found that a high degree of religiosity was related to degree attainment in white, African-American and Hispanic students. Lee noted that religiosity was not a significant factor in degree attainment in the Asian-American population.

The researchers say relationship between religiosity and degree attainment may be due to certain positive behavioral effects related to participation in a religious group. They cite previous studies that link religious participation to reduced delinquent behavior—a factor likely to affect educational outcomes.

They also note that some parents of academically successful children cite religious values as a factor in their success. Clark has been conducting interviews with parents of secondary school students for an unrelated study on gender and school achievement, and she says the topic of religiosity comes up quite often.

“I’ve been surprised at how often parents brought up religion as a factor in their child’s academic performance, even though we weren’t even asking about it,” Clark said. Even so, it is possible that good grades and religious involvement stem from the same root cause, such as a specific parenting style, the researchers said. The researchers also note that the survey suffers the same flaws as any other study using self-reported data, and that the results may reflect a tendency, among high-achieving students, to portray themselves in a positive light.

While the study shows outcomes of students who identify with a religion and still describe themselves as “nonreligious,” it does not reflect the religious outcomes of atheists or agnostics. While the survey allowed students to select “none” as their religion, respondents in that category were too few to be included in the analyses. The same was true for Mormon respondents and those who identified as “other Christian” and for Native American students.

However, the study does offer insights that teachers and counselors can use in improving student performance, Clark said. Because religious differences are often too hot a topic for the classroom, Clark said, educators may feel inclined to steer conversation away from the topic of faith. However, it is important that educators listen to what students are saying, and acknowledge the role religion may play in their school lives.

“Students and parents are saying that religion is an important part of their academic lives, and we need to listen to that,” Clark said.

— Tim Lockette

The distinction between academics and the “real” world was always an artificial one. Scholars are real people living in the everyday world, with all its social obligations. And good scholarship always depends on observation of what’s really happening out there in the world.

Nowhere is research more real than at a college of education. Our “academic” goals include preparing teachers for the demanding world of the K-12 classroom, finding solutions for the learning problems of struggling children, and showing school administrators how to manage crises and budget crunches.

For the College of Education, the schools and communities of North Central Florida– and across the state—serve as our laboratory. Our professors and students partner with community educators and leaders on projects designed to meet pressing educational and social needs in the local schools and neighborhoods, whether that involves preparing teachers for high-poverty schools, counseling struggling families in our free Couple and Family Clinic, or marshalling the resources of a community’s child welfare agencies.

These efforts and many other community outreach activities are highlighted in “Colleges with a Conscience,” a new Web feature designed to highlight UF’s many efforts to sustain a better quality of life in our community. You can see the COE’s “Colleges with a Conscience” site here, or go here to see some of the things other UF colleges are doing.

If you know of other efforts that should be highlighted on this page, please contact the COE News and Publications Office at news@coe.ufl.edu.

by Don Pemberton

(Editor’s Note: Gloria Jean Merriex, a UF alumna and inspiring fifth-grade mathematics teacher, died of a brain hemorrhage on May 16, 2008. Merriex was well-known in Alachua County for her innovative teaching methods, which enabled students from a high-poverty school to achieve mathematics scores that were among the highest in the state.To learn more about her, read The Gainesville Sun’s news obituary, published May 21, 2008.)

First time visitors to Gloria Merriex’s classroom quickly discovered that they were witnessing a gifted maestro at work.

Tall, lean and graceful with a confident countenance, Merriex conducted her fifth grade math classroom at Duval Elementary Fine Arts Academy on the east side of Gainesville as if it were a great orchestra. Towering over her young protégés, the master teacher worked off of a script that was deeply embedded in her brain but was unknown and unseen to a casual observer.

With eyes firmly fixed on their teacher, the students were led through a dazzling array of exercises and activities that had no resemblance to any other math classroom in the world. Singing, dancing, reciting, writing and constantly moving, Merriex’s pupils unraveled the mystery of mathematics.

Merriex, a gifted pedagogue, ingeniously merged music, movement and math into a brilliant mosaic that immersed her students in an exciting new world of learning where the goal was total and absolute mastery of mathematics.

A typical classroom lesson might start with a group sing-along to a hip hop song Merriex had composed that contained essential math facts and formulas. Next, her students might pantomime geometric symbols, followed by an original dance, also choreographed by Merriex that provided visual representations of math facts and formulas. Merriex, always one step ahead of her students, would quickly change pace, returning the pupils to their seats to work on their exercises in their journals. Soon, they were up again, writing out their math problems on the board, explaining their reasoning and problem solving to the class.

Counterintuitive and unorthodox, Merriex believed in teaching the most complex and demanding mathematics principles first, then slowly and methodically adding new skills and concepts. Every day she circled back to what had been learned and taught since the first day of school, always vigilant for slippage and gaps in learning.

By the time the FCAT test appeared at their doorstep, her students were ready to conquer it. Their confidence was well-placed. Seldom did they disappoint. Year in and year out, her classes had some of the highest FCAT math scores in the state. Last year, they achieved the greatest math gains of any fifth-grade class in Florida.

Merriex’s results were even more extraordinary when viewed from the context of the under-resourced community in which her students lived. Keenly aware that more than 95% of her students came from low income homes, she never saw them as poor. Instead, she thought they were rich in potential and was determined to mine that potential and turn it into gold.

In time, word got out about the talented math teacher at Duval Elementary. It was no surprise to her colleagues when she won the teacher of the year award for Alachua County.

Merriex’s fame spread further when her tenacious principal, Dr. Leanetta McNealy, engineered one of the most substantial educational turnarounds in the state, guiding Duval Elementary School from a state grade of “F” to an “A.” Gloria became the public face of a talented and passionately dedicated group of faculty members that had, against incredible odds, created a powerful learning culture that integrated the fine arts into the curriculum, causing math, reading and writing scores to soar.

Soon the outside world discovered the amazing teacher from Gainesville. Scholars, principals, doctoral students and leaders of philanthropic foundations from around the state and country visited her classroom to see the master teacher at work.

She and her students became much in demand conference keynote presenters. Within the past year, Merriex took her class to demonstrate their math prowess, in lively and entertaining performances, that showcased her teaching strategies to audiences in Miami, Tampa, Atlanta and Orlando. They never failed to receive standing ovations.

UF College of Education researchers wrote extensively about the secrets to Gloria Merriex’s success. Not only had Merriex created an innovative curriculum and utilized cutting-edge teaching strategies, she also deeply connected with her students’ culture, community and aspirations. That connection led to evening math classes for parents, Saturday and summer classes for the children, and incorporating the student’s everyday life into the math lessons. Most importantly, she empowered her students, giving them confidence to tackle the most daunting intellectual challenges.

Suddenly and sadly, it all came to an end last week when Gloria Merriex, fondly known as Jean to her family and loved ones, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage after a full day of teaching. Put on life support, she died at Shands Hospital.

When she died, Gloria Jean Merriex was on the verge of national, if not global, acclaim.

She had recently been awarded a prestigious grant from the Kellogg Foundation, one of the foremost philanthropic entities in the world. Two days prior to her death she met with collaborators at the UF Lastinger Center for Learning to discuss the Kellogg project that would share her work with a state and national audience by publishing her curriculum, developing training seminars, underwriting an extensive tour schedule and laying the groundwork for a documentary about her life and practice.

In a separate grant, the Smallwood Foundation awarded the UF Digital Worlds Institute funding to install high tech equipment and cameras in her classroom so that her teaching could be beamed out to classrooms, researchers and teachers around the world.

As word got out of Merriex’s passing, overwhelming grief overtook her friends, family and fans in Gainesville and around the state and country. All who knew her were deeply affected by their loss, particularly since she was just months away from achieving the national recognition that she so richly deserved.

But fame was never Merriex’s goal. From her first day of teaching to her last day on earth, this virtuoso teacher wanted to orchestrate a life of immense goodness and leave a legacy that would live on in the hearts and minds of her students.

Indeed, Merriex leaves a powerful mark on this world. In her students, Merriex instilled a love of learning and confidence in their innate abilities. To adults, she demonstrated the power of human beings to transform lives.

The world is a better place because of Gloria Jean Merriex. She is greatly missed.

Don Pemberton is the director of the Lastinger Center of Learning at UF’s College of Education

Gene Hall, a former University of Florida education professor and, internationally-recognized scholar on the topic of change in K-12 schools, will present a seminar at Criser Hall June 19. Titled “Implications of leader style on the success of change implementation,” the seminar will share insights from Hall’s research on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, a framework that describes, explains and predicts probable teacher behaviors throughout the school change process.

This model has been the subject of research for more than 35 years and is featured in Hall’s latest book, Implementing Change – Patterns, Principles and Potholes.
 
The seminar will be held from 10-11:30 a.m. in Criser Hall room S201A. The seminar is open to anyone interested.

For additional information, contact Brian Myers at bmyers@ufl.edu

New course helps Gator athletes learn and teach leadership in middle-school mentoring program

What do 6-foot-6-inch Florida football lineman Phil Trautwein and sixth-grader Nick Nixon have in common?

Gator lineman Phil Trautwein (right) was one of several UF students who mentored middle school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School as part of a new course on leadership at the UF College of Education.

A lot of mutual admiration and encouragement, and, hopefully, plenty of learning from each other.

Trautwein and seven other University of Florida student-athletes are joining some of UF’s brightest non-athlete students to act as mentors to a group of middle-school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the university’s nearby K-12 laboratory school. The mentoring is part of a College of Education course designed to let some of UF’s most accomplished students—both on and off the playing field—share what they know about leadership.

“To compete in collegiate athletics, you have to pick up a number of really valuable skills of self-motivation and leadership,” said UF doctoral student Matt Ohlson, who created the course. “There’s a lot of overlap between those skills and the skills you need to be a school leader. I wanted to find a way for athletes and educational administration students to share their skills with each other, and pass them down to young people.”

Ohlson, a former elementary school teacher now working toward a Ph.D. in educational administration and policy, played basketball as an undergraduate at Brandeis University.

Ohlson recognized that when he was on the court, he was not just learning how to shoot foul shots and dribble around defenders. He was developing leadership skills and self-confidence that would be useful off the court as well. Ohlson often wondered why there were not more courses and educational opportunities available that teach student-athletes to bring their on-court skills into play through their roles as community leaders. Later, as a UF graduate student in educational leadership, he found that his classmates — most of them future school administrators — were getting exactly the sort of education athletes needed: classes in leadership, goal-setting and motivating others.

While doing research for UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning, Ohlson also observed a level of collegiate sports fanaticism he’d never seen in New England. On some days, nearly 80 percent of the students would be wearing Gator gear. To Ohlson, students’ admiration for Gator athletes seemed like a powerful force just waiting to be tapped.

Thus was CAMP Gator born. Short for Collegiate Athlete Mentoring Program, CAMP Gator is a course, offered at both the graduate and undergraduate level, that unites Gator athletes and outstanding non-athletes to share their knowledge about leadership. Students in the class study respected books about organizational leadership, including Stephen R. Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and develop their own philosophies of leadership. They then take their combined knowledge to P.K. Yonge to mentor at–risk middle-school kids who show potential leadership abilities. The mentoring program and class were offered for the first time in January.

The class encourages UF student-athletes to participate in community volunteer activities, and to develop leadership skills for professional sports, education or almost any career they choose.

“What sets our program apart is its leadership focus. The objective is to find your talents and bring out the best in others,” said Ohlson.

The mentoring pairs meet once a week to talk about leadership and goals, but also to hang out, encourage and listen to each other. Trautwein, an offensive lineman for the Gators, does exactly that with his new buddy—sixth grader Nick Nixon. Trautwein tells Nick how he manages his time wisely to balance school and football. Nick said that helped him learn how to juggle his many activities and projects, such as starting a petition for sixth-graders to have lockers and playing on a local basketball team.

Trautwein (who, as a Gator senior captain, received a medical redshirt after suffering a stress fracture in his right foot and will return to play on the 2008 squad) says he has also learned from his time with Nick. “I’m a role model, and whatever I say or do could help him become a better leader,” the 300-pound left tackle said.

Another P.K. Yonge student, seventh-grader Jordan Lewis, made noticeable improvements after just one session with UF mentor Katie Hurst, according to Jordan’s teachers.

“Middle school is a mish-mash,” said PKY Assistant Principal Russ Froman. “This program helps the kids feel like they fit in with someone,” Froman said.

During their first session, Jordan and Hurst paired up on an ice-breaking activity and got to know each other better.

Hurst, a UF public relations major, wrote in her class blog on the CAMP Gator web-site: “The activity was helpful in generating topics to talk about, but after the first few questions we were talking like new friends. Each of us was sharing funny stories and laughing.”

Hurst posts her thoughts about her time with Jordan on the class blog, and Jordan can respond or write her own posts. Jordan said she has already learned that she needs to apologize when she misbehaves and not stay mad at the world — a significant change in attitude, say her teachers.

“We hope CAMP Gator is the beginning of a long relationship between P.K. Yonge and student mentors from the University of Florida,” said Froman. “Every one of these kids has incredible leadership potential and the goal is just tapping into that.”

— Anwen “Wendy” Norman and Tim Lockette

Allison Dempsey

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Spreading rumors and gossiping may not cause bruises or black eyes, but the psychological consequences of this social type of bullying could linger into early adulthood, a new University of Florida study shows.

In a study of 210 college students, UF researchers discovered a link between what psychologists call relational victimization in adolescence and depression and anxiety in early adulthood, according to findings published online this month in the journal Psychology in the Schools. Rather than threatening a child with physical violence, these bullies target a child’s social status and relationships by shunning them, excluding them from social activities or spreading rumors, said Allison Dempsey, a doctoral student in the UF College of Education and the study’s lead author.

“Even though people are outside of high school, the memories of these experiences continue to be associated with depression and social anxiety,” said Dempsey, who graduated from Columbine High School in Colorado one year before the 1999 school
shooting there and now studies school prevention programs. “It was interesting to see these relationships still continue to exist even though they are in early adulthood now and in a completely different setting.

“I’m hoping this study will help shed light on the fact that this is a real problem and continues to be a real problem after students leave school.”

To uncover the relationships between social bullying and loneliness, depression and anxiety, researchers surveyed college undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 25 and asked them to recall their experiences from high school. They
were also looking to see if having friends mitigated some of the effects of bullying and if there was any relationship between gender and the severity of psychological symptoms, said Eric Storch, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the UF College of Medicine and a co-author of the study.

“About 20 years ago people thought of bullying as very physical,” Storch said. “As a result people thought guys did the bullying, and that it wasn’t really a big experience for girls. The problem is that isn’t actually true. There are different types of aggression.

“Boys do tend to be more physical, but both sexes engage in relational victimization. We wanted to see if gender affected strength of the relationship between depressive symptoms and victimization.”

But researchers found no gender difference in the link between this type of bullying and depression. They also discovered that having friends or other positive social relationships didn’t lessen rates of depression and anxiety in adulthood, a finding that surprised them, Dempsey said.

For some children, having friends and positive support can help make them more resilient to the slings and arrows from bullies, Storch said. But other children take the words and abuse more to heart and begin to believe what’s being said about them.

“Those types of negative thoughts are actually believed to be at the core of things like depression and anxiety,” Storch said. “Behaviorally what starts happening is you avoid interactions and situations that could be quite positive for you.”

Currently, there are few prevention or intervention programs that focus specifically on relational victimization, in part because it’s tougher to pinpoint and stop, Dempsey said.

“If a child tries to punch someone or kick someone, there’s evidence of that happening,” Dempsey said. “There’s a definite aggressor and a definite victim. When it comes to spreading rumors and gossiping, that’s a lot more difficult to prove who’s doing it. And it’s harder to provide consequences.”

Dempsey said she hopes this study and others will help other researchers and psychologists design programs that can help stop this form of bullying in schools.

“I think many people have the belief that victimization is a normal rite of passage in childhood,” Storch said. “While it certainly does happen to most kids, it’s not acceptable. And while I think it would be difficult to completely curtail it, by reducing it you’re going to help someone a tremendous amount to not have to go to school and be plagued by this environment of being tortured day in and day out.

“This isn’t a normative experience and we need to do something about it and recognize that not doing something could affect children who are really rising stars.”

Wendy Troop-Gordon, an assistant professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, said understanding how past relational bullying affects people in adulthood is an important step forward for research in this field.

“Turning 18 is not a magical age when you leave all of these experiences behind,” said Troop-Gordon, who is not affiliated with the study. “People do seem to carry these experiences with them.”

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Media Contact

April Frawley Birdwell, afrawley@ufl.edu, 352-273-5817

Teachers Teaching Teachers

More than 400 K-12 educators and prospective teachers across North Central Florida converge upon P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School in Gainesville every spring for the annual Teaching, Inquiry and Innovation Showcase, where they share with each other what they have learned individually about school improvement through the process of teacher research.

The showcase is staged by the Center for School Improvement at the UF College of Education. Co-sponsors are P.K. Yonge (UF’s laboratory school), the North East Florida Educational Consortium (NEFEC), and UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning.

Instead of traditional professional development relying on outside “experts,” this novel professional-development showcase features an emerging “inquiry-oriented” approach in which practicing educators and UF education students collaboratively assess their own teaching practices and share new knowledge among themselves. Essentially, it’s “teachers teaching teachers.” Education research suggests this collective networking approach generates more meaningful change and improvement in teaching and learning in classrooms—and allows schools to improve from within.

To view a television news report (from Gainesville’s ABC affiliate, WCJB TV-20 ) of this year’s Inquiry Showcase, held April 18-19, 2008, please click here.

VOL. 3, ISSUE 7

Apr. 15, 2008

You’re reading coE-News, an electronic newsletter produced monthly during the academic year by the College of Education News & Communications Office to keep faculty and staff up-to-date on college news and activities. Click here to download a PDF version of this edition. You will need a PDF reader to view this document.

GOT NEWS? We want to hear it. Submit individual or unit news and calendar events of collegewide interest to news@coe.ufl.edu for publication consideration. All submissions must be in writing or via e-mail and must include contact information for follow-up questions.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

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DEAN’S MESSAGE

Research funding. Research funding. Research funding.
Our peers rate UF’s College of Education higher than any other education college in the state — yet we dropped in the U.S. News and World Report rankings this year. A look at the rankings data will tell you why: research funding. While UF excels at doing a lot with a little, says Dean Catherine Emihovich, our relative lack of research dollars is beginning to have a bite. In her April message, Dean Emihovich explains how we will find the funds to match our talents. (more)

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TOP STORIES

UF alumnus/Florida Commissioner of Education to speak at Spring 2008 commencement
Eric J. Smith, the COE graduate who reformed district-level school systems in North Carolina and Maryland before becoming Florida’s Commissioner of Education, will be the featured speaker at the college’s Spring 2008 Commencement for bachelor’s degree recipients May 3 at the Philips Center for the Performing Arts. For more information on the ceremony, go here.

Clark named 2008 Graduate Teacher of the Year
Her students describe her as genuine, candid and caring. Her research gets to the heart of one of most perplexing mysteries in education today—gender differences in learning. Small wonder that Mary Ann Clark, an associate professor in Counselor Education and B. O. Smith Research Professor, has been selected as the University of Florida College of Education Graduate Teacher of the Year for 2008. (more)

Ferdig named UF Research Foundation Professor
Associate Professor Rick Ferdig, an expert on virtual schooling and one of the leaders in the new movement to harness the power of video games in the classroom, has been awarded a University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship. (more)

K-12 teachers, administrators to share research in Inquiry Showcase
How do you get students to care about the course content and not just the grade? Will pre-writing strategies help first-graders with writing anxiety? How do you keep your high-performing students on task in classroom discussions about literature? Teachers from K-12 schools across North Central Florida have done research on these and dozens of other real-world dilemmas of the classroom. On April 18-19, those teachers (some 400 of them) will converge on Gainesville to present their results to each other at the annual Teaching Inquiry and Innovation Showcase, co-hosted by UF’s Center for School Improvement and P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. For more information about the showcase, go here.

“Go-to” coworkers win COE Staff Member of the Year Awards
COE faculty and staff members in Norman Hall have long known Libbie Richardson and Ric T’Felt as their “go to” people for some of the thorniest problems in college administration. Now COE staff have made their appreciation official by selecting both Richardson and T’Felt for this year’s Staff Member of the Year Awards. (more)

Banquet to honor educators for public-minded scholarship
Some of North Central Florida’s most committed teachers, school administrators and education professors will be honored for their impact on the community in the College of Education’s Scholarship of Engagement banquet April 17 at the UF Hilton Conference Center. (more)

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NEWS AND NOTICES

Students, faculty offer 27 examples of “What’s Good in Education” in contest
Last month, coE-News asked you to look beyond the bad news—budget cuts, bureaucracy and all—and write on the topic “What’s Good in Education?” The results were fantastic: 27 tightly-written, well-reasoned essays from students and faculty who have seen our schools up close and have come away with hope for the future. Responses ranged from the deeply philosophical to the minutely detailed, from news-you-can-use to heartbreaking classroom narratives. Choosing a contest winner was difficult, and the overall submissions were so strong, we decided to post all of them on the Web—including the winning entry. Click here to see who won the $500 first-place prize, read all the entries, and make your own judgment.

SAGE symposium to showcase graduate student research
Faculty, staff and students have until April 25 to register for the SAGE Symposium, the annual summer event in which the college’s graduate students present their research. Sponsored by the Student Alliance of Graduates in Education, the event will be held June 6 in the Norman Terrace Room. Admission to the event is free and lunch will be served. To register, send an e-mail to SAGE@coe.ufl.edu with “Symposium Registration” in the subject line.

Students use graffiti in fight against domestic violence
Long before there was a blogosphere, there was the wall. High-traffic areas such as the 34th Street wall and the 13th Street tunnel have long been Gainesville’s de-facto free expression zones, where anyone could paint a message that everyone can see. In early April, students in Counselor Education Professor William Conwill’s undergraduate course on domestic violence took their message to the 13th Street pedestrian underpass, covering a large swath of the passageway with anti-violence slogans of their own creation.

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FACULTY/STAFF HONORS/APPOINTMENTS

Ferdig to edit new journal on video games and learning
Associate Professor Rick Ferdig (STL) has been invited to become the first editor of The International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations—a new journal that will be among the few peer-reviewed publications in the growing field of video game studies. (more)

COE researchers win Biggs-Pine Award for religiosity study
Does your religion, and the amount of effort you devote to it, have any effect on your eventual educational outcome? Assistant Scholar Ana Puig and Associate Professor Mary Ann Clark recently won the Biggs-Pine Writing Excellence Award for a study that explores that question. Titled “The role of religiosity in postsecondary degree attainment,” the paper summarized the complicated results of a look at data on thousands of individuals, their religious beliefs, and their likelihood of finishing a bachelor’s degree. The paper appeared in the October 2007 issue of Counseling and Values, the journal of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVC), which sponsors the Biggs-Pine Award. Puig accepted the honor on behalf of herself, Clark and co-author and UF alumnus Sang Min Lee of Korea University March 28 at the annual conference of the American Counseling Association.

Snyder appointed to federal review panel for early childhood research
Patricia Snyder, the David Lawrence Jr. Chair in Early Childhood Studies, has been appointed to the Early Childhood Education Scientific Review Panel at the U.S. Department of Education’s primary research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences (or IES). During her three-year appointment, Snyder—who is known nationally for her own research in early childhood issues—will collaborate with colleagues on peer review of research funded by IES.

Dixon named ‘Young Emerging Leader’ in cross-cultural counseling
Associate Professor Andrea Dixon received the 2008 Young Emerging Leader Award from the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD) at the annual conference of the American Counseling Association in Honolulu in March. In addition to her research into the role of “mattering” as a counseling tool, Dixon conducts research on gender and ethnic minority identity development, cross-cultural competence, and multicultural counseling.

Mendoza to co-chair 2009 AERA section on faculty, teaching and learning
Assistant Professor Pilar Mendoza (STL)—one of the dozens of UF faculty members who presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in New York City in March—has been asked to co-chair AERA’s Division J (higher education), Section 3 (faculty, teaching and learning) at the organization’s 2009 meeting in San Diego. The position means Mendoza will oversee the review process of the proposals submitted to Section 3 and provide programmatic recommendations to the Division J Chair about the proposals selected to be part of the 2009 AERA Conference Program

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STUDENT AWARDS AND HONORS

Mathematics educator receives UF Graduate Student Teaching Award
Doctoral student Emily Peterek, who teaches a mathematics education course in the Unified Elementary ProTeach Program, has been selected for a university-wide Graduate Student Teaching Award. According to professors in the School of Teaching and Learning, Peterek does an excellent job of modeling the best methods for teaching mathematics to young students, promoting critical thinking about mathematics, and reflecting on her own teaching. “The excellence of Ms. Peterek’s teaching is clearly evident in her dedication to preparation, implementation and analysis of her teaching,” said Professor Tom Dana, director of the School of Teaching and Learning.

Homeless work earns counselor education student a Multicultural Counseling Award
Doctoral student Michael Brubaker assembled a group of his fellow counselor education students for a three-hour counseling session with residents of a Gainesville homeless shelter—and found that the counselors were much more open to working with homeless people because of the interaction. This pilot study helped Brubaker earn the first Dr. Daya and Mrs. Usha Sandhu Multicultural Counseling and Diversity Student Research Award. (Pictured here are, from left, Assistant Professor Cirecie West-Olatunji, Brubaker, Usha Sandhu and Daya Sandhu.) (more)

UF honors Yacco with Multicultural Student Award
COE doctoral student Summer Yacco has been selected for a Multicultural Student Award, presented annually to a small number of UF students across campus. While pursuing her doctorate in counselor education (on the school counseling track), Yacco has helped UF students learn to manage their own inner pressures as a teacher of the undergraduate elective course Stress and Anxiety Management. A graduate assistant in various graduate-level courses, Yacco has also supervised master’s students in clinical experiences, and has presented her work at conferences. This fall, she hopes to intern with the counseling coordinator for Alachua County Schools.

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PUBLICATIONS/PRESENTATIONS

COE professors write book on ‘top 10’ of professional development communities
Professor Nancy Dana and Associate Professor Diane Yendol-Hoppey are known across Florida for their efforts to turn K-12 schools into communities of inquirers, where teachers improve their own practice by researching classroom problems and teaching strategies. Now the two COE professors are sharing their strategies for developing inquiry-based professional development communities in a new book from Corwin Press and the National Staff Development Council. (more)

Alliance presents best practices at Toronto conference
The UF Alliance program was selected to participate in the Best Practices Gallery at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation’s “Neither a Moment nor a Mind to Waste” conference. The conference, held April 6-10 in Toronto, focused on strategies for broadening access to higher education for underrepresented students. For more information go to: http://www.neitheramoment.com/eng_rfp.html.

COE professor’s textbook goes into fourth edition
It’s difficult to keep a textbook up-to-date when the topic is education finance. As portions of the economy go through boom and bust cycles, schools can go from not-quite-feast to famine in a single year. COE Professor R. Craig Wood is doing his part to keep up: he recently completed the fourth edition of his textbook Money and Schools. Wood, co-director of the UF’ Center for Education Finance and director of the national American Education Finance Association, has worked with several states as a consultant on their education finance systems, and his textbook has been adopted by colleges across the country.

Presentations

Behar-Horenstein, L. S. (March, 2008). The critical thinking skills toolkit. Presented to the Change and Curriculum Innovation Group of the American Dental Educational Association. Dallas.

Behar-Horenstein, L. S. and Mitchell, G. S. (March, 2008). Faculty experiences in a professional development seminar. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Dental Education Association, Dallas.

Garrett, M. T. and Torres Rivera, E. (2008, February). Opening session: Bringing the natural elements of relation to life in group work: A Native American Perspective. Invited presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, FL.

Goodman, R. D., West-Olatunji, C. A. and Mehta, S. (2008, March). “Advocacy and outreach in Southern Africa: Using critical consciousness to engage in social justice,” Poster session presented at the International Counseling Psychology Conference, Chicago, Illinois.

Herrera, Susan W. and Hagedorn, L.S. (March 26, 2008). Presented at AERA conference in New York, Assessing Global Competence and Global Consciousness: Measuring the Impact of Internationalizing the Curriculum.

Mendoza, P. (2008). How Doctoral Socialization Shapes the Academic Culture. Symposium: Expanding models of doctoral student socialization. The 2008 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York City

Mendoza, P., Kuntz, A. and Berger, J.B. (2008). The effects of market forces on faculty work in science and engineering. The 2008 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York City (research paper)

Mendoza, P., Mendez, J.P. and Malcom, Z. (2008). Financial accessibility in community colleges: Assessing the impact of Oklahoma’s Promise program vs. the Federal Pell grant and Stafford Loans. The 2008 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York City.

Molina, B., Garrett, M. T., Schmidt, B., Madwid, R. (2008, February). Closing session: Honoring the circle of life, love, and harmony. Invited presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, FL.

Oliver, B., Archer-Banks, D., Melendez, D., Maxis, S., Primack, M., and Basallo, J. (April 2008). Enhancing College Access for Poor Minority Students: A Perspective from a Leading American Research University. Toronto, Canada.

Oliver, B., Archer-Banks, D., Melendez, D., Maxis, S., Primack, M. and Basallo, J. (April 2008). Enhancing College Access for Poor Minority Students: A Perspective from a Leading American Research University. Toronto, Canada. Neither a moment nor a mind to waste: Strategies for broadening Access to Post-secondary Education International Conference.

Peabody, D. and Behar-Horenstein, L. S. (March, 2008). Beliefs and instructional practices among secondary teachers within selected high- and low-performing high schools. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Thomas, V. and Garrett, M. T. (2008, February). Best practices guidelines: Examining the role of diversity in group work. Panel presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, FL.

West-Olatunji, C. A., Roysircar-Sodowsky, G., Goodman, R. D., West, C. A. C. and Brooks, M. (2008, March). “Culture centered disaster outreach: Working with AIDS survivors in southern Africa,” Paper presented at the American Counseling Association Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Publications

Behar-Horenstein, L. S., and Amatea, E. S. (2007). Organizational paradigms, school leadership and change: Contributions from Constantine’s theory. Educational and Society, 25, 27-49.

Behar-Horenstein, L. S.(2008). A Critical Thinking Skills Toolkit. An interactive website created for the American Dental Educational Association. 81 pages plus 4 videotapes.

Garrett, M. T. (2008). Culturally-alert counseling with Native Americans. In G. McAuliffe (Ed.), Culturally-alert counseling: A comprehensive introduction (pp. 220-254). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Garrett, M. T. (2007). Nuwati: Native American medicine, healing and the sacred way of being. In A. Eisen and G. Laderman (Eds.), Science, religion, and society: History, culture, and controversy (pp. 654-664). Armonk, NY: Sharpe.

Goodman, R. D. and West-Olatunji, C. A. (2008). Transgenerational trauma and resilience: Improving mental health counseling for survivors on Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 30, 121-136.
Lee, S., Puig, A. and Clark, M.A. (2007). The role of religiosity on postsecondary degree attainment. Counseling and Values 52 (1), pp. 25-39.
Rameau, P., Louime, C. and Behar-Horenstein, L. (2007). A plan for the creation of a community college system in developing countries: Case study Haiti. European Journal of Social Sciences, 5, 104-120.

Tasso, K. and Behar-Horenstein, L.S. (2008). Attributes of patient-physician interactions in a teaching hospital. Hospital Topics, 86, 21-28.
West-Olatunji, C. (2008). Equal Access, Unequal resources: Appreciating cultural, social and economic diversity in families. In E. Amatea (Ed.). Building culturally responsive family-school partnerships: From theory to practice (pp. 144-168). Thousand Oaks, CA: Allyn and Bacon.

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IN THE NEWS

A recent sampling of “media hits” from the College of Education:

The Gainesville Sun—Dean Catherine Emihovich (03/29/08)—Dean Emihovich was quoted in a story on this year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate schools. She noted that the COE’s drop in rankings was probably caused by a change in how the college formulates its research expenditures and the retirement of several senior faculty members that has resulted in the loss of significant research funding. The Independent Florida Alligator also covered the story.

Inside Higher Education –UFCollege of Education (04/07/08)—Sherman Dorn, an education professor at the University of South Florida, mentioned UF’s drop in the U.S. News rankings in an editorial. Dorn suggested that the rankings would be more accurate if U.S. News looked at the quality of dissertations coming out of each college. You can read the piece here.

Inside Higher Education—Doctoral candidate Chris Mullin, Educational Administration and Policy (04/08/08)—Reporting from the convention of the American Association of Community Colleges in Philadelphia, the online education magazine covered Mullin’s recent presentation on rising tuition in community colleges—and community college administrators’ response to it. You can read the story here.

The Independent Florida Alligator—Professor and Director Tom Dana, School of Teaching and Learning (03/18/08)—Dana was quoted in a story on Florida PROMiSE, the new $5.9 million mathematics and science education initiative launched jointly at UF, the University of South Florida and the University of Miami.

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CALENDAR

APRIL 17
Peterson Death Education Series
Living and Loving Fully in the Face of Death and Loss: Facilitating Relational Resilience
Froma Walsh
8:30 a.m.- 4 p.m., UF Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, Century A

APRIL 17
Scholarship of Engagement Banquet
6:30 p.m., UF Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, Ballroom
Contact: jmount@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext: 250

APRIL 17
COE Distance Education Showcase
1-3 p.m., Norman Terrace Room

APRIL 18-19
Fourth Annual Teaching, Inquiry, and Innovation Showcase
Savannah Grande (Evening of April 18)
P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School (Morning of April 19)
Contact: Nancy Dana at ndana1@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext. 299

APRIL 24
Elluminate Advanced Techniques
12:15 p.m.—1:30 p.m., room G518

APRIL 26
SAS Programming Course
9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
See http://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/educational-research/ for more information
Contact: Cynthia Wilson Garvan, cgarvan@ufl.edu

MAY 1
Podcasting in Higher Education: Current Trends and Applications
12:15—1:30 p.m., room G518

MAY 3
UF Advanced Degree Commencement
9 a.m., Stephen C. O’Connell Center

MAY 3
Distinguished Educators Luncheon
Noon, Reitz Union, room 283
Contact: jmount@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext: 250

MAY 3
COE Baccalaureate Commencement
6 p.m., Center for the Performing Arts

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QUICK LINKS

UF: www.ufl.edu
College of Education: education.ufl.edu
coE-News: Publications
Education Times magazine: Publications

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coE-News is produced by:
College of Education, University of Florida
Dean’s Office/News & Publications
Dean: Catherine Emihovich (cemihovich@coe.ufl.edu)
Director: Larry Lansford (llansford@coe.ufl.edu)
Editor: Tim Lockette (Lockette@coe.ufl.edu)

Correspondents:
Wendy Norman, Copy Editor
Marta Pollitt, P.K. Yonge (mpollitt@pky.ufl.edu)

COE faculty and staff members in Norman Hall have long known Libbie Richardson and Ric T’Felt as their “go to,” people for some of the thorniest problems in college administration. Now COE staff have made their appreciation official by selecting both Richardson and T’Felt for this year’s Staff Member of the Year Awards.

Both Richardson and T’Felt were presented with their awards at the Staff Appreciation Luncheon March 20.

Libbie Richardson, an accountant in the Business Office, is known to staff members throughout the college as the guru of all things financial. Whether you are wondering how to get a purchase order number, trying to navigate PeopleSoft, or trying to work out a sticky question about the proper use of a purchasing card, Richardson seems to always have a well-researched answer on hand. In letters of nomination, fellow staff members praised Richardson for training them on important tasks and technologies, responding quickly to any and all requests for help, and being “one of the most organized people I’ve ever worked with.”

If Richardson is COE’s in-house sage on business matters, then Ric T’Felt, senior programmer in the Technology Office, is the resident oracle of computing at Norman Hall. Fellow staffers are accustomed to running to him whenever they are mystified by e-mail slowdowns, PC/Mac compatibility problems, upgrades to existing software and questions about how to get rid of that annoying “your mailbox is over its limit” message. (Hint: archive your e-mail.) In their nomination letters, co-workers cited T’Felt’s willingness to work during lunch or after hours to solve emergency problems, his patience and calmness, and his creative approach to problem solving.

Doctoral student Michael Brubaker is the first recipient of the Dr. Daya and Mrs. Usha Sandhu Multicultural Counseling and Diversity Student Research Award. Shown here are (from left) Assistant Professor Cirecie West-Olatunji, Brubaker, Usha Sandhu and Daya Sandhu

Doctoral student Michael Brubaker assembled a group of his fellow counselor education students for a three-hour session with residents of a Gainesville homeless shelter—and found that the counselors were much more open to working with homeless people because of the interaction. This pilot study, plus his research on Native American healing traditions and his work with drug-addicted homeless people in Jacksonville, have earned Brubaker the first Dr. Daya and Mrs. Usha Sandhu Multicultural Counseling and Diversity Student Research Award.

Brubaker traveled to Honolulu to receive the award, which was presented March 28 at the annual conference of the American Counseling Association. The award was created this year by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development, a division of the ACA, in honor of Daya Sandhu, a University of Louisville counselor education professor.

"Daya Sandhu is one of the pillars of research in multicultural counseling," Brubaker said, "And I’m honored to receive this award."

Brubaker has worked with Seeking Treatment or Recovery — a Jacksonville project which offers addiction treatment services to chronically homeless people—assisting with an evaluation of the STAR’s programs.

Recently, he began working on homeless issues closer to home, bringing a group of counselor education students to St. Francis House, a local homeless shelter, to meet with homeless clients, St, Francis House staff and UF professors, and discuss ways to provide counseling services to homeless clients. He evaluated the students after the experience, and the pilot study revealed that after visiting St. Francis House, students were more willing to work with homeless clients and less likely to attribute their housing condition to personal deficiencies.

Brubaker has also worked with Assistant Professor Michael Garrett on an article on Native American healing traditions and how they might be useful in counseling, and has taught an undergraduate course on alcohol and drug abuse.

The latest US News & World Report rankings of America’s Best Graduate Schools of education have just been released, and the news for our college was rather disappointing. This year, we were ranked 53rd, and even more disconcertingly, we placed behind three other education colleges in Florida—USF, FSU and the University of Miami—all of which tied at 45th. While we can take some comfort in the fact that two UF programs are still nationally ranked in their specialties, Counselor Education (No. 3) and Special Education (No. 4), and that our peer assessment scores were actually higher than the other colleges in the state, we must recognize that other colleges have now caught up to us, and may continue to remain ahead if we do not make some fundamental changes.

Reviewing the criteria, it is now clear that the greatest discrepancy in the rankings occurred in the area of research expenditures. Faculty and students may find this discrepancy puzzling, because we have steadily increased the number of funded grant proposals in the past year; in fact, we now have over $23 million in funded research projects. However, the actual amount spent in a given year may be far less, and this is why our total was so much lower than our state peers. One explanation is that they have many funded centers that operate on yearly state contracts, which raises their annual research expenditures higher than ours.

Obviously, the rankings do not capture all the positive aspects of our college, and they fail to acknowledge all the exciting initiatives currently in place to prepare outstanding educators, help schools improve, and contribute to the quality of education in this state. At the same time, we cannot ignore their public relations value in terms of students making decisions on where to attend graduate school, and for this reason, we will need to concentrate our energies this coming academic year on identifying areas where we can improve our research capacity.

One area that will receive increased attention is to secure more state contracts for one-time expenditures, as well as working with other units across campus to help them manage the assessment portion of their research grants. The Office of Educational Research just recently received funds from the Division of Sponsored Research on campus to develop a new evaluation service to assist PIs across campus with meeting their assessment needs. This new service, which will be known as CAPES (Collaborative Assessment and Program Evaluation Services), is designed to provide researchers with access to applied statisticians, program evaluators, survey methodologists and data analysis programmers to help them prepare rigorous program evaluation plans for their grant proposals.

In addition, OER will continue to work with COE faculty to identity several thematic areas where large, multi-unit, multi-disciplinary proposals can be submitted for major funding. One example is the area of early childhood studies, which not only involves multiple programs within our college, but also has the potential to attract faculty from developmental psychology; family, youth and community sciences; nursing; and pediatrics to collaborate on projects designed to address the needs of young children and their families.

In closing this column for the academic year (as our traditional summer hiatus for publishing coE-News approaches), I want to end on a positive note amidst all the gloom of budget cuts and declining rankings, and mention the recent writing contest we held to ask COE and PKY faculty and students to respond to the topic, “What’s good in education.” We received over 27 entries, including one from a practicing educator (and graduate student in our online degree program) in Miami. The winning entry, along with selected others, are to be featured on our Web site this week with a link on our home page.

Even as we grapple with what seem to be intractable problems, it’s extremely important to remind ourselves of why we do the work we do, and I think you’ll find the winning entry to be a heartwarming testament to the power of education to change lives for the better. Our college is strong and vibrant, and next year I anticipate that we will rise again in the rankings as we continue to make significant contributions to educational issues and concern across this state and beyond.

— Dean Catherine Emihovich

Mary Ann Clark

Her students describe her as genuine, candid and caring. Her research gets to the heart of one of most perplexing mysteries in education today.

Small wonder that Mary Ann Clark, an associate professor in Counselor Education and B. O. Smith Research Professor, has been selected as the University of Florida College of Education Graduate Teacher of the Year for 2008.

Clark is best known to the public for her research on the puzzle that is male academic underachievement. For most of American history, male students outperformed female students—no great surprise, given that teachers often saw male students as the only ones who would go on to college and careers. In our more egalitarian age, however, boys are falling behind. For the past two decades, boys have slid increasingly behind girls in academic achievement—not just in America but in other countries around the world. Clark is one of the lead investigators on a multi-year study that is looking at male underachievement in the United States, England, Australia and Korea.

Her students praise her for encouraging them to take an active role as researchers in this and other of Clark’s research projects . Clark asks her students to collect data in schools, includes them on e-learning with researchers abroad, and asks them to present results with her at conferences.

"A class never passes when students are not involved or do not learn something new," said doctoral student Summer Yacco. "(Dr. Clark) is the kind of professor I would one day hope to be."

Clark will be presented with the Graduate Teacher of the Year Award at the college’s May 3 baccalaureate commencement.

VOL. 3, ISSUE 6

Mar. 17, 2008

You’re reading coE-News, an electronic newsletter produced monthly during the academic year by the College of Education News & Publications Office to keep faculty and staff up-to-date on college news and activities. Click here to download a PDF version of this edition. You will need a PDF reader to view this document.

GOT NEWS? We want to hear it. Submit individual or unit news and calendar events of collegewide interest to news@coe.ufl.edu for publication consideration. All submissions must be in writing or via e-mail and must include contact information for follow-up questions.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

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DEAN’S MESSAGE

Working together as champions for early learning readiness
Beneath the headlines about war and the economy, there are troubling trends emerging that could affect the next generation of preK-12 students. Child poverty is on the rise. The infant mortality rate—a primary indicator of the wealth and living conditions of a population—is climbing again after decades of decline. In her Dean’s Message for March, Dean Catherine Emihovich explains what the College of Education is doing to meet the problem head-on. (more)

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TOP STORIES

COE joins $5.9 million effort to bolster math and science education
UF is teaming up with two other top Florida universities to launch Florida PROMiSE, a multi-million-dollar effort to prepare teachers to meet the state’s tough new standards in science and mathematics. The move comes as the COE begins a renaissance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. (more)

Bondy named new director of School of Teaching and Learning
Professor Elizabeth “Buffy” Bondy, known around the state for her work to turn around the fortunes of high-poverty schools, will be the next director of COE’s School of Teaching and Learning, Dean Catherine Emihovich announced last week. (more)

COE scholars in force at AERA conference
For years, the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association has been a hotbed of new, exciting, research-based ideas about teaching. At this year’s conference, to be held in New York City March 24-28, UF faculty and students will once again be a major presence, participating in 66 presentations or panel discussions on a wide range of topics including: teaching in diverse settings, the effects of “ubiquitous computing” in the classroom, response-to-intervention approaches to special education and more. For a complete list of UF presenters, click here, select “search the preliminary program” and enter “University of Florida” into the search field.

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NEWS AND NOTICES

Death education lecture series resumes April 17
Death is a subject people often don’t like to talk about, much less study— but our aversion to discussing the topic can lead to profound suffering for those who have lost a loved one. On April 17, the College of Education will host a day-long lecture event with Froma Walsh, the Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor Emerita at the University Chicago and creator of the “Family Resilience Framework,” a research-based system for helping families cope with end-of-life dilemmas and bereavement challenges. The event is the latest installment in COE’s groundbreaking Peterson Death Education Series, one of the few lecture series dedicated to end-of-life issues. The event will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the UF Hilton Conference Center. For more information, click here to read news release about the workshop, or send questions Ana Puig in the College of Education at anapuig@coe.ufl.edu or 392-2315, ext. 235. To RSVP for the event, contact Rosie Warner at rwarner@coe.ufl.edu.

Win $500 in “What’s Good in Education” writing contest
Everything you read, see and hear about education lately tends to focus on doom and gloom. Perhaps it’s time to remind ourselves—and others—that there’s still a lot that is good in education. To bring out a little of that good, the College of Education is hosting the “What’s Good in Education” writing contest. COE faculty, staff and students are invited to submit entries of no more than 450 words celebrating the things our school system does right. The best entry will receive a $500 stipend (funded by charitable contributions) for use toward books, tuition, travel or other school-related expenses. The winning essay will be published as a “guest column” in the upcoming issue of Education Times, the COE alumni magazine, and posted (along with other entries) on the COE Web site. Submit entries by noon, March 20, to news@coe.ufl.edu. Click here for more information.

Successful COE food drive continues into summer
Before the winter holidays, the COE Staff Council asked the college for help in collecting food for needy families in North Central Florida. You responded, and the Staff Council delivered hundreds of pounds of food just in time for the holidays. In 2008, the need is still there—and the Staff Council is continuing its food drive into the summer months. Please bring your donations of canned and non-perishable food to Elaine Green in the E
ducational Psychology office 1403 Norman Hall at any time between now and June 30.

Celebrate the 1950s at Staff Appreciation Luncheon March 20
What do Sandra Dee, James Dean, Norman Bates, the Mouseketeers, Joseph McCarthy and Ed Wood have in common? They’re all pop culture icons from the 1950s—and they’re all people you can be at this year’s Staff Appreciation Luncheon, to be held 11:30 a.m. March 20 in the Norman Courtyard. Come dressed as your favorite character from the age of beatniks, bobby socks and the Bomb — and enjoy free burgers, fries and hot dogs. See who gets this year’s Staff Member of the Year Awards. No need to RSVP, just be there”¦ or be square.

Russian teachers say “privyet” (hi) to COE
The College of Education welcomed a delegation of Russian teachers in a wide variety of disciplines—from mathematics to world artistic culture—who visited the College of Education in February as part of an eight-day tour of Alachua County. The tour was sponsored by the Library of Congress Open World program. In addition to their stop at Norman, the group visited local K-12 schools. To find out what they thought of American curriculum, check out The Gainesville Sun‘s coverage of the visit here.

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FACULTY/STAFF HONORS/APPOINTMENTS

Brownell honored as top reviewer by AERA
Professor Mary Brownell has been named one of the “top 10 reviewers” by the American Educational Research Journal/Social and Institutional Analysis, the American Educational Research Association’s journal for scholarship on political, cultural, social and economic issues in education. AERJ editors cited Brownell not only for her willingness to take on reviewing projects with a short deadline, but also for reviews that displayed “deep understanding of the field of research and a compassionate voice.” Even the authors Brownell rejected, AERJ editors say, often wrote back to express their appreciation for her constructive criticism. Brownell will be honored for her achievement at the AERA annual meeting in New York City on March 24.

Ohana award goes to West-Olatunji in Counselor Education
Assistant Professor Cirecie West-Olatunji in Counselor Education will receive the Ohana Award from Counselors for Social Justice at the annual meeting of the American Counseling Association March 26-30 in Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to her counseling work in southern Africa and post-Katrina New Orleans, West-Olatunji was chosen for the honor because of her scholarly reputation and her long history of speaking out on social justice issues in counselor education.

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STUDENT AWARDS AND HONORS

Doctoral student gets Golden Apple
Nicole Bien, a Gulfview Middle School special education teacher and COE doctoral student, is one of this year’s recipients of the Collier County Education Foundation’s Golden Apple Award. Given annually to only six of the 3,000 teachers in Collier District Schools, the Golden Apple is highly respected among Collier County educators and parents. Bien will officially accept the award in a televised ceremony to be held in May. Bien is a student in Project EXCEL, a new COE degree program created to prepare a new generation of leaders in special education administration.

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PUBLICATIONS/PRESENTATIONS

Hagedorn, higher education doctoral students will guest-edit major publications
Professor Linda Serra Hagedorn, chair of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy, will work closely with two of her higher education Ph.D. candidates as they join her in guest co-editing two major publications on community colleges. Christopher Coogan will join Hagedorn as a guest-editor for an issue of The Journal of College Student Retention. This special edition will focus on retention in community colleges. Doctoral student David Horton will join Hagedorn as co-editor of an issue of New Directions in Community Colleges with a focus on community college athletics.

Ponjuan to present at ASHE workshop
Educational Administration and Policy Assistant Professor Luis Ponjuan has been invited to present his research on faculty retention at the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Equity Publications Workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., in June. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the workshop is one of the activities of the Institute on Equity Research Methods and Critical Policy Analysis, which was founded to develop a core group of scholars with the skills to study racial and ethnic equity in higher education. Ponjuan also co-presented a commissioned paper for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education in Miami. The paper titled “The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher education” was presented to higher education leaders interested in reversing the declining rates of Latinos participating in higher education.

Presentations and Workshops

Garrett, M. T., & Torres Rivera, E. (2008, February). Opening session: Bringing the natural elements of relation to life in group work: A Native American Perspective. Presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Hagedorn, L.S. (2008, March) Latino Student Access and Success: The Community College View. American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Latino/a Student Success Institute. Miami.

Hagedorn, L.S. (2008, March) Evidence of Change in Danville Virginia: Evidence from the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count Initiative. New York City.

Hagedorn, L.S. (2008, February) Student Success: Can we Decipher the Formula? Presentation to the administration and faculty of the Antelope Valley Community College. Lancaster, CA.

Hagedorn, L.S. (2008, February) Using Transcript Data to Answer Policy Questions. Presentation to the Community College Transfer Initiative and the National Association of System Heads. The Education Trust, Washington, DC.

Puig, A., Lenes, E., & Garrett, M. T. (2008, February). Experiential Integration of Creativity into Counseling and Supervision. Presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Tate, K., Brubaker, M., & Torres Rivera, E. (2008. February). Group Therapy for Homeless Clients: A Humanistic, Resource-Focused Approach. Presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Torres-Rivera, E., & Garrett, M. T. (2008. February). U-no-le-hi: Joining the Four Winds Together through Effective Group Work. Presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Specialists in Group Work, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Torres-Rivera, E., Parham, T., D’Andrea, M., West-Olatunji, C., & Daniels, J. A
. (2008, February). Initiating the NIMC’s Project: Continuing the National Discussion of Race, Justice, and Peace: The Role and Function of Counselors, Psychologists and Other Mental Health Professionals. Town Hall conducted at the Annual Winter Roundtable on Cultural Psychology and Education, New York City.

Publications

Torres-Rivera, E., Phan, L. T., Garrett, M. T., Roberts-Wilbur, J., & Schwartz, E. (2007). Comparing the color of fear and evolution of a group: A pilot study. Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 41, 1-6.

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DISSERTATION DEFENSES

Students, faculty and staff are invited to attend the following dissertation defense. Please RSVP if you plan to attend:

Assessing the Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services in Urban Florida School Districts
Doctoral candidate: Myrna Allen
10 a.m., March 19, 290 Norman Hall
RSVP to: David Quinn: dquinn@coe.ufl.edu

Assessing the Development of Campus Safety Policy in the Community College Following the Virginia Tech Tragedy
Doctoral candidate: Jennifer Kerkhoff
10 a.m., March 25, 290 Norman Hall
RSVP to: Dale Campbell, dfc@coe.ufl.edu

International Graduate Students: Choice of Majors and Academic Performance
Doctoral candidate: Jia Ren
2 p.m., March 20, 1331 Norman Hall
RSVP to: Linda Serra Hagedorn, Hagedorn@coe.ufl.edu

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IN THE NEWS

A recent sampling of media hits from the College of Education:

San Francisco Examiner — “AT&T Foundation Grant” — (02/22/08) Associate Professor Rick Ferdig’s study to evaluate the effectiveness of various methods of distance education, funded by a grant from the AT&T Foundation, was mentioned in a story in the online edition of The San Francisco Examiner. The story also ran in the online edition of the The (Gulfport, Miss.) Sun-Herald.

Bradenton Herald — “Florida PROMiSE” — (03/03/2008) The new mathematics and science education initiative, done jointly by UF, the University of South Florida and Florida State University, was the subject of a story in the Herald.

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CALENDAR

MARCH 17

Monday Morning Coffee: It’s never too early to start your proposal, Part III, with Paul Sindelar, Ana Puig & Cyndi Garvan
Open to all COE faculty.
10 a.m., Norman Terrace Room
Contact: Rosie Warner: rwarner@coe.ufl.edu; 392-2315, ext 234

MARCH 20

COE Staff Awards Luncheon
11:30 a.m. Norman Hall Courtyard
Contact: jmount@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext: 250

MARCH 24-28

American Education Research Association Conference
New York City

MARCH 27

“Workload Management Strategies for Online Educators”
12:15 p.m., Room G518

APRIL 2-5

Council for Exceptional Children Annual Convention
Boston

APRIL 5-6

Florida Fund for Minority Teachers, Inc.
12th Annual Recruitment and Retention Conference
Rosen Plaza Hotel
Orlando

APRIL 14

Monday Morning Coffee
B.O. Smith Professors’ Annual Report w/Kristen Kemple & Mary Ann Clark
Open to all COE faculty.
10 a.m., Norman Terrace Room
Contact: Rosie Warner: rwarner@coe.ufl.edu; 392-2315, ext 234

APRIL 17

Peterson Death Education Series: “Living and Loving Fully in the Face of Death and Loss: Facilitating Relational Resilience”
Froma Walsh
8:30 a.m. – 4 p.m., UF Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, Century A
RSVP to: Rosie Warner: rwarner@coe.ufl.edu; 392-2315, ext 234

APRIL 17

Scholarship of Engagement Banquet
6:30pm, UF Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, Ballroom
Contact: jmount@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext: 250

APRIL 18-19

Fourth Annual Teaching, Inquiry, and Innovation Showcase
Savannah Grande (Evening of April 18th) and P.K. Yonge (Morning of April 19th)
Contact: Nancy Dana at ndana1@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext. 299

MAY 3

Advanced Degree Commencement
9 a.m., Stephen C. O’Connell Center

MAY 3

Distinguished Educators Luncheon
Noon, Reitz Union, Room 283.
Contact: jmount@coe.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0728, ext: 250

MAY 3

COE Baccalaurate Commencement
6 p.m., Center for the Performing Arts

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QUICK LINKS

UF: www.ufl.edu
College of Education: education.ufl.edu
coE-News: Publications
Education Times magazine: Publications

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coE-News is produced by:
College of Education, University of Florida
Dean’s Office/News & Publications
Dean: Catherine Emihovich (cemihovich@coe.ufl.edu)
Director: Larry Lansford (llansford@coe.ufl.edu)
Editor: Tim Lockette (Lockette@coe.ufl.edu)

Correspondents:
Wendy Norman, Copy Editor
Marta Pollitt, P.K. Yonge (mpollitt@pky.ufl.edu)

The explosion of knowledge across multiple disciplines has led to renewed interest in higher education to encourage faculty to seek out new partners for their research efforts, and to share ideas in “co-laboratories” designed for this purpose. In last month’s column, I mentioned the exciting news that we might receive external funding to renovate Norman Hall and the Annex to redesign our interior space to facilitate greater interdisciplinary collaboration both across the college and across campus. In a series of columns, beginning this month, I focus on describing interdisciplinary initiatives COE faculty and their partners are busily generating for creating new knowledge, recruiting outstanding students, and in this dreary budget climate, attracting new funding.

One area, early childhood readiness, is becoming increasingly important, given that the quality of life for young children is sharply incongruent with what might be expected from the world’s preeminent superpower. After a decade of decline, poverty rates for children from birth through age 6 are rising; between 2000 and 2005, the number of children under age 6 who were poor increased by 16 percent (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2007). Infant mortality rates are also rising, especially in the South with a clear link to race and class (New York Times, April 22, 2007). Schools with high percentages of poor or ethnically and linguistically diverse children struggle continually to meet AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) targets mandated by the No Child Left Behind federal law, and recent trends in positive achievement gains from state tests do not correspond to the more rigorous standards of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Reversing these dismal trends will require new collaborative partnerships, not just across disciplines in the academy, but with community groups, school districts and parent organizations. Over the past five years, faculty in the College of Education in three program areas (early childhood education, school psychology and special education), P.K. Yonge, and Baby Gator, along with graduate students, have developed innovative programs to address the needs of young children within a framework of engaged scholarship by building collaborative partnerships with school districts, community groups and health-care providers.

A recently funded Kellogg Foundation project, Ready Schools Florida, grounded in the principles of engaged scholarship, is an excellent example of the kind of interdisciplinary work that attracts interest from major donors. This highly innovative and transformative project features a collaborative partnership among three key players: the Miami-Dade School District, The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, and college faculty affiliated with the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center for Learning. According to Don Pemberton, the center’s director, “Ready Schools Florida is designed to craft and implement a credible, carefully documented approach that can enhance local and state efforts to improve child well-being and practice change in early learning and elementary education. At the heart of this work is the development and utilization of a set of replicable strategies that can serve as a model for the state and country to mobilize community investments in child health, well-being, and early development and learning. These strategies connect public schools, social-sector agencies, health and early learning organizations, governmental institutions, institutions of higher education and philanthropic entities to leverage resources and existing initiatives to produce improved outcomes for children and families.”

This initiative is tied to the vision of recreating universities in ways that enable them to build structural frameworks in support of improved quality of life and increased positive outcomes for children from birth through 8 years old. The goal is extraordinary, but given the extensive array of resources available in higher education, and a deepened sense of commitment among faculty and students to engage in solving complex social problems, we can imagine a better future for all children, and take the necessary steps to achieve it.

As John Dewey so eloquently stated, “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.”

— Dean Catherine Emihovich

GAINESVILLE, Fla.— To stem the crisis in mathematics and science
education in America’s schools, the University of Florida is teaming up
with two other top Florida universities in a historic,
multi-million-dollar effort to prepare K-12 teachers for the 21st
Century classroom.

UF’s College of Education is one of the partners in a statewide effort,
funded by a $5.9 million grant from the Florida Department of
Education, to develop professional development programs for Florida
science and mathematics teachers, many of whom are teaching
out-of-field due to a statewide shortage of mathematics and science
educators.

Dubbed Florida PROMiSE (short for Partnership to Rejuvenate and
Optimize Mathematics and Science Education), the grant is administrated
by the David. C. Anchin Center at the University of South Florida, and
represents the first major mathematics and science education effort
undertaken jointly by USF, Florida State University and the University
of Florida.

“Florida PROMiSE represents an unprecedented statewide effort to
enhance teacher quality and student preparation in mathematics and
science,” said Professor Tom Dana, director of the School of Teaching
and Learning and coordinator of the PROMiSE program at UF’s College of
Education.

The effort comes against a backdrop of crisis in science and math
classrooms in Florida, and in the nation as a whole. Historically a
leader in technological and industrial innovation, the United States is
no longer producing mathematics and science graduates at the same rates
the country maintained in the 20th Century. Meanwhile, emerging powers
such as China and India are sending more students to graduate school in
the same field. The result is a looming shortage of engineers,
scientists and mathematicians for America’s technology-dependent
economy.

Fewer trained scientists means fewer science teachers. As demand for
home-grown scientists and researchers has gone up, the flow of science
and mathematics graduates into the K-12 educational system has slowed
to a trickle. Many of the people currently teaching science in K-12
classrooms hold degrees in other fields.

The Florida PROMiSE grant comes as UF begins a renaissance in science
and mathematics education. In November, UF’s College of Education
secured $3.4 million in grants from the National Math and Science
Initiative and the Helios Education Foundation to establish
FloridaTeach, a new teacher education program that represents a
radically different approach to recruiting science and mathematics
teachers. Modeled on the UTeach program at the University of
Texas-Austin, the program will recruit science and technology majors at
all levels of college, and induct them into the community of teachers
by giving them classroom experiences beginning in the first semester in
the program.

Through Florida PROMiSE, the three partner universities will work with
four of Florida’s largest school districts (Miami-Dade, Hillsborough,
Duval and Seminole), the Florida Virtual School, various
multi-county educational consortia and the private firm Horizon
Research, Inc. to develop professional development training that will
help all science and mathematics educators meet the state’s new,
tougher standards for mathematics and science. Multi-county groups
participating in the project include the Heartland Educational
Consortium, the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium and the
Panhandle Area Educational Consortium.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the universities to work together
with school districts to enhance the students’ access and opportunity
to learn mathematics and science,” said Gladis Kersaint, the USF
associate professor of mathematics and senior research associate in the
Anchin Center who is the principal investigator of the grant award.

Florida PROMiSE will include a statewide public awareness campaign to
make sure that Florida taxpayers will be fully aware of the new
standards and why they are needed.

For more information, go to:http://flpromise.org.

If you’re short on time, this animated excerpt from the video above sends you flying through this proposed instructional technology building addition. Creating this Experiential Learning Complex, or ELC for short, is part of the overall Norman Hall renovation-expansion project that stands as the College’s top fundraising priority in UF’s visionary Florida Tomorrow capital campaign. (3 min.)

Posted on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008

Catherine Emihovich, dean of the College of Education at the University of Florida, has been elected president of the Holmes Partnership, a consortium of local and national education interests dedicated to equitable education and reform in teaching and learning.

Emihovich, formerly the group’s vice president for research, only started her presidency in January, but she voices high hopes for what she believes the organization can accomplish during her three-year term and beyond.

“The Holmes Partnership can lead the way in providing a new vision for public education that is more inclusive and attentive to the needs of students and their families as they struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing global economic environment,” she said.

The consortium unites educators from universities, public school districts, teachers associations and other organizations working together to create a powerful, unified voice in educational reform. The group tackles issues such as equal access and social justice in education and—through the Holmes Scholars program–provides scholarship and leadership placement opportunities for underrepresented doctoral students seeking academic careers in higher education.

Emihovich has been a Holmes Partnership member since 1994 and has an impressive track record in building strong school-university partnerships during her academic career.

She has been dean of education at UF since 2002. She is the college’s 12th dean and the first woman to lead the college. She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, with a strong grounding in anthropology and linguistics. Prior to returning to graduate school, she taught high school English for four years in New York state.

Her scholarly pursuits match up well with the humanistic mission and activities of the Holmes Partnership. Her major research interests include race, class and gender equity issues; literacy education and school-university partnerships. She is a past president of the Council on Anthropology and Education within the American Anthropological Association, and a past editor of Anthropology and Education Quarterly.

Emihovich is a prominent advocate of “engaged scholarship,” a philosophy espousing scholarly activities—done for the public good—that contribute directly to improved scholastics or address important social or community issues. The action-oriented research concept is a burgeoning movement in higher education that she has infused as a core principle of a faculty-led transformation of the UF College of Education’s research and teaching programs.

Contacts

Writer
        Larry Lansford, llansford@coe.ufl.edu, 352-392-0726, ext. 266

Source
        Dean Catherine Emihovich, cemihovich@coe.ufl.edu, 352-392-0726

 

What do Native American boarding schools, 1950s mental hygiene films and the Booker T. Washington/W.E.B. Du Bois debate have in common? They’re all part of the history of American education—and they’re all things Associate Professor Sevan Terzian uses to teach his undergraduate students how our schools became what they are today.

Terzian, known for his innovative approaches to teaching education history, has been named a UF University Teacher of the Year. The honor — given each year to only one or two professors among the University of Florida’s entire faculty — came to Terzian just a few weeks after the College of Education named him its 2008 Undergraduate Teacher of the Year.

“Students unanimously consider Dr. Terzian one of the best teachers they have ever had,” said Professor Tom Dana, director of the School of Teaching and Learning.

Terzian is a researcher in the social foundations of education—a topic that, for many non-teachers, might seem a bit obscure. In his undergraduate courses, however, Terzian uses role-playing, historic films and Socratic dialogue to show students how their own school experiences have been shaped by history, and how teachers have historically tried to shape their students.

Among other activities, Terzian asks his students to play the roles of educator Booker T. Washington and activist/writer W.E.B. Du Bois in a face-to-face version of their famous epistolary debate over African-American education. He has them play the roles of the school officials in a simulated conflict over desegregation and religious instruction in schools. He also plays “mental hygiene” films from the 1950s to show how schools try to control the behavior of their students.

Terzian, a member of the School of Teaching and Learning faculty since 2000, is uniquely well-qualified to teach students about the intersection of popular culture and education history. He holds two doctorate degrees from Indiana University—in the history of education and in American studies—and has devoted much of his research career to the study of the history of the American high school, with a focus on attitudes about science, gender and education in the post-WWII era. He is currently at work on a book about the origins of high school science fairs, science clubs and talent searches from the 1920s to the 1950s.

His colleagues praise his ability to craft a structured, content-rich classroom experience. Students sometimes often describe him as a tough teacher—but also say they would gladly return for another class with him.

“I have not attended a class as difficult as his in my entire college career,” said Whitney Shadowens, a senior majoring in English. “However, the high expectation of learning pushed me to work harder and become a better student.”

In describing his own philosophy of teaching, Terzian stresses the importance of building class community, providing prompt feedback on assignments and encouraging students to ask tough questions.

“Nothing pleases me more than when a student asks a question that makes us all think hard about the nature of our own assumptions,” he said.

If you know a teenager who can’t name the branches of government, don’t be too surprised. In this age of high-stakes testing, civic education is being crowded out of the curriculum in many schools.

A University of Florida professor, though, hopes to reverse the tide as project director of a new, half-million-dollar effort to prepare teachers to bring civics to Florida middle schools.

“Social studies , including civics, isn’t tested on the FCAT, and it isn’t part of No Child Left Behind, and as a result it’s falling off the map,” said Elizabeth Yeager, a professor at UF’s College of Education. “If you don’t have informed citizens, you can’t have a functioning democracy.”

Two years ago, the Florida legislature responded to the civic education slump by passing a law that required the teaching of civics in all the state’s middle schools.

That created a problem for middle-grades educators, who for years had taught geography, world cultures and history – but not civics – in social studies courses. Many younger teachers had never taught civics. Others had not had a class in American government since their college years.

Enter the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, a bipartisan, multi-institutional organization dedicated to bringing quality civic education back to the K-12 classroom. The brainchild of former Florida Senator and Governor Bob Graham and former Congressman Lou Frey, the center was officially launched in late January by Gov. Charlie Crist. The center will combine the efforts of UF’s Graham Center for Public Service and the University of Central Florida’s Lou Frey Institute of Politics and Government to strengthen civic education in the state.

One of the Center’s first initiatives is a project that would provide summer workshops for middle grades educators to help them brush up on their knowledge of government. The project – “Strengthening Civic Education in Florida’s Middle Schools” – will be funded over a three-year period by a $556,000 grant from the Helios Education Foundation.

Yeager, working in conjuction with Annette Boyd-Pitts and the staff of the Florida Law-Related Education Association in Tallahassee, will direct the program, which will involve intense, five-day workshops in which teachers will study the foundations of the Constitution and current Constitutional issues. The program will also include a “service learning” component in which teachers are asked to identify a problem in their community and craft a plan for solving it through citizen action. Teachers can then go to their classes and ask their students to get involved in a similar way.

“The goal is for teachers and students to learn about both the content of the Constitution and the process for getting involved in their government,” Yeager said. “Democracy should be more than a spectator sport.”

They say that if you want to advance in your job, you should work on the problems that keep your boss awake at night.

If that’s true, Luis Ponjuan has a bright future. His research addresses the dilemmas that vex college administrators. How do we hold on to our best professors? How do we build a diverse faculty?

“Higher education is full of opportunities,” said Ponjuan, a professor of educational administration and policy at UF’s College of Education. “If we understand more about who succeeds in higher education, then we can offer these opportunities for our increasingly diverse society.”

Ponjuan has built his career on studying higher education from the inside. He asks questions people often don’t think to ask. Are professors really satisfied in their work?

He also asks questions administrators are sometimes afraid to ask outright. Why are my minority faculty leaving? Why don’t more female students major in engineering?

Ponjuan sees the university in the  21st-century as a drastically changing workplace – shifting from from an esteemed and revered intellectual haven to a place of burgeoning workloads, shrinking job security and baffling pay disparities. Small wonder that institutions are losing talented faculty members and potential future faculty members to the private sector. This higher education faculty career problem is even more important for women faculty and faculty of color, he says.

Deans often fret about low numbers of black and Hispanic faculty in their colleges – and sometimes they blame the problem on a small pool of minority students in the Ph. D. pipeline.

Nonsense, says Ponjuan. U.S. schools are graduating more black and Hispanic Ph.D.s than ever, he says. According to his research, colleges aren’t having trouble finding minority scholars – they’re having trouble keeping the ones they find.

“I’m more concerned about the women and faculty of color who are leaving higher education altogether,” Ponjuan said, “because if we lose these talented individuals, who will be there to teach the next generation of underrepresented scholars?”

Universities may court faculty of color graciously, but Ponjuan’s studies suggest that they often feel isolated and abandoned once they begin work as new faculty members. And minority professors are not the only faculty members who sometimes abandon academia for the private world. In many fields, Ponjuan says, faculty of all backgrounds are slowly migrating to the private sector.

When professors do leave academia, administrators often say it’s because faculty salaries lag behind the private sector. But Ponjuan’s research shows that salary is not as important as other factors.

“If salaries were so important, these individuals would never have worked in academia in the first place,” Ponjuan said. “They’re leaving because they are frustrated – because they’re increasingly being asked to do more research, teaching, and institutional service while not having the infrastructure and institutional policies in place to succeed.”

Ponjuan says universities can plug the leaks in the faculty pipeline by making the tenure process more transparent for junior faculty. His studies have shown that new tenure-track professors often see the criteria for tenure as confusing, murky and potentially unfair, especially for women and faculty of color.

A first-generation college graduate, Ponjuan knows a thing or two about learning to fit in on campus.

As a Cuban immigrant, Ponjuan spoke only Spanish prior to enrolling in elementary school in the rural town of Raceland, La. – but he flourished in courses for speakers of English as a second language, and completed a psychology degree at the University of New Orleans.

Ponjuan cites faculty mentors and student affairs administrators at UNO as major influences on his later careerr. He learned about higher education practice while earning his master’s degree at Florida State University and working five years as an academic advisor at the University of Florida. He became a higher education researcher while earning his Ph.D. in higher education administration at the University of Michigan.

Ponjuan’s work is about more than simply calling attention to problems of gender and diversity in academia. He is also working on solutions to the problem, searching for ways to fill the pipeline of future science researchers.

He is a key researcher, with Assistant Professor Troy Sadler,in UF’s landmark Science for Life initiative, designed to overhaul the science curriculum from kindergarten through graduate school. Ponjuan is studying the academic experiences of lower-division college students to see what can be done to draw more students – particularly women and underrepresented minorities – into the field.

Ponjuan sees this project as a chance to practice what he preaches. He engages his six graduate students by involving them in the research process, from designing surveys, conducting data analysis, and publishing and presenting research work.

“I’m practicing what I’m studying,” said Laura Waltrip, one of Ponjuan’s graduate assistants on the project. “We sit at the computer together and debate which word to use. He’s always reminding me to use my ‘research voice’ in writing, rather than my ‘reflective voice.’”

Mentoring his graduate students is one of Ponjuan’s points of pride. If higher education needs a new generation of researchers, he says, the best way to do it is to engage his students in the research process.  

“In order to encourage graduate students to pursue faculty careers, we need to be mentors.”  Ponjuan is quick to add, “However, once they become faculty members, we need policies and the infrastructure that ensures they have a long and productive academic career.”