With $800,000 in new funding from the Florida Department of Education, the University of Florida College of Education is launching a program to help middle and high school teachers earn certification in special education and boost expertise in literacy instruction, especially for students with reading and learning disabilities.

Project PRESS, Preparing Reading Endorsed Secondary Special Educators, will provide practicing middle and high school teachers the opportunity to pursue a master’s degree in special education with a reading endorsement. Professor Mary Brownell and Assistant Scholar Anne Bishop, both from the Department of Special Education, and Associate Professor Zhihui Fang, of the college’s School of Teaching and Learning, are the principal investigators.

Brownell’s department will recruit secondary teachers mainly from the 13 school districts in northeast Florida. Two groups of 20 teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds will participate on a two-year cycle. The teachers will complete 36 hours of course credits and related on-the-job experiences that lead to a master’s degree in special education with a reading endorsement and state certification.

“There has been a huge shortage of special education teachers for more than 30 years, especially those with reading expertise,” Brownell said.

Project PRESS features evidence-based teaching methods in both special education and reading education. It will help contribute to the supply of highly qualified middle and high school special education teachers and ensure that teachers have the skills and knowledge to meet the academic literacy needs of students with learning disabilities and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

“Many special education teachers are prepared broadly, and we found that they were not sufficiently prepared to meet the literacy needs of their students,” Brownell said. “However, we are tightening up the type of preparation teachers typically receive to create a heavier focus on literacy for adolescents.”

Writer

Chan Tran, ctran@ufl.edu, (352) 392-0726, ext. 246

Research has shown that African-American children and girls of any race with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are less likely than white boys to get proper medical attention for their problem, but the reasons why are poorly understood. University of Florida researchers, though, are finding answers in a $2.6 million federal study.

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, assistant professor of educational psychology at the College of Education, and Regina Bussing, professor of psychiatry at the College of Medicine, are in their second year of a five-year grant funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

After researchers screened a community sample of more than 1,600 families, parents of 266 students at high risk for ADHD subsequently participated in diagnostic interviews and focus groups and provided detailed accounts of help-seeking activities since they first became concerned about their children. Data collection will continue for three additional waves and include a community survey of treatment-intervention responses. Unaffected peers are also included in the study to compare their outcomes to the teens with ADHD.  

The researchers so far have focused on the parents with elementary school children at high risk for ADHD. They discovered that parents’ perceptions of their child’s ADHD-related behavior may be influenced by their child’s gender and race. For example, black girls were often perceived as “misbehaving,” so they were disciplined, rather than given professional help, according to Koro-Ljungberg. Black boys, on the other hand, were considered “endangered” and parents took measures to protect them by using restrictions and behavioral modifications.

The researchers also found that many children, especially girls, stop taking their medication treatments soon after starting therapy.

Among childhood psychiatric disorders, ADHD has been a source of controversy. Some experts contend ADHD is overdiagnosed, but studies continue to show that many affected children remain untreated, according to UF researchers. ADHD afflicts 3 percent to 5 percent of school-age children, but it is treatable.  

The ADHD study relied on both quantitative and qualitative research, or research using interviews and case examples, rather than merely collecting numeric data, to determine what interventions are seen and chosen as most appropriate by the parents and teens. Qualitative research, in many instances, can reveal what numbers and statistics can’t, according to Koro-Ljungberg.

The researchers are continuing data collection through personal interviews and telephone surveys and will start their fifth wave collection this November. The researchers will also hold focus groups of parents, at–risk youth and teachers to provide feedback and insights into how the children’s ADHD behavior was handled. The researchers ultimately will assess various professional guidelines and options for improving treatments for girls and African-American youth with ADHD.

Qualitative research has not typically been a research focus in educational psychology, but Koro-Ljungberg’s teaching and research are shifting the field, said Elizabeth St. Pierre, an associate professor in the University of Georgia’s language and literacy education department.

“Dr. Koro-Ljungberg is a pioneer in the introduction of qualitative research into educational psychology,” St. Pierre said. “Indeed her exemplary presence on the national scene is encouraging other educational psychologists to follow her lead in what many of us feel is an overdue opening up of the field.”

Writer

Chan Tran, ctran@ufl.edu, (352) 392-0726, ext. 246

The UF College of Education at Norman Hall
has been selected as the state host site in Florida for a

National Web simulcast

of the

White House Conference on
Helping America’s Youth

Featuring

First Lady Laura Bush

WHEN:
Thursday, Oct. 27 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

WHERE:
Rm. G520 in Norman Hall
(ground floor of Education Library)

WHAT:
This national conference, hosted by Howard University, will bring together policymakers, research experts, educators, coaches, parents and representatives of foundations, faith-based and volunteer organizations to share examples of what is already working to make a difference in the lives of young Americans; and to generate new ideas that can be used across the country.

A National Digital Network is being developed that will link each of the 50 state sites with Washington, and provide broadcast and Webcast feeds, as well as email.

The list of speakers includes UF alumnus Mark Merrill, who got his undergraduate and law degrees at UF. Merrill, president of Family First, will serve on the panel at the 1:20 p.m. session on “Connecting with Family.”

The Webcast will also be available on the University of Florida website: www.ufl.edu

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
For conference schedule, visit: www.howard.edu/youth/schedule.htm
Mrs. Bush’s website is at: www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady/

This announcement prepared and distributed by:
UF College of Education, Dean’s Office/News & Publications
392-0726, ext. 266; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

Former UF College of Education Dean Ben Nelms will receive the Distinguished Service Award from The National Council of Teachers of English at its upcoming 2005 conference.

Nelms was nominated for the honor by several of his former doctoral students and colleagues in the College of Education, including Barbara Pace, associate professor in the School of Teaching and Learning, and Rose Diane “Mickie” Miller, associate director of the UF Alliance.

“Throughout his long and illustrious career, Ben has served as an example of an engaged scholar who has focused both on the theory and on the practical aspects of teaching secondary English language arts,” Pace wrote in nominating Nelms. “While he has published hundreds of articles focused on classrooms and the role of reader-response theory in teaching literature, he has never lost sight of the vitality of classroom life or of the way that teachers’ voices can make, and should make, a contribution to the profession.”

Nelms joined the UF education faculty in 1990 as professor of curriculum and instruction after already serving decades teaching English education in Missouri and Iowa. At UF, Nelms held positions as graduate coordinator in the School of Teaching and Learning in the 1997-98 school year and director from 1998 to 2000. He also was editor of two major NCTE publications: English Journal and English Education.

In 2000, Nelms signed on to a two-year term as interim dean of the College, leading the faculty and staff during a rough period of budget woes and a statewide reorganization. Nelms’ tenure as dean also was marked by his vision of a university-high school partnership linking the College of Education with underresourced schools across the state. Nelms launched the UF Alliance in 2000, opening up professional development and educational opportunities for teachers and students alike.

“The UF Alliance provides five four-year scholarships to students from each of the partner schools. Not only have these students been academically successful, but they have become campus leaders as well. Many of these students, as well as their teachers and administrators, credit their success to the vision Dr. Nelms had for excellence in teaching and learning,” Miller wrote in her nomination of Nelms.

In 2002, Nelms left the Dean’s Office and took the director’s chair of the UF Alliance. He retired earlier this year.

The Distinguished Service Award recognizes individuals who have exhibited valuable service to the profession, scholarly or academic merit, distinctive use of the language and excellence in teaching. NCTE will honor Nelms at the board of directors meeting of the organization’s annual convention in Pittsburgh on Nov. 18.

###

Writer

Joy Rodgers, jrodgers@coe.ufl.edu, (352) 392-0726, ext. 274

The Florida Association for Staff Development (FASD) has honored Nancy Dana, director of the College’s Center for School Improvement, for her contributions to outstanding staff development practices.

Dana directs the center’s teacher-inquiry programs and workshops, which involve a collective networking approach to professional development for teachers. Earlier this year, 26 teachers and 13 principals from schools in the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium (NEFEC) met regularly for four months to exchange ideas, experiences and teaching strategies.

Participants focused on areas of teaching they sought improvement in, such as curriculum development, student achievement, content knowledge or teaching techniques. UF education faculty and graduate students served as mentors and coaches for the teachers. In April, the teachers presented their findings at the NEFEC- and CSI-sponsored Teaching, Inquiry and Innovation Showcase in Gainesville, which was attended by more than 300 teachers and school administrators from 14 school districts in Northeast Florida.

Dana received her award at the recent FASD Fall Leadership Conference in St. Petersburg.

# # #

Writer
Chan Tran, ctran@ufl.edu, (352) 392-0726, ext. 246

As the UF College of Education approaches its 100th year of preparing teachers, counselors, school administrators and other educators for their life’s work, several new academic leaders and top administrators will be on hand to help Dean Catherine Emihovich lead the college’s efforts to reach the top tier of American education schools.

The college, which held its first classes in 1906, currently ranks 15th among public education schools of the year in a row in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of the nation’s top graduate education schools.

Emihovich, UF’s education dean since 2002, has been assembling a staff she thinks can help the college develop nationally reputed academic programs and attract eminent faculty and top students worldwide, moves designed to elevate the college into a top-10 national ranking.

The dean’s new “cabinet” includes a new associate dean for research, two new academic department chairs, and three new directors for programs in graduate studies, informational and instructional technology, and a novel university-schools alliance created to improve educational opportunities for inner-city high school students.

Here are brief profiles of the six new College of Education appointees:

NEW DEAN

Paul Sindelar
Professor and Associate Dean for Research

Sindelar assumes the new post of associate dean for research after five years as co-director of the Center on Personnel Studies in Special Education (COPSSE). He and his new Research Office staff will support college faculty in their efforts to obtain external funding for research and training initiatives. Sindelar previously headed the college’s Center for School Improvement for five years and was chair of special education from 1988-1996. His research interests include teacher effectiveness, alternative-route teacher preparation, and the cost-effectiveness of teacher preparation options. In his 17-year UF career, he has brought into the College of Education more than $11 million in external funding.

“Improving the research culture is a high priority,” Sindelar said, “and everyone here understands the importance of bringing in external funding for the research. My job is to put the infrastructure in place to move the college forward on both fronts.”

NEW CHAIRS

Linda Serra Hagedorn
Professor and Chair, Dept. of Educational Administration and Policy

Hagedorn is the former associate director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, and also co-directed the Higher Education/ Community College Leadership concentration of the Ed.D. program. She has written numerous articles on community college student success, equity issues and college retention of underrepresented student groups, and is the vice president of the postsecondary education division of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

“Our department has changed its name to Educational Administration and Policy, so the new name and the new chair will usher in many changes,” Hagedorn said. “This year we will establish curriculum advisory boards to assist us to revise our courses and programs to attract top-notch students globally.”

Tina Smith-Bonahue
Associate Professor and Interim Chair, Dept. of Educational Psychology

Smith-Bonahue, an associate professor, recently added interim chair to her departmental responsibilities in education psychology. She also is educational director of UF’s Multidisciplinary Diagnostic and Training Program (MDTP) for children with complex learning, behavioral or medical needs, and teaches in the Unified PROTEACH Early Childhood Program. Her primary research interests include the temperament and behavioral adjustment of high-risk preschoolers, and inclusion of preschoolers.

NEW DIRECTORS

Thomasenia Adams
Associate Professor and Director, Office of Graduate Studies

Adams, associate professor and former graduate coordinator in teaching and learning, is the founding director of the new office of graduate studies in education. She will work closely with the associate dean for research, department chairs, graduate coordinators, faculty and staff to enhance the quality of graduate teaching and research in the college. She also will assist in recruiting and mentoring strong graduate students as the college heightens its emphasis on graduate education. Her primary research interests focus on math and geometry teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, teaching math from a multicultural perspective, and mathematics as a language.

“One of my primary goals is to promote graduate education so we grow with the overall university goal to increase graduate enrollment,” Adams said. “We are looking to improve every facet of graduate education in the college.”

Bernard Oliver
Professor and Director, UF Alliance

Oliver, a veteran university and public schools administrator and a scholar in urban and multicultural education, is the new head of the UF Alliance, a school-improvement partnership involving UF and six under-resourced urban high schools across Florida. He most recently was assistant superintendent for high school education in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Oliver also has held faculty and administrative posts at several universities, including the Ewing Kauffman endowed chair at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and dean and professor at Washington State University.

Tracey (Trace) Choulat
Director, Informational and Instructional Technology

Choulat is no stranger to the special technology needs of higher education. In the past 10 years, he has designed, built or managed information technology groups, networks and servers, and academic computing environments for more than a dozen colleges and universities across the United States. He most recently was technical director for SunGard Collegis, Inc., of Maitland, Fla. At UF, one of his first tasks will be developing a technology strategic plan for the college.

“The Office of Information and Instructional Technology will be assessing the computing needs of the college, working to improve service levels and developing a strategic plan to align technology infrastructure with the goals and objectives of the college,” Choulat said.

* * *

“These new appointments continue the restructuring of the dean’s area that began when I arrived three years ago,” Emihovich said. “These appointments, along with all the other new faculty, st
aff and administrators that have joined us, will position our college very nicely to maintain our leadership in professional education across Florida and throughout the world.

“It’s a great time to be an ‘alumni’ as the college prepares to celebrate the start of our next 100 years in 2006.”

Hal G. Lewis Sr., a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in education at the University of Florida and a crusader for desegregation of Florida schools and college campuses, died at his daughter’s home in Livermore, Cal., on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2005. He was 97.

Lewis, who lived in Gainesville, also was the principal of P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the UF College of Education’s laboratory school, from 1944-48. He was a professor of educational foundations at the college for 42 years, spanning 1936 through his retirement in 1979.

He first came to the college in 1935 to take courses required for renewing his teaching certificate. G. Ballard Simmons, then principal at P.K. Yonge, was so impressed by the young teacher from Georgia that he invited Lewis to join his faculty. There were only six College of Education faculty at that time—more than a decade before UF became coeducational.

Lewis’s ties with P.K. Yonge lasted for more than 60 years—as a teacher, principal, parent and College of Education professor. He first taught social studies and then core courses at the lab school from 1936 until 1941. After obtaining his doctorate at Columbia University, he contacted Simmons, by then UF’s acting dean of education, about returning to P.K. Yonge. Lewis was hired as principal in 1944 and served for three years before returning to teaching at the UF College of Education, where he served as chair and sole faculty member of UF’s newly formed Department of Foundations of Education, which housed the programs in education psychology, research methods, and social and philosophical foundations of education.

Hal Lewis: through the years…

During the tumultuous period of desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s, Lewis focused his efforts on preparing teachers to work with children of a different race, a development that didn’t sit well with all teachers-in-training of that era. He served two terms as president and one as board chairman of the Florida Council on Human Relations, one of the first southern groups to work for desegregation. He also founded the Gainesville Council on Human Relations and served for 10 years on the Florida Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Behind the efforts of Lewis, J.B. White (dean of education from 1949-64) and other UF faculty and administrators, UF enrolled its first black student in 1958, into the College of Law. The College of Education soon followed suit.

“Dr. Lewis’s desegregation activism occurred at a time in North Florida when such behavior entailed serious risks,” said Richard Renner, a College of Education faculty member from 1965-2003. “His longlife contributed much to improve race relations.”

Professor Rod Webb, an education faculty member since 1971, said Lewis was “a proud son of the South, but he recognized in his teens the evils of segregation and fought furiously to end it. His dedication to equality was deep and his opposition to injustice was unequivocal.

“Hal scanned the social horizon. He dedicated the college and the P.K. Yonge School to innovation and to anticipating the problems that schools would face in the near future.”

Lewis remained at the College of Education until 1979, when he was appointed Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus upon his retirement.

“Hal never walked a well-worn path. He found his own way and did so with amazing and gentle grace,” Webb said. “When Hal was in his 90s, students he had taught 30, 40 and 50 years earlier would still seek him out to thank him for his guidance, kindness and inspiration.”

Lewis was born in 1908 in Greensboro, Ga. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1930, where he was in the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, before earning his doctorate from Columbia. In Gainesville, he was active in the Gainesville community and his church.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Godwin Lewis, and son, Hal Graham Lewis Jr. Survivors include his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Lewis Costantino of Livermore, Cal.; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the Lewis family requests that donations be made to the P.K. Yonge Alumni Fund, 1080 SW 11 th Street, Gainesville, FL 32601; or to The Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Dr. Lewis’s obituary includes biographical information from two reference books: “Exploration and Experimentation: The Road to Educational Excellence/The College of Education 1905-2001”; and “A History of the P.K. Yonge Laboratory School” by Louisa Bohannon Taylor (1995).

GAINESVILLE , FL—The Florida League of Middle Schools has established an annual lifetime achievement award in honor of a University of Florida education professor considered by many to be the nation’s leading expert on middle school education.

The 200-school league, founded in 1972, named the award for Distinguished Professor Paul S. George of the UF College of Education’s School of Teaching and Learning. George was honored recently at the league’s 34 th annual conference in Sarasota.

The yearly award will go to an educator selected for “leadership and service for the advancement of middle school education” in Florida. The first recipient of the Paul S. George Award was Orange County middle school educator Shirley Fox, who received her doctorate in special education from UF in 1993.

George has published 10 textbooks on middle school education and other topics that have been adopted for use by dozens of universities and school districts. The Middle School Journal described three of his books in one article as “classics in the field.” The journal also identified George as “the number one ranking scholar” in middle school education, based on a survey of 241 American university professors and deans.

The American Association of School Administrators has referred to George as “the foremost expert on middle schools in the country,” and he previously received the National Middle School Association’s Lounsbury Award for lifetime achievement in middle school education.

George has helped the UF College of Education maintain its reputation as the nation’s hub of middle-school education research and leadership. UF education professors were instrumental in advancing the middle school concept in the mid-1960s. They first proposed middle schools in 1963 as a preferred, transitional setting to the departmentalized junior-senior high school system for handling a child’s formative years. The college hosted a year-long institute in 1966 to study the middle school concept, involving 36 school teachers and administrators from around the South. Two years later, three UF professors co-authored what became the primary textbook on the emergent middle school at many universities.

George arrived in 1972 as the first professor hired for the college’s new middle-school teacher education program. By 1977, there were more than 5,000 middle schools nationwide. He has continued to carry the gauntlet for middle schools into the 21 st century, serving as an international consultant and publishing more than 150 books, journal reports, textbook chapters and multimedia presentations, many on middle school education issues. He recently has been investigating the change from middle school (grades 6-8) to K-8 schools in a dozen of America’s largest school districts.

George also has other research interests, ranging from Japanese education to the social organization of schools, and even the application of corporate organizational strategies to improving public education. H e also is one of the college’s most popular instructors and mentors for doctoral students in teacher preparation, having supervised some 35 doctoral dissertations.

Leadership in middle school education, though, is his legacy.

“This honor recognizes the important contributions Paul George has made to middle level education through over 30 years of extensive, carefully crafted scholarship,” said Tom Dana, chairman of the School of Teaching and Learning. “No one else in the world has had the impact he has had on policy and practice in quality middle schools.”

View video of this lecture

Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, will share his perspective on the future of higher education when he delivers one of the University of Florida’s Sesquicentennial Lectures, October 8, 2003. The presentation, titled “The Future of the American University,” is scheduled for 7:30 at the Philips Center for the Performing Arts. It is open free to the public.

Levine is credited with revitalizing Teachers College, which was founded in 1887 to train teachers for New York’s expanding immigrant population. Since his appointment in 1994, he reorganized the college’s administrative and academic structure, erased an annual operating deficit, recruited top scholars and launched the college’s largest-ever capital campaign. Emphasizing what he calls the “biology of learning,” Levine started an outreach program to assist local and state education officials in bolstering educational efforts. In 1999, the college began offering Web-based certificate courses, and created a foundation to support promising educational ventures and development of new educational products and services.

Levine, an advocate of improving teacher quality and enhancing the use of technology in higher education, is the author of dozens of articles and reviews. His most recent book is When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today’s College Student (with Jeanette S. Cureton), published in 1998. His numerous opinion editorials appear in such publications as The New York Times; The Los Angeles Times; The Wall Street Journal; and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Levine is a 1982 Guggenheim Fellowship winner, and was named one of the “20 most outstanding leaders in the academic community” in a 1998 Change magazine survey.

Six graduate students in the College of Education will be presenting papers at the annual History of Education Society meeting in Evanston, Illinois from October 30 to November 2. The students’ conference papers all stemmed from research projects they undertook in Professor Sevan Terzian’s

For the first time, the Florida Space Grant Consortium has awarded a grant to a preschool. The recipient of this grant was Baby Gator Child Development and Research Center at the University Of Florida College Of Education.

According to NASA administrator Dr. Jaydeep Mukherjee, the grants are intended for school-age children, but the one submitted by Darci Hames, a Baby Gator teacher, included plans for science education support for young children, which convinced NASA that an award for this preschool was appropriate.

On Wednesday, Novemebr 12th, 2003, Baby Gator hosted specially invited guests during a dedication ceremony for the playground equipment purchased as a result of the grant. NASA sent administrator Dr. Jaydeep Mukherjee and Payload Specialist Sam Durrance to assist with the “lift off .” Durrance also autographed photos for guests, shared a 7-10 minute video of his space travel and answered questions.

Additional guests and activities included:

• Christine Zamora from the Florida Department of Agriculture provided a display and information about plants in space.
• Febi Mayfield, a teacher a Baby Gator and an accomplished songwriter and vocal artist with the group “Jabezz”, sang “Space Walker”, a song she composed about space. She recently sang this song and others she has composed for an event hosted by NASA in Titusville.
• NASA will lend a Moon Rocks display for the day. Rosario Munoz and Juanita Luster, Baby Gator teachers, have completed the training required by anyone handling the rocks.
• Each Baby Gator classroom set up a booth in the playground, which contained interactive science activities for the children and their families. The classroom was also opened to display space projects.
• The Baby Gator Parent Advisory Council served lunch to parents and families at noon.

By E. Sherwin Mackintosh

Now, what is that building?” That was my first qualified and motivated faculty. question. I was touring the P.K. Yonge School with my son, Chase, and my friend, Randy Scott, a/k/a Florida’s Teacher of the Year. We were visiting my wife’s family in Gainesville, and I had just stepped out of the Front Office at P.K. Yonge when I looked over and asked Randy about the huge building project underway adjacent to the office. “Oh, that’s our new Performing Arts Center,” Randy answered. It’s a $6.5 million dollar facility. That’s all that I remember about the tour. Randy’s mouth kept moving, but I didn’t hear anything he said. The rest of the time, the wheels of my mind started turning (granted, not as fast as they used to. . .). I couldn’t get over the fact that in a time when most schools were doing away with, or at least cutting back their Performing Arts programs, P.K. Yonge had invested $ 6.5 million dollars into an innovative Arts facility housing the Chorus, Drama, Band, and Elementary Music departments, as well as a state of- the-art auditorium. In addition, it wasn’t just the “school auditorium”; it was “The Performing Arts Center.” All that said a lot about the commitment of this administration to the Arts. I was blown away. At the end of the tour, we found ourselves back where we started, and Randy asked what we thought. I woke up and asked again, “Now what is that building?” I had spent the last 17 years in New York City. I worked for a large church in Manhattan and had produced shows at Madison Square Gardens, the Beacon Theater, Town Hall, even Harlem’s Apollo Theater. I had helped to start the HOPE School of the Arts in Harlem and Patterson, New Jersey. I had spent some time playing on Broadway, made a Carnegie Hall debut in the recital hall, and I was commissioned to write and perform at Governor Lawton Chiles’ Memorial service in Washington, D.C. where I performed for President Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy and others. However, the truth is, the thrill was gone, the shine had worn off the Big Apple, and I was looking for a little slower pace (my health seemed to be dictating that) and a new dream for my life (God seemed to be dictating that). Randy knew this and seemed to have his own agenda going, because he again said, “That’s the new Performing Arts Center.” But this time he added, “And I think you’re just the man to be the new director.”   You see, I wasn’t looking for a job, but as P.K.Yonge Director Fran Vandiver said later, I was looking for an opportunity. Well I spent an extra day in Gainesville, met with Dr. Vandiver at 7:30 on Monday morning, and it wasn’t long before we loaded up the truck and moved to: Yes, Gainesville Florida. I was to be the first Director of the new Performing Arts Center work with the Chorus and Drama departments, and begin work on my Doctorate. It was a new dream, but I’m not sure about the slower pace.

Today everyone is asking, “Now what is that building?” Well it’s a new dream and a new opportunity for all of us. It’s a resurrection, it’s a revival, it’s a new resource for the arts, not only for P.K. Yonge, but the University and the community as well. And I believe the day will come when people will no longer be asking, “Now, what is that building?” Because its reputation will precede it.

The P.K. Yonge Performing Arts Center will become not only a magnet for the performing arts, but will help set the standard for Performing Arts in the Educational world.

Now- that’s a building.

Elementary Music Room	Band Room	Creekside Gallery
Stage in PAC Auditorium	Auditorium	Fine Arts Hallway
“Moon Dance” by Artist Charles Strain

P.K. Yonge Performing Arts Center Dedication Week Celebration

Schedule

DECEMBER 3, 4 and 5 (WED-FRI)

9:00 AM: Elementary Orientation Mini-Performances, PAC Auditorium

MONDAY, DECEMBER 8

9:00 AM: High School Performance

With Guest Conductor David Holt, PKY Band Director 1986-1996

PAC Auditorium

7:30 pm: Dress Rehearsal (general public)

Featuring T.O. Sterrett and Guest Conductor Robert Hyatt, PKY Band Director 1983-1986

PAC Auditorium

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9

6:30 pm: Alumni Reception

Creekside Terrace (overlooking Tumblin