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Researcher-author on teacher ‘inquiry’ tapped for elite UF professorship

University of Florida education professor and best-selling author Nancy Fichtman Dana, recognized nationally for her research and books on novel strategies in school reform and professional development for educators, has been named a UF Research Foundation Professor for 2012-2015.

Dana, a professor in the College of Education’s School of Teaching and Learning, is one of 33 UF faculty scholars selected for the prestigious posts. The University of Florida Research Foundation awards the professorships annually to tenured faculty who have a distinguished record of research and a strong research agenda that is likely to lead to continuing distinction in their fields. The three-year award includes a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 grant to support their research.

Dana is one of the nation’s top scholars in the field of “practitioner inquiry” or action research, a novel approach to professional development for teachers, principals and other school administrators.  The process involves educators assessing their own practices, and then sharing what they learn with their peers to foster “whole school” improvement and enhanced student learning.

“Teachers are in the best position to identify problems in the classroom and find workable solutions. Rather than having outsiders come to schools and tell them how to fix their problems, we’re encouraging schools to take charge of their own professional development,” Dana said. “We coach them on becoming more reflective, analytical and critical of their own teaching, and then taking action to improve their classroom practices.”

“This self-reflecting and sharing process,” she adds, “allows schools to improve from within.”

Dana has coached the action research of thousands of educators from school districts across the state and nation, and has published eight books and more than 50 journal articles and book chapters on teacher and principal professional development and practitioner inquiry.

Two of her books—guides to classroom research and coaching inquiry-based learning communities in schools, respectively—were best sellers. The latter was chosen 2008 Book of the Year by the National Staff Development Council.  She recently published an electronic version of her 2010 book, “Powerful Professional Development: Building Expertise Within the Four Walls of Your School.”

Her publisher, Corwin Press, has an author’s website for Dana at: http://www.corwin.com/authors/522546.

Dana’s research on practitioner inquiry forms the core of the college’s innovative, on-the-job Teacher Leadership for School Improvement graduate degree program, which the Association of Teacher Educators cited as the 2011 Distinguished Program in Teacher Education.

“Dr. Dana is an exceptionally productive scholar and she continues to probe the possibilities and impact of practitioner inquiry, extending her work to special education teachers and the use of the latest Web technologies,” said Elizabeth Bondy, director of UF’s School of Teaching and Learning.

Dana is working with UF education colleagues Cynthia Griffin (in special education) and Stephen Pape (mathematics education) to develop and evaluate an extensive online professional development program for third through fifth grade teachers focused on the teaching and learning of math. Their work is funded by a $1.5 million grant from the federal Institute of Education Sciences.

Dana has a doctorate in elementary education from Florida State and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from State University of New York at Oswego. In 2009, the New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the New York Association of Teacher Educators dually presented Dana with the New York Teacher Impact Award.

Dana joined UF’s education faculty from Penn State in 2003 and directed UF’s Center for School Improvement through 2010.  She received the national ATE organization’s Distinguished Research in Teacher Education Award in 2005.

More recently, she has helped the college’s Lastinger Center for Learning redesign professional development programs for several Florida school districts, with practitioner inquiry at the core.

She said her future research activities will focus on gauging the effectiveness of practitioner inquiry on K-12 virtual school educators, and on helping general and special education teachers use action research to meet the mathematical learning needs of all students, including those with disabilities.

 

CONTACTS

   SOURCE: Nancy Dana, professor, UF College of Education, ndana@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4204

   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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‘Opportunity’ research will boost interventions for children with autism

Fresh off winning a highly competitive seed grant from the University of Florida’s Office of Research, UF College of Education professor Maureen Conroy aims to fill a critical gap in intervention options addressing core social and communication learning deficits in children with autism spectrum disorders, or ASD, a complex, neurological developmental disorder that affects more than 240,000 American children and young adults.

Although no two people with autism will have exactly the same symptoms, people with the disorder typically have difficulty communicating with others and are socially awkward or prefer to stay to themselves.

“Social skill deficits are the most distinguishable feature of children with autism, but little research has been conducted to explain the intentions behind occasional displays of positive social behavior,” Conroy said. “Determining the primary reasons these children engage in positive or ‘prosocial’ behavior—perhaps to get attention, get their way or escape an uncomfortable situation—is a new strategy that showed promise in an earlier study. Now we can use this information to design and test tailored interventions for improving a child’s communication and social skills.”

Principal investigator Conroy, a professor of special education and early childhood studies, and co-PI Krestin Radonovich, a UF pediatric neuropsychologist, have received a Research Opportunity Fund (ROF) grant from UF worth more than $93,000 for their two-year study. Sixty children with ASD between 3 and 10 years old are being recruited from Alachua County to participate.

“Autism is a vital national health concern,” said Conroy, who also is associate director of UF’s Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies. “It’s estimated that ASD occurs in one of every 88 children. What’s most alarming is that the prevalence rate today is 10 times higher than it was in the 1980s. The cost impact on our society is estimated as high as $90 billion annually.

“In our research, we will implement function-based interventions to promote higher rates of positive social interactions in children with ASD, which should improve their long-term outcomes.”

Conroy’s project is one of 18 ROF grants awarded this year by UF’s research office. The annual seed grants provide funding for new and particularly promising research proposals that are multi-disciplinary and are expected to attract additional external funding from major funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Conroy also was awarded a seed grant in 2005.

Other past grant recipients from the College of Education include Linda Lombardino (2011), Ann Daunic (2009), Holly Lane and Luis Ponjuan (both 2008), and Jennifer Asmus (2002).

“Research Opportunity Fund grants historically go to UF faculty researchers in the technical fields such as medicine and engineering,” said Thomasenia Adams, associate dean for research, faculty development and graduation education, “so it is notable to have several multidisciplinary research teams from the College of Education receive this highly competitive award over the past several years.”

Conroy has extensive experience in conducting early intervention research with children who are at risk for or have social and behavioral disabilities, including children with autism spectrum disorders. She is principal investigator on an Institute of Educational Sciences grant worth $4 million, investigating the efficacy of a classroom-based intervention model aimed at reducing significant behavior problems in pre-kindergarten children at risk for learning and behavioral difficulties.

CONTACTS

   SOURCE: Maureen Conroy, professor in special education and early childhood studies, UF College of Education, mconroy@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4382

   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Smith Professorship study will benefit English language learners

Elementary school students learning English as a second language will benefit from groundbreaking research by University of Florida education professor Ester de Jong, in new studies supported by her recent appointment to the College of Education’s prestigious B. O. Smith Research Professorship.

While occupying the three-year post, de Jong will investigate ways that elementary teachers can best help young English language learners (ELLs) bridge the language gap in order to succeed in school. Her research focuses not on conversational English but on the “academic language”—the language of school, textbooks and testing—that is vital to school success. 

The B.O. Smith endowed professorship supports new, cutting-edge research of promising education faculty who are preparing to go up for full professor. It carries the potential for $3,000 annually in research funding and a $5,000 yearly salary stipend, renewed year to year based on research progress, for a total award package of $24,000. Appointments last three years and are staggered so a new professorship is awarded annually.

Cynthia Griffin in special education is the other current B.O. Smith Professor. The professorship’s namesake is a former UF education faculty member in curriculum and instruction.

de Jong, an associate professor in bilingual and ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) education, said mastering academic language proficiency is essential for all students, but especially for bilingual learners still acquiring English. She said their learning is best supported when teachers purposefully develop academic language.

 “Current research primarily focuses on academic language development at the secondary-level content areas. This study will take place in two partnering second-grade, dual language classes in a Duval County elementary school. Spanish is the language of instruction in one class and English in the other classroom,” said de Jong, a UF faculty member since 2001.

Recent studies show that more than a third of fourth-grade ELLs are behind their white peers in math and nearly half are behind in reading. More and more, researchers view ELL students’ lack of access to the development of academic language as a leading influence on academic achievement.

de Jong’s study will involve multiple teacher interviews and videotaped observations of teacher-student exchanges during classroom lessons in both Spanish and English.

“The findings,” de Jong said, “will contribute to our understanding of academic language in the classroom and will support effective professional development for teachers working with English language learners.”

de Jong, who speaks fluent Dutch, English and Spanish, is a nationally recognized authority in dual language education. She has published several research articles on the topic and is the sole author of the 2011 book, “Foundations of Multilingualism in Education: Principles to Practice.” She has an Ed.D. degree in literacy, language and cultural studies from Boston University.

 “Dr. de Jong’s research funded by the B.O. Smith Professorship addresses a major gap in the international literature on bilingual education,” said Elizabeth Bondy, director of UF’s School of Teaching and Learning. “Her findings will position her to be competitive for significant additional external funding and will enhance the professional development of teachers working with English language learners.”

de Jong in 2009 was awarded a College of Education Faculty Enhancement Opportunity grant worth more than $35,000 to fund activities to enhance her expertise in the research, policy and practice of teaching in multilingual contexts. She used her added expertise to build on her current $1.2 million study (with co-researchers Maria Coady and Candace Harper) examining teacher effectiveness with students in Florida schools who speak English as a second language.

The B.O. Smith study continues research conducted in 2009-2010 in a dual language school in Massachusetts, sponsored by a $40,000 Spencer Foundation research grant.

CONTACTS
   SOURCE: Ester de Jong, associate professor, UF College of Education, 352-273-4227; email edejong@coe.ufl.edu 
   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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‘Smart classroom’ moving teacher preparation into 21st century

Aiming to bring teacher education into the 21st century, UF’s College of Education is working this summer to convert a vintage 1979 reading clinic—Room 2309 in Norman Hall—into a prototype “smart” classroom, where professors will incorporate the latest educational technology into their teaching to transform student learning and increase teacher-student engagement.

The college received $141,000 for the project from UF’s Office of Academic Technology through a campuswide grant program supported by student technology fees.

The “reinvented” classroom will feature the latest educational technology to increase teacher-student interaction and collaboration. New touch-screen SMART boards will complement the traditional dry-erase boards, and students will sit in groups for collaboration at seven movable media pods outfitted with iPads or laptop computers where everyone is connected to each other via a shared screen.

“The reading clinic room originally had an odd shape that made student engagement difficult. The biggest part of this grant isn’t the SMART boards or the iPads—it’s  the use of technology to redesign the classroom into collaborative thinking stations,” said Suzanne Colvin, associate director of teacher education in the college’s School of Teaching and Learning.

The classroom’s media pods will each face a large screen for the students to share their computer-monitor views with the group. Each station can connect to one of two 40-inch monitors at each end of the classroom. With the screens at each station and the capability to connect to the 40-inch monitors, the instructor can see what each group is working on from a distance, even with large classes.

The redesigned classroom will help instructors to create a collaborative, problem-solving experience for students, Colvin said. She said students can get an experience in the new classroom that isn’t possible with distance learning or a traditional lecture-style class.

“There’s decreasing reliance upon “stand–and–deliver” instruction in campus-based classrooms,” Colvin said. “The advantage to being on campus is that instructors can guide students through group thinking, if the tools are available in the classroom to do so.”

Colvin said she got the inspiration for the media pods from similar classrooms she’d learned of at Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Minnesota.

The classroom is scheduled to be completed by summer semester of 2013 with renovations beginning this summer. The classroom will serve education courses and other electives from outside of the College.

The Academic Technology Office’s technology fee advisory committee accepts grant proposals for technological improvements across campus every year. The money for the grants comes from the technology fee that is built into tuition at $4.42 per credit hour for undergraduate students and $5.52 for graduate students.

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UF ranks 6th in U.S. among public online teacher education programs

The UF College of Education’s online teacher education program has been ranked 16th in the nation—and sixth among public programs—by TheBestSchools.org, an independent online resource for people seeking college degree programs and higher-education institutions that best meet their needs.

The rankings, announced Thursday, June 21, by the Web-based group, are based on academic excellence (measured by faculty education and productivity), program depth (measured by number of courses available) and affordability.

The website’s listing of the top 25 ranked programs includes a five-paragraph summary of UF and the College’s “wide variety” of education degrees and certificate programs.

Dan McCoy, senior director of E-learning, technology and creative services for the College, attributed the high ranking to “the fact that we take the needs of our online students very seriously.”

We work hard to accommodate the busy lives of working educators in the structure of our programs while also providing an excellent education,” McCoy said. “Access to an online degree can better facilitate the immediate application of our best research by teachers and administrators to their workplace.”

The University of Florida’s overall distance education program ranked second nationally behind the Penn State University World Campus.

TheBestSchools.org provides information on a wide variety of career options and strategies and in-depth rankings of colleges and degree programs in many categories. It has no ties to any educational institution and, according to the website, the organization’s editors “all hold Ph.D. degrees and have extensive experience in teaching, research and publishing at the university level.”

CONTACTS

   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Washington ‘Knight-ed’ for quest to revive civic learning, citizenship involvement

Professor Elizabeth Washington

As part of a $3 million campaign to strengthen civic learning and involvement, UF education  professor Elizabeth Washington was recently named a Knight Effective Citizens Fellow by the university’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service to help develop and test a novel online civics course for UF undergraduates.

Washington will join a work group of newly appointed Knight fellows in the project in an effort to strengthen students’ civic knowledge and involvement in democratic citizenship activities. After evaluation at UF, the online course will be made available to universities across the nation.

The course development is one of five civic-learning projects funded by a $3-million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The grant also supports four other initiatives promoting civic involvement including the use of social media, ways to engage public discussion and evaluation of current civic learning and engagement programs.

With severe school budget cutbacks and the emphasis on standardized tests mainly in reading, science and math, Washington said the amount of time and effort devoted to teaching subjects such as civics, American history and government is seriously declining in public schools.

Washington is a national expert and advocate for civics education and citizen involvement. She is a professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at the College of Education and a Senior Fellow with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship and the Bob Graham Center, where she works to improve civics education standards in Florida.

As a Knight fellow, she will work with one of her former students, Emma Humphries, who was hired by the Graham Center upon completion of her doctoral degree earlier this year to fill the grant-funded position of assistant scholar in citizenship. Humphries will coordinate the fellows’ work group and its course development activities.

The Bob Graham Center was created in 2008 by former Sen. Graham to give UF students an opportunity to experience political leadership and involvement outside of the classroom and a firm grounding in democratic government. The Knight fellows are working on the course curriculum with plans to offer the course to UF students in next spring.

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Higher Ed professor in partnering talks with Colombian university

When Pilar Mendoza, UF assistant professor in higher education administration, arrived in Bogota, Colombia in May to speak at the Strategies for Improving the Quality of Higher Education forum at the Universidad de los Andes (UA), her presentation wasn’t the only item on her agenda.

Mendoza and three co-researchers, two from the U.S. and one from another Colombian university, held talks with their University of the Andes counterparts during the forum that could lead to a five-university international partnership–including UF’s College of Education and the UA’s Center for Research and Professional Development in Education (or CIFE).

According to Mendoza, who presented in Bogota with University of Alabama colleague Aaron Kuntz on the topic of student retention, the four visiting co-researchers have pending projects with UA’s interdisciplinary CIFE, which develops programs, training and research on educational topics at the university and throughout Latin America.

The other two members of the visiting U.S.-Colombia foursome were University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor Joseph Berger and Universidad del Atlantico doctoral student Jairo Quintero. The provost of the host University of the Andes and an official with Colombia’s Ministry of Education also participated in the talks.

Mendoza and her three co-researchers have collaborated before. Later this summer, The Journal of Higher Education will publish their co-authored research article detailing the differences between top-tier and lower-ranked programs in materials science in terms of their abilities to partner with other industries without compromising their core values. Berger was also the dissertation adviser of both Kuntz and Mendoza during their doctoral studies, and Mendoza is the international dissertation chair for Quintero, who spent a month last fall at UF working with Mendoza.

Mendoza is a member of the International Advisory Board at UA’s CIFE and a faculty affiliate of UF’s Center for Latin American Studies.

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Diversity committee campaign addresses school equity issues

The 11-by-17-inch poster, taped to a women’s bathroom door in Norman Hall, offered a sad-but- true fact about sexual orientation and tolerance–or lack of same–in America’s public schools.

The bright orange-and-white poster’s message read: “Did you know. . .Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning youth hear anti-gay slurs on average once every 14 minutes at school?”

Members of the COE Faculty Policy Council's Diversity Committee display posters they developed for a collegewide diversity awareness campaign. Pictured, clockwise from left, are: Brianna Kennedy-Lewis, Bridgett Franks (chair), Maria Coady, Theresa Vernetson, Elayne Colon and Erica McCray. Not pictured are Shelley Warm and Michael Bowie. (Photo and story by Nicole La Hoz)

COE assistant professor Brianna Kennedy-Lewis, member of the college’s diversity committee, had hung the poster recently as part of a collegewide campaign, but found it in a hallway trash can the next day.

“I don’t know who took it down or why,” said Kennedy-Lewis, an instructor in curriculum, teaching and teacher education. “It justifies further that we need to be raising these issues.”

The poster is part of a diversity awareness campaign coordinated by the COE’s nine-member diversity committee, including eight faculty (chair Bridget Franks, Kennedy-Lewis, Maria Coady, Ana Puig, Erica McCray, Theresa Vernetson, Elayne Colon and Shelley Warm) and Michael Bowie, director of COE recruitment, retention and multicultural affairs.

The committee, charged by the College’s Faculty Policy Council, makes recommendations concerning diversity at the college and in the community.

Eight sets of six “Did you know…” posters have been placed throughout Norman Hall. Each poster targets an issue of inequity in public schools, such as access for students with disabilities or high-quality schooling for at-risk youth and minorities, and promotes projects of faculty committee members addressing those issues. Featured projects include Coady’s Project DELTA, a grant-funded study that looks at how well graduates of UF’s Elementary ProTeach program do at teaching English-language learners in Florida’s schools, and Franks’ collaboration with the Human Rights Council of North Central Florida on an anti-bullying initiative in Alachua County public schools.

The “Did you know…” project began last year when committee members discussed creating posters that detailed ongoing projects in the college. They then agreed to broaden the focus to include intersections between diversity-related programs at the college and concerns in public education.

The Diversity Committee first met as a task force in 2009, advising the college on creating a safe and accepting environment for all faculty, students and staff. Now, the committee hopes to gather other faculty members’ work—and even projects by graduate students—to include in the next academic year on a new set of posters.

“These issues of equity,” Kennedy-Lewis said, “are what we’re all about as a college of education.”

CONTACTS
SOURCE: Brianna Kennedy-Lewis, asst. professor, UF College of Education, 352-273-4041; email bkennedy@coe.ufl.edu

WRITER/PHOTOGRAPHER: Nicole La Hoz, communications intern, UF College of Education, 352-273-4449; nicdyelah@coe.ufl.edu

MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

 

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CEC honors special ed alum for stellar career in teacher education

The Council for Exceptional Children, the world’s largest international organization of special education professionals,  recently awarded University of Florida alumnus Fred Spooner (PhD ’80, special education) its prestigious 2012 TED/Merrill Award for Excellence in Teacher Education.

The honor recognizes Spooner for a lifetime of research productivity, masterly teaching and inspirational leadership in the special education field and advocacy for children with disabilities. Spooner, a longtime professor in special education at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, received his Ph.D. degree in special education from UF in 1980 and also was awarded the College of Education’s 2008 Alumnus Achievement Award.

Spooner’s latest honor from the CEC comes from an organization with more than 45,000 members. He is a past president of the North Carolina teacher education division of the CEC. Spooner received the TED/Merrill Award at the CEC’s annual convention in Denver.

During his 31-year career at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Spooner has become known as one of the nation’s leading authorities on teaching students with significant disabilities. He has published six books and more than 90 refereed articles and his work has appeared in influential publications such as The Journal of Special Education, Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities and Exceptional Children.

His academic success led him to editorships at three of the nation’s leading special education journals: Teaching Exceptional Children, The Journal of Special Education and Teacher Education and Special Education. He has also been a pioneer in the use of online instruction to prepare special education teachers—work that has gained Spooner national attention and convinced various state agencies and universities to seek out his advice on online education.

CONTACTS

    WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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Center for Learning offers Master Teacher training to help turn around state’s lowest-ranked high school

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning, part of the College of Education, recently joined a multi-organization, multiyear effort that includes Duval County Public Schools (DCPS), the Jaguar Foundation and Teach for America to turn around the state’s lowest-ranked high school, Andrew Jackson H.S. in Jacksonville.

Starting during the 2012-13 school year, this collaboration – which also includes United Way, City Year, Communities in Schools, Educational Directions, Big Brothers & Big Sisters, Ready for Tomorrow and Bridge of Northeast Florida – will aim to improve teaching and learning at Jackson, an F school on intervene status. The organizations are meeting May 29 to brainstorm ideas and synthesize their plans.

“The whole purpose of this project is to increase success,” says DCPS Deputy Superintendent Patricia Willis, “and introduce more of what the UF Lastinger Center is doing in non-high schools.”

Through its award-winning Master Teacher Initiative, the Lastinger Center provides on-the-job, onsite/online professional development to educators in Jacksonville’s highest needs elementary and middle schools. The initiative’s programs include a free UF master’s degree to teachers who make a five-year commitment to their schools. It offers this opportunity at Jackson, which, like many vulnerable schools, struggles to hire and keep experienced faculty.

“We’re inviting everyone who wishes to contribute to turning around Andrew Jackson High School to join us on a multi-year journey,” Lastinger Director Don Pemberton says. “It’s not going to be easy. It’s not for the mild and meek. But it’s an opportunity to make a real difference.”

Besides providing comprehensive professional development to Jackson teachers and administrators that includes leadership and team building, Lastinger will also help boost student engagement and morale, mobilize the community to support the school, recruit UF volunteers, chronicle the transformation effort and assemble research and evaluation teams to measure the results.

“We will identify research-based strategies and share them widely with our partners,” Pemberton says.

Brain drain to magnet and private schools often harms vulnerable schools, says UF Duval County Professor-in-Residence Crystal Timmons. Many high-achieving students opt out of attending lower-performing schools such as Jackson.

Out of 1,200 area students who could attend Jackson, only 800 have elected to do so.

“The community is losing a third of its students,” says Jon Heymann, CEO of Communities in Schools and a DCPS School Board candidate. “They’re voting with their feet.”

To attract more high-achieving students, who receive opportunity scholarships to attend schools out of their zones, Jackson will offer the International Baccalaureate and leadership and entrepreneurship programs beginning this fall.

“If everyone’s truly committed,” Timmons says, “then there is no reason why this venture should not be successful and why the students should not be successful.”

As part of the turnaround effort, social workers and other professionals will also be stationed at Jackson to meet the needs of students, teachers and families, Willis notes.

“We think if we can get sustainable work in Jackson,” she says, “we can spread that work and replicate it in other struggling schools.”

An educational innovation incubator, the UF Lastinger Center harnesses the university’s intellectual resources and partners with educational organizations to design, build, field-test and disseminate new models to transform teaching and learning.

CONTACTS

    WRITER: Boaz Dvir, UF Lastinger Center, 352-273-0289; bdvir@coe.ufl.edu

 

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Higher Ed alum named to head new UF Innovation Academy

UF’s new Innovation Academy, one of the nation’s most forward-looking undergraduate enrollment programs, didn’t have to look far for its inaugural director—hiring Jeffrey Citty (EdD ’11), a recent doctoral graduate in higher education from UF’s College of Education.

Citty, whose appointment took effect in March, is responsible for overall administration and leadership of the academy, collaborating with an advisory board.

Instead of taking traditional fall and spring courses, between 400 and 500 students admitted to the Innovation Academy will be on campus during the spring and summer terms, leaving each fall semester free for online courses, studying abroad, internships, creative problem-solving, community service and unique employment opportunities. The first class of academy students will enroll for the spring 2013 semester.

“This is an exciting and unique opportunity for students who want a little more out of their undergraduate experience,” Citty said. “It targets entrepreneurial-minded students looking for a nontraditional college route. The IA model also increases access to UF by expanding capacity during the spring and summer when more space is available.”

Citty was the College of Engineering’s student affairs assistant director in 2011 and coordinated its academic support services from 2003-2011. He oversaw all aspects of the engineering freshman transition program, focusing on recruitment and retention. In 2009, he was recognized by the National Academic Advising Association with an award for Outstanding Advising.

Dale Campbell, professor and interim director at the College of Education’s School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education, called Citty “a passionate, student-centered adviser.”

“I have no doubt that he‘ll be very successful working with other units and colleges on campus to help the Innovation Academy grow and succeed,” Campbell said. “He’s highly prepared to provide leadership for the program.”

CONTACTS
WRITER: Nicole La Hoz, student intern, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4449
MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

 

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Senate aide, rising thought leader named Outstanding Young Alumni

One is a former Florida College Student of the Year and a rising star among thought leaders in American education. The other is making a national impact in the political arena as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.

They are Brian Dassler (MEd ’02, English education) and Jocelyn Moore (MEd ’00, student personnel in higher education), both named 2012 Outstanding Young Alumni by UF’s College of Education. The UF Alumni Association established the award in 2006 to recognize graduates who are 35 or younger and have distinguished themselves in their profession and community.

Read their profiles below and it’s easy to see why they were selected:

Brian Dassler

Brian Dassler (MEd ’02, English education)
Principal
KIPP Renaissance School, New Orleans

While an undergraduate at UF, Dassler’s numerous honors, scholarships and campus activities led Florida Leader magazine to select him as its 2001 Florida College Student of the Year. He received his M.Ed. degree from UF in 2002 and has been making his mark ever since, not only as a superb teacher, but as a national education thought leader.

He taught high school English for five years in Broward County and in 2007 became the district’s youngest recipient of its Teacher of the Year Award. Dassler last year was named the founding principal of the KIPP Renaissance School in New Orleans, a progressive charter school in the city’s impoverished Upper Ninth Ward. He trained for that position through a novel fellowship program of the national KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Foundation.

He has served on the Florida PTA Board of Directors and on several state education advisory groups. Opinion columns written by Dassler have received widespread coverage on hot education topics such as the achievement gap in America’s schools and the pros and cons of virtual schooling.

Jocelyn Moore (MEd ’00, SPHE)
Legislative Director
Office of U.S. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV

Jocelyn Moore chose an unconventional career path in public policy after earning her master’s in Student Personnel in Higher Education in 2000, but she attributes her problem-solving and creative-thinking skills to her UF graduate studies experience. She has worked for 12 years as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate, currently as the legislative director for Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV.

She oversees the progression of bills and initiatives he is involved in and also is staff director of the Senate finance subcommittee on health care that he chairs. Moore previously worked for former Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and helped him develop a stipend program for all UF students interning on Capitol Hill. Her career highlights include helping to get President Barack Obama elected, working with mining companies to improve mine safety, and helping to lead our nation’s health care reform effort.

She volunteers with the Junior League of Washington to promote literacy and previously served on the board of the Washington, D.C., Gator Club. She received the 2010 First Focus Champion for Children Award and the 2009 Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust Congressional Staff Leadership Award.

CONTACT
   MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

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P.K. Yonge erects new elementary building in bid to become ‘technological powerhouse’

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The formal dedication Friday (May 11) of P.K.Yonge Developmental Research School’s new, technology-enhanced elementary wing marks completion of the first phase of total campus revitalization for the long-time University of Florida laboratory school.

P.K. Yonge and UF College of Education officials call it an important first step into transforming the K-12 school into a “model 21st century technological powerhouse.”

Aerial photo of P.K. Yonge's new, tech-enhanced elementary building.

The new 36,000-square-foot building will house kindergarten through fifth grade classes. The 13-month construction project, which cost $7.6 million, started in February 2011 with the demolition of one of three existing, single-story elementary school wings. Construction on the state-of-the-art, two-story replacement wing started March 28, 2011, with all but some minor finishing touches completed earlier this month.

The project is first in line in an effort to make the entire school a green campus. P.K. Yonge director Lynda Hayes says the new building achieves 25 percent greater energy efficiency than traditional school facilities and should qualify for LEED Gold certification–a benchmark of high-performance green buildings.

The entire makeover of P.K Yonge calls for tearing down all but five existing campus buildings. The master plan features several new buildings including a café, a global media center and a community outreach center. A new gymnasium, health and fitness center and a jogging and fitness track also are slated.

BRPH Construction Services of Melbourne, Fla., constructed the new elementary building and BRPH Architects-Engineers, Inc. designed the master plan for P.K. Yonge’s total campus renewal.

“The new elementary school embraces modern teaching methods and technology, tools and space considerations. It’s set up in a learning community model,” Hayes said.

She said a summer literacy program for younger elementary students will soon begin classes in the new building, but all elementary classes will be held there starting the next school year in August.

Officials call the new elementary school “a building without classrooms.” Traditional closed-off classrooms are replaced by learning studios with transparent walls, common areas and media centers. Computer labs are replaced by wireless devices such as laptops and tablets.

“The integrated technology will teach students how to make good decisions on the Internet and make global connections for research and communication as part of their coursework,” Hayes said.

Specialized space called the da Vinci Studio awaits students for creative science and art classes and projects. Students also have outdoor learning areas surrounded by nature, indoor reading lofts and comfortable chairs facing each other instead of all staring ahead at the teacher, as well as traditionally organized learning experiences. Teachers have designated workrooms and planning areas, accessible throughout the day to encourage collaborative teaching efforts.

Hayes, in her first year as P.K. Yonge’s director, said the school will work with stakeholders on strategies to raise the remaining $39 million needed to complete the total campus renewal project.

She moderated Friday’s dedication event and Alachua County Commissioner Paula DeLaney and other dignitaries spoke before the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony. Other participants included Joseph Glover, UF provost; Ed Poppell of the University of Florida Development Corporation (which oversees development of Gainesville’s Innovation Square); Glenn Good, dean of UF College of Education; and Fran Vandiver, retired P.K. Yonge director.

The campus revitalization project, nearly four years in the making, is a key legacy of Vandiver’s 13-year tenure as school director. She retired in April 2011.

Dean Good described P.K. Yonge’s forward-thinking campus renewal effort as typical for an education innovator.

“P.K. Yonge was into education reform before education reform was cool,” Good said. “These advances will improve the educational experiences of every student at P.K. Yonge and serve as a model for other schools in Alachua County and across the state and nation.”

CONTACTS

    SOURCE: Lynda Hayes, director, P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, lhayes@pky.ufl.edu; 392-1554, ext. 222

    SOURCE: Thomas Reilly, senior superintendent, BRPH Architects-Engineers, 321-751-3052

    WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, News & Communications, UF College of Education, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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1,000 Florida educators to share ‘action research’ in UF showcases

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—More than 1,000 public school educators are presenting their action research in coming weeks at the University of Florida’s annual inquiry showcases around the state.

The university’s Lastinger Center for Learning, part of the College of Education, co-produces the showcases with the Miami-Dade, Collier and Duval school districts as part of its award-winning Master Teacher Initiative. It is also sponsoring presentations by STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teachers in Pinellas County.

The events showcase classroom-oriented research projects that aim to boost student learning.

“Year after year, the teachers and administrators who participate in our Master Teacher Initiative dig deep into their practice and conduct hands-on research to figure out the best ways to help their students learn and develop,” said Don Pemberton, director of the Lastinger Center.

Miami-Dade holds its showcase May 12 at Southwest Miami Senior High School; Duval May 24 at the University of North Florida Center in Jacksonville; and Collier June 4 at Immokalee High School.

During the past school year, educators have tackled an eclectic variety of subjects. Many of them studied the effects of the technology they’ve incorporated into their classrooms.

Projects include “Get Them Hooked,” in which Carter G Woodson Elementary (Jacksonville) second-grade math teacher Deanda Ewers incorporated “research based engagement strategies” into her lesson plans; “Two Teachers? Pros and Cons of Team Teaching,” in which Coral Park Elementary (Miami) kindergarten teachers Carlos Mena and Jennifer Figueredo analyzed this scenario in their classroom; and “Impact of Study Island on AP Stats,” in which Immokalee High School 12th-grade math/computer science teacher Steven Becker examined the impact of new software on his students’ achievement.

The UF Lastinger Center is a global leader in the teacher quality movement. Harnessing the university’s intellectual resources, it partners with philanthropic, educational, governmental and business organizations to design, build, field-test, scale and disseminate new models and strategies to transform teaching and learning.

CONTACT
    WRITER: Boaz Dvir, UF Lastinger Center for Learning, UF College of Education, 352-273-0289, bdvir@coe.ufl.edu

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’65 grad Delores Lastinger named UF Distinguished Alumna

Delores Lastinger, a leading civic leader, philanthropist and former Jacksonville high school teacher known for her tremendous contributions to the Northeast Florida community and the University of Florida, has been chosen to receive the 2012 University of Florida Distinguished Alumna Award.

She was honored May 5 at UF’s commencement ceremony in Gainesville.

Lastinger, a longtime Jacksonville resident who, with her husband Allen, moved to St. Augustine in 2001, earned her bachelor’s degree in education from UF’s College of Education in 1965 and has always displayed a deep commitment to education. The Lastingers in 2002 created a $4 million endowment at UF to establish the Lastinger Center for Learning at the college.

The renowned center reflects the Lastingers’ vision of practical training that improves teacher practice and student learning. Little did they know that the center would grow in a few short years to link some 300 partnering high-poverty schools across Florida with UF research scholars from multiple disciplines, forming powerful learning communities in support of school improvement, teacher advancement and children’s early learning and healthy development. The Lastingers are active board members who continuously contribute to the center’s success.

“Close to 10 years ago, Allen and Delores, who’ve worked hard in life, found themselves in a position to give something back,” said Lastinger Center Director Don Pemberton. “They invested in education and planted a seed here in the College of Education. That seed has grown and grown and grown.”

Delores is vice president of the Lastinger Family Foundation and her devotion to education and charitable work has been a lifelong labor of love. After graduating from UF, she earned a master’s in education administration and supervision from the University of North Florida and taught for many years at Episcopal High School in Jacksonville before having children and moving into high-profile volunteer work and philanthropy.

UF has been the beneficiary of the Lastingers’ generosity on several occasions. Delores and Allen are joint lifetime members of the UF Alumni Association and are members of the President’s Council. (Allen has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from UF and is the retired CEO of Barnett Banks.) Delores also serves on the UF Foundation’s leadership gifts council and campaign steering council.

Besides the center, the Lastingers have made substantial donations to UF’s archeology program, the John V. Lombardi Scholarship Program, the UF 150th Anniversary Cultural Plaza Endowment-UF Performing Arts, and the David Lawrence Jr. Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies (also in the College of Education.)

Delores Lastinger’s generosity is well known throughout Northeast Florida. She and Allen co-chaired a successful $15 million capital campaign for Jacksonville Episcopal High, where Delores serves on the board of trustees. She also served on the board of directors for Leadership Jacksonville and developed the group’s annual fundraising program for its Youth Jacksonville Program, which supports more than 800 high school students. She’s also held board leadership positions for the Hubbard House (a domestic violence shelter), Hope Haven Children’s Clinic and Family Center and other charities.

Delores has volunteered for many years at the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida inpatient care center in St. Augustine and helped the center establish its pediatric hospice program. She’s also a trustee of Flagler College in St. Augustine and the Lastingers have campaigned to help preserve the college’s historic buildings.

MEDIA CONTACT: Boaz Dvir, creative services, UF Lastinger Center, UF College of Education, 352-273-0289; bdvir@coe.ufl.edu

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2012 Recognition Dinner Scholarship Video

Each year, the college hosts the Recognition Dinner as a way to honor its generous donors and recognize student award winners and scholarship recipients. As a tribute to scholarship donors, the college compiles a Thank You video which plays during the reception. The video shows a handful of scholarship recipients who describe which scholarship they received, how they will use the funds, and how grateful they are to their donor.

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North Florida educators converge on UF for FATE showcase

GAINESVILLE, FL – More than 300 practicing and future teachers, teacher educators and educational administrators—mainly from North Florida’s I-10 corridor—converged on the University of Florida campus April 21 for the 2012 multi-regional conference and inquiry showcase of the Florida Association of Teacher Educators (FATE).

The conference theme was “Teacher Learning and Practice Across the I-10 Corridor,” with participating educators hailing from the western Florida Panhandle counties to Jacksonville on Florida’s east coast, and as far south as the Alachua County and Marion County school districts in northcentral Florida.

All conference sessions and activities will be in Gainesville at UF’s Norman Hall, home of UF’s College of Education, from 9:45 a.m. until 4 p.m. Norman Hall is located on the southeast corner of UF’s campus at 605 SW 13th Street.

Darby Delane

Conference sessions showcased successful applications of teacher inquiry—also called action research—with attending educators sharing their findings from classroom-oriented research projects conducted to improve their own teaching practices, with enhanced student learning as the metric for success.

“Inquiry, or action research, is gaining popularity as an effective strategy for job-embedded, teacher professional development and school improvement,” said Darby Delane, school-university partnerships coordinator at UF’s College of Education.

Darby and UF lecturer Shelley Warm, who coordinates the college’s SITE educational preparation institute, represented UF on the 2012 FATE conference planning committee.

Several North Florida school districts and teacher-education programs from UF, University of North Florida, Florida A&M, Tallahassee Community College and Daytona State College will be represented at the conference, along with several higher-education institutions and school districts from central Florida regions of FATE.

Pertinent session topics included:

—  Preparing African-American, low-income and first-generation students for college achievement

—  Social media as a learning tool

—  Saving rural and inner-city schools through university-school partnerships

—  Social studies: the disappearing subject

—  Help stop the revolving door of science teachers

—  Cultural competence: Essential skills for new teachers

—  Professional Development Schools

A sampling of presentations by UF education faculty and students includes:

—  The UF Literacy Initiative, a promising intervention model for preventing reading difficulties in young children

—  How race and gender play a role in students’ classroom discipline

—  How UF is shifting its elementary teacher preparation program to meet today’s education needs

—  Behavior management without raising your voice

—  Breaking the code: an approach to increasing math FCAT scores

CONTACTS

   SOURCE: Darby Delane, university-school partnerships coordinator, UF College of Education, delane@coe.ufl.edu; (w) 352-273-4191

   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Participant in UF master-teacher program receives top honor in Pinellas

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For the second year in a row, a teacher who receives training from the University of Florida Master Teacher Initiative has been named teacher of the year in Pinellas County.

Pinellas County Schools recently chose UF Lastinger Center Teacher Fellows Facilitator Stephanie Whitaker, a fifth-grade teacher at Dunedin Elementary, as Pinellas County’s 2012 Teacher of the Year.

“I don’t think I would have won Outstanding Educator if I hadn’t had the opportunity to participate in the Teacher Fellows program and conduct inquiry,” said Whitaker, 29, who teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages, known as ESOL.

Inquiry — action research conducted on the job by educators — is a cornerstone of the Master Teacher Initiative, an award-winning, job-embedded professional development program run by the UF Lastinger Center for Learning.

Inquiry has proven to be a natural fit for Whitaker, said Lastinger Innovation Champion Sylvia Boynton, who has worked closely with Dunedin teachers over the years.

“One of the things I’ve started doing is inquiry opportunities with my students — having them conduct research,” Whitaker said.

It’s been a big hit, year after year.

“There was never a discipline problem and the kids loved every minute — they would ask to do this work,” Boynton said.

Whitaker, who’s been teaching for six years, has participated in the Teacher Fellows program since Dunedin partnered with Lastinger five years ago.

Last year, PCS named Tracy Staley, a participant in the Master Teacher Initiative’s on-the-job graduate program, the district’s Outstanding Educator. She went on to become a finalist for the state Teacher of the Year.

Being named Pinellas’ 2012 Teacher of the Year caught Whitaker by surprise.

“It’s really been an out-of-body experience,” she said.

Her teaching has been more structured since she began as a Teacher Fellow, Whitaker said. She differentiates her instruction through individualized data and views her students in new ways.

“I look at my classroom through a different lens,” she said.

Besides teaching, Whitaker serves on Dunedin’s school leadership team.

“She is a wonderful resource to the other teachers,” Boynton said.

CONTACT

SOURCE: Sylvia Boynton, innovation champion, UF Lastinger Center for Learning, 727-742-3759, sboynton@coe.ufl.edu

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FLORIDA VOICES

Florida Voices 
April 2012
Pilar Mendoza (higher education administration)

An opinion piece by Pilar Medoza, assistant professor in higher education administration, was featured in a discussion about whether tuition increases hinder the competiveness of Florida’s work force. Mendoza wrote that it would. “Higher education is a public good. But the prevalent ideology insists on seeing it as a private good. The result is the crumbling of our Kindergarten-g

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TAMPA BAY NEWS WEEKLLY

Tampa Bay News Weekly 
3-29-2012
Lastinger Center

The Lastinger Center was mentioned in an article about the Pinellas county teacher of the year for its Teacher Fellow Facilitator program. Teacher-of-the-year winner Stephanie Whitaker is involved with the program that gives teachers in Pinellas county support and feedback regarding their classroom practices.

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CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: Linda C. Jones

The Chronicle of Higher Education 
3-25-2012
Linda Cronin Jones (science education)

In a letter to the editor published in The Chronicle, UF science education professor Linda Cronin Jones and co-author Francis Putz, a biology professor, warn of the consequences of STEM educators not having sufficient experience in teaching before going into a classroom.

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Gift honors long College-PKY lab school partnership

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida and its K-12 laboratory school, P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, have a long history of collaboration dating back to 1934, and now each will benefit from a $100,000 gift from one of the lab school’s former teachers.

Stephanie Wester, P.K. Yonge’s only fifth-grade teacher when she taught there in 1957-58, and her husband William J. Wester, both retired and living in Gainesville, have pledged the money to create an endowed scholarship in UF’s College of Education. The Stephanie Kornprobst Wester Endowed Fellowship will support deserving UF graduate students in education who are conducting innovative research or teaching projects at P.K. Yonge during their advanced degree studies.

“I didn’t get my degrees at (the University of) Florida, but it’s my husband’s alma mater and I’ve come to think of it as mine, too,” Stephanie Wester said. “I loved teaching at P.K. Yonge, and the school and the College of Education always work so hard together. P.K. Yonge has some exciting plans for the future and my husband and I want to help out and be a part of that.”

Stephanie has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Kent State and a master’s in reading education from Johns Hopkins University. Her husband, William, earned two UF degrees, in physical education in 1953 and electrical engineering in 1958. He is retired from Westinghouse, where he worked from 1973 to 1996.

UF’s College of Education established P.K. Yonge in 1934 as a model school to test its teaching theories and curriculum innovations and to provide practical teacher training for its undergraduates. The college and P.K. Yonge shared the new school building (located on the southeast corner of UF’s campus) until 1957, when the lab school moved a few blocks south to new quarters at its current location. The college took over the old school building and renamed it Norman Hall after former education dean James W. Norman.

“In 1958, I marched my fifth graders from the old building to the new school along with all the other P.K. Yonge students, from kindergarten to high school. That was an exciting time and the kids were absolutely thrilled,” Stephanie Wester said.

Mrs. Wester regrets she had to resign after just one year at P.K. Yonge, following her husband that summer to Long Island for his new job. Her 25-year teaching career took her to schools in Miami, Gainesville and Baltimore, plus three more years as supervisor of student teachers at Salisbury (Md.) State College.

After nearly a half-century away, the Westers moved back to Gainesville in 2005, with their loyalty to UF and P.K. Yonge still intact.

“Stephanie Wester taught at P.K. Yonge during one of the most critical times in the history of its 78-year partnership with the College of Education,” said Glenn Good, in his first year as UF dean of education. “Through their gift, the Westers now offer support at another exciting juncture, as P.K. Yonge embarks on a total campus revitalization to evolve into a model learning community and a 21st century technological powerhouse.

“Good things seem to happen at P.K. Yonge when Stephanie Wester comes around.”

CONTACT:

WRITER: Larry Lansford, Director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Professor elected president of nation’s largest counseling association

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Cirecie West-Olatunji, an associate professor of counselor education at the University of Florida’s College of Education, has been elected president of the American Counseling Association, the nation’s largest counseling professional organization. She will serve one year as president-elect beginning July 1 and will start a one-year term as the group’s 62nd president on the same date next year.

West-Olatunji

West-Olatunji has held leadership positions at the branch, division and national levels of the ACA, which has more than 43,000 members. She currently serves on the association’s executive committee and on the governing council as a representative of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. She is a past president of the latter group.

She joins an impressive lineup of national leaders from UF’s counselor education program, spanning several decades. The program is ranked second nationally in its specialty area in the U.S. News & World Report’s survey of America’s Best Graduate Schools, and has consistently held a Top 5 national ranking since the mid-1990s.

“Dr. West-Olatunji continues the long-held tradition of UF counselor education faculty serving as national and international leaders of the profession,” said UF education dean Glenn Good, who also has a counseling background.

West-Olatunji said she expects the ACA to be dealing with several major emerging trends during her presidency—including the globalization of counseling and new counseling theories based on patients’ cultural backgrounds, learning how emotional responses to traumatic events (such as natural disasters) can contribute to psychological distress, and “a flurry of theories related to counseling young children age 5 and younger.”

“The next decade in counseling will be very exciting times in which counselors will need to be more responsive than ever,” she said.

West-Olatunji’s research specialty is in multicultural counseling and the role of cultural identity in the psychological, emotional and educational development of socially marginalized students. She has worked with local school communities to improve supportive parenting practices among students in low-income African-American families.

With an unusually high number of natural disasters occurring worldwide in recent years, she has been promoting the need to train more practitioners who can provide counseling for victims of disasters and their surviving family members and friends. She has taken graduate counseling students to New Orleans to assist in post-Katrina disaster recovery efforts. (She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in counselor education from the University of New Orleans.)

She also has organized national teams of counseling students, faculty and practitioners to travel to South Africa and Botswana for community-based counseling of HIV and AIDS patients.

After visiting post-earthquake Haiti and other recent disaster sites, West-Olatunji has designed a new online certificate program in disaster counseling at UF for licensed mental health professionals and state-certified school counselors drawn to the field. She is developing a training model that can be used in places like New Orleans, Port Au Prince, Haiti, and Japan, and is planning a trip to Latin America for another outreach trip next year.

She has received numerous awards for research and service to the profession from groups such as the AMCD, Florida Counseling Association, Counselors for Social Justice, and the Association for Black Psychologists.

CONTACTS

     SOURCE: Cerecie West-Olatunji, associate professor, UF College of Education; (w) 352-273-4324; cwestolatunji@coe.ufl.edu

     WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

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Early-childhood service award has special meaning for Patricia Snyder

When Patricia Snyder, who heads the University of Florida’s Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies, recently received the Mary McEvoy Service to the Field Award from the international Division for Early Childhood, she cherished both the recognition and the associations with McEvoy and previous award recipients.

Patricia Snyder portrait

Patricia Snyder

The McEvoy award annually recognizes a community member, parent or professional who has made significant contributions, on a national or international level, to early intervention and early childhood special education that improve the lives of young children with special needs, their families, or those who work on their behalf. The DEC is a division of the Council for Exceptional Children, the largest international organization of professionals in the field.

McEvoy, the former director of the Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota, was a nationally respected researcher and advocate in early childhood studies. She was one of seven passengers who died with Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone in a 2002 plane crash on their way to a political debate and funeral service. She was 49.

“Mary McEvoy set the bar high for those of us in early-childhood-studies science, policy and practice. Those who have previously received the award named in her honor have raised the bar even higher,” Snyder said. “Much of what we envision for our center at the University of Florida is influenced by the work of Mary, her colleagues, and previous award recipients, which makes this honor even more meaningful.”

Snyder is the inaugural occupant of the David Lawrence Jr. Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies at UF’s College of Education. Prior to her UF appointment in 2007, she was the founding director of the Early Intervention Institute at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and subsequently was the director of research at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Child Development for two years.

UF Education Dean Glenn Good said Snyder’s selection for the McEvoy Award reflects UF’s national leadership role in early childhood studies. “Dr. Snyder spearheaded the creation of the university’s center for excellence in 2010 by mobilizing the university’s top specialists in early childhood studies for collaborative research and training activities.

“She has worked to create exceptional interdisciplinary programs and projects for her entire career.”

Snyder interacts with a toddler at Baby Gator.

The new center she heads has quickly gathered some early momentum. While UF’s Baby Gator Child Development and Research Center serves as the hub for model demonstration and training activities, Snyder set up the center’s administrative and research offices in newly renovated quarters in the College of Education’s Norman Hall.

Joining Snyder on the center’s interdisciplinary leadership team are Baby Gator director Pam Pallas, education professor James Algina, associate scholar in education Kelly Whalon, and UF pediatrics professors Marylou Behnke and Fonda Davis Eyler. World-class scholar Maureen Conroy also was recruited back to UF for a leadership team post. Conroy promptly landed a $4 million federal grant to examine the efficacy of a social and behavioral intervention in early learning settings. The center also has hired its first research scientist, Tara McLaughlin, a December doctoral graduate of UF’s early childhood-special education program with several national research and editorial honors.

Prominent businesswoman Anita Zucker, a 1972 UF education graduate, kept the momentum building last year when she pledged $1 million to create an endowed professorship in early childhood studies.

In the research arena, Snyder is working on a $6 million federal grant to expand a job-embedded, advanced degree track in early childhood studies and teacher leadership for teachers in Miami-Dade schools. She recently completed a highly competitive, $1.3 million federal grant to study the impact of professional development on preschool teachers’ instructional practices. In early February, she and her colleagues received a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship training grant from the Institute of Education Sciences.

“We are developing new early learning interventions in collaboration with local, state and national partners and supporting the next generation of early-childhood studies leaders and researchers,” Snyder said.

She served as editor of the Journal of Early Intervention from 2002-2007.  Barbara Wolfe, a professor emeritus at the University of St. Thomas, says the high standards Snyder set as editor “played an important role in how early childhood intervention research is viewed and used by others.”

Snyder also advises state and federal early-learning commissions and is a local volunteer for United Way and the Children’s Movement of Florida.

“Pat has had a major impact on the field (of early childhood studies), has contributed significantly to the development of future leaders in our field, and has made a difference in the lives of children and families,” Wolfe wrote in nominating Snyder for the McEvoy Award.

Several of her doctoral students lauded Snyder in their nomination letters for her effective mentorship and the collaborative research opportunities she offers. Concerning her leadership style, Snyder says that among her leadership mantras are to “lead quietly, competently, and by example.”

“I consider it the supreme compliment when peers and practitioners say the quality of their work is enhanced through their collaborations with me, my colleagues, and our students,” Snyder said. “At the end of the day, my litmus test for the work we do is how much it improves services and supports for young children and their families.”

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Patricia Snyder, the Lawrence Endowed Professor in Early Childhood Studies, UF College of Education, 352-273-4291; patriciasnyder@coe.ufl.edu

WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

 

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Memory of brothers killed in car crash lives on with mother’s gift to UF

GAINESVILLE, FL — In August of 2006, UF’s College of Education lost two of its most involved and beloved graduate students, but their memory lives on in a scholarship created by donations from their mother, friends, faculty and fellow students.

The college’s counselor education program has about 150 students, but they all felt the loss of David and Brian Marshall, according to Ana Puig, a doctoral student in counselor education at the time and now an associate scholar and research director in the college’s Office of Educational Research.

The Marshall brothers were killed in a single-car crash on a trip back to Florida from their hometown of Gloucester, Mass. Brian, 31, was a pursuing an M.Ed./Ed.S. degree in mental health counseling  and David, 39, was working toward a doctoral degree in counselor education. Both were awarded posthumously in 2007.

Esther Marshall

Brian was one of Puig’s students, but she knew both brothers well. She remembers their generous spirit, something their mother, Esther Marshall, wanted to recognize with the scholarship. Esther took out a life-insurance policy and has pledged the benefit amount from her estate toward the $30,000 needed to create a permanent endowed scholarship.

“She wants to make sure the annual scholarship goes to counselor education students who are known for being like her sons were–always active, always involved, always helping other people,” Puig said.

College officials say the $30,000 goal hasn’t been reached yet, but Puig said faculty and students in the counselor education program still hope to raise the money needed to contribute toward the permanent endowment. Meanwhile, the college has already awarded a scholarship for each of the past five years to a deserving counselor ed student with funds contributed by others who knew, or have since heard about, the Marshall brothers and what they meant to the program.

The scholarship is open to graduate students of counselor education. Interested students can find more information on how to apply for the $500 scholarship at https://education.ufl.edu/student-services/scholarships/.

The Marshall brothers were always together and known for their love of sports (especially the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots), their generosity and hosting Gator football game-day parties with New England clam chowder and chili.

David was founder of the Florida Center of Performance Excellence, a sports psychology counseling center. They both worked closely with athletes as part of their internship training and David developed a popular undergraduate course focused on sports performance.  The course was modeled after one developed by the U.S. Military Academy and augmented with material developed by the U.S. Olympic Committee.  Offered as an undergraduate elective by the counselor education program, it proved especially attractive to Gator student athletes, many of whom attended the college’s memorial service for the brothers.

David and Brian Marshall received their degrees posthumously in a spring 2007 memorial ceremony at the Norman Hall. Pictured from left during the presentation are former COE Dean Catherine Emihovich, Esther Marshall, Michael Marshall (Brian's twin brother), and former UF counselor ed assistant scholar Kitty Fallon.

They were both heavily involved in student organizations including UF’s student Beta chapter of Chi Sigma Iota International, the counselor education profession’s honor society, for whom David served as president. David even cut his famous ponytail to raise over $1,000 for Relay for Life, one of the organization’s fundraisers. He also won an international Outstanding Service Award from the group, in part, for this creative fundraising idea.

“If you needed something, you’d call Brian or Dave, and they’d come,” Puig said. “If you’d call one, the other would always show up. They were inseparable.”

As namesakes of the scholarship started by their mother, they shall be remembered that way for many years to come at the College of Education.

CONTACTS

Source: Ana Puig, associate scholar and director of research, UF College of Education; anapuig@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4121

Media Relations: Larry Lansford, director of news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137.

Writer: Jessica Bradley, intern, news and communications, UF College of Education.

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Lastinger Center featured in booklet on UF’s impact in Miami-Dade

UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning, the College of Education’s statewide teaching- and school-improvement program, is featured in the South Florida edition of “UF in Your Neighborhood,” a new booklet produced by the University of Florida Foundation.

The foundation recently published several different regional versions of the booklet to highlight how UF’s teaching, research and service impact the lives of UF alumni and all residents in major markets throughout Florida and the Southeast.

The South Florida edition, covering Miami-Dade County, leads off with “Promise of a Brighter Future,” a full-page overview describing how “improving teacher practice and student achievement is at the heart  of (the Lastinger Center’s) newly expanded program in Miami-Dade County.”

Following the Lastinger Center piece, under a headline of “Education Champion,” the booklet offers a mini-profile of UF alum David Lawrence Jr., former publisher of The Miami Herald and a leading advocate of early childhood education at UF, in Miami-Dade and across the nation.

Here are brief summaries of how the college’s  Lastinger Center for Learning and UF early-learning advocate Lawrence are impacting the Miami-Dade County communities . . .

— Ready Schools Florida program
The Lastinger Center has partnered with Miami-Dade Schools and The Early Child Initiative Foundation since 2006 on an ambitious effort to give young children the best chance to succeed in school and beyond. It’s called Ready Schools Florida. Supported by a $10 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the program promotes early learning and child well-being from birth through elementary school. It’s an all-out effort to prepare all pre-schoolers for success by the time they enter the classroom.

— Master Teacher Initiative
Improving teacher practice and student achievement is at the heart of another innovative Gator program. UF’s Lastinger Center last year was awarded a $6-million federal innovation grant to expand its award-winning Master Teacher Initiative to some of Miami-Dade’s most vulnerable schools. The initiative allows early-learning teachers at 20 schools to pursue a new graduate degree track in early childhood education and teacher leadership while remaining on-the-job and at virtually no cost to them. UF campus-based professors provide the online instruction while professors-in-residence based at the district provide on-site instruction and first-hand observation. More than 1,200 teachers and 30,000 of Miami-Dade’s youngest school children are the beneficiaries of the three-year effort.

Lawrence

— EDUCATION CHAMPION: David Lawrence Jr., UF alum and early-learning supporter
UF alumnus David Lawrence Jr. needs little introduction to Miami-Dade citizens and education supporters. The 1963 College of Journalism graduate is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and he left the newspaper in 1999 to become an advocate for early childhood education. Lawrence is president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation in Miami, and the David Lawrence Jr. K-8 Center public school in Miami is named in his honor. UF’s College of Education also has a $1.5 million endowed professorship in early childhood studies named in his honor. Lawrence joined the UF faculty in 2001 as the University Scholar for Early Childhood Development and Readiness and he is a Lastinger Center visiting scholar and board member. Lawrence was instrumental in forging the UF-Miami/Dade partnerships in the Ready Schools and Master Teacher initiatives.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Don Pemberton, director, UF Lastinger Center for Learning, dpemberton@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4103

WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

 

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Institute honors 11 alumni in higher ed administration

Flanked on far left by COE Dean Glenn Good and on far right by UF higher education administration program head Dale Campbell, the Outstanding Alumni award winners are, from left: Anne Kress, Jeanna Mastrodicasa, Devi Drexler, Kristy Presswood, Carl Hite, Tina O'Daniels, Deanne Williams, and Hank Dunn.

UF’s higher education administration program only selects its Outstanding Graduates every five years, so it’s a big deal when the winners are announced. That’s why officials at the UF Institute of Higher Education announced this year’s 11 recipients at a special gathering of their peers—at a special alumni reunion and awards banquet held concurrently on Jan. 28 with the annual gathering of the Community College Futures Assembly in Orlando.

The competitive awards program recognizes selected professionals—all Ph.D. or Ed.D. graduates of UF’s higher education administration program—for their effectiveness as community college administrators, participation in collegewide strategic planning, community involvement, and professional activities at the state, regional and national levels.

The UF alumni winners of 2012 were:

— Devi Drexler, educational policy consultant with the Florida Department of Education division of accountability, research and measurement
— Hank Dunn, president of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (N.C.)
— Carl Hite, president of Cleveland State Community College (Tenn.)
— Anne Kress, president of Monroe Community College (Rochester, NY)
— Anna Lebesch, vice president for workforce development at St. Johns River State College (in Palatka, Fla.)
— Jeanna Mastrodicasa, assistant vice president for student affairs, University of Florida
— Christopher Mullin, program director for policy analysis with the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington D.C.
— Tina Barreiro O’Daniels, associate provost at the Tarpon Springs campus of St. Petersburg College (Fla.)
— Brian Polding, chair of the College of Information Systems and Technology, and the School of Business at North Florida campus of the University of Phoenix (in Jacksonville)
— Kristy Presswood, associate vice president of the College of Education, Daytona State College (Fla.)
— Deanne Williams, associate professor and chair, hospitality management department at Virginia State University (in Petersburg, Va.)

The recipients emerged from a pool of 30 nominees reviewed earlier in the month by a panel of leading higher education professionals from the CCFA organization.

Capsule summaries below highlight noteworthy achievements and honors of the winners:

Devi Drexler, PhD
Educational Policy Consultant
Florida Department of Education; Division of Accountability, Research and Measurement

At the Florida Department of Education, Dr. Drexler provides statewide analysis and information to support policy decisions of the deputy and commissioner of education, such as FCAT analysis and review. She’s worked in student affairs administration at several institutions including the University of Florida, FSU, Georgia Gwinnett, Santa Fe, Lake Sumter and Tallahassee Community Colleges. Drexler is a member of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the Pi Lambda Theta International Honor Society.


Hank Dunn, EdD
President
Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College (N.C.)

Dr. Dunn has worked in community colleges for nearly 30 years, with 21 years in the Florida Community College System. At A-B Tech, he aligns budgets to the strategic plan, creates flexible learning formats and helped to pass a countywide sales tax worth $129 million to the college for repair, renovation and building of facilities. Dunn helped increase enrollment by 10,000 students in a four-year period in a past position at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.


Carl Hite, PhD
President
Cleveland State Community College (Tenn.)

During his 15 years as president of Cleveland State Community College, Dr. Hite has made sure his college not only keeps pace with the tremendous changes occurring in higher education, but leads the way in implementing essential changes. CSCC is a past recipient of the prestigious Bellwether Award, received after the college’s redesigned math program was recognized by President Obama as a program that every American community college should replicate. Hite is leading efforts to scale up the redesign “across the curriculum.” Hite is president of the National Alliance of Community and Technical Colleges.


Anne M. Kress, PhD
President
Monroe Community College, Rochester, NY

Previously, as provost at Santa Fe Community College, Dr. Kress negotiated a faculty contract change, grew international programming and sustainability efforts, began the Center for Innovation and Economic Development, and moved SFC to a four-year degree. As the current president of Monroe Community College, fundraising has improved each year during the recession and MCC hosted the first event to raise over $100,000 in one evening. MCC has expanded its honors program and changed policies to improve student success and completion.


Anna M. Lebesch, EdD
Vice President for Workforce Development
St. Johns River State College (in Palatka, Fla.)

Dr. Lebesch has worked in higher education for over 15 years as a counselor, instructor and administrator. Last year, she implemented St. Johns River’s first bachelor of science degree in organizational management and helped garner a $1.9 million federal grant for the college’s nursing programs. She is a member of the Reaccreditation Leadership Team and the Institutional Planning Council. Lebesch is an active member of numerous Clay County associations and chairs the county’s economic development council.


Jeanna Mastrodicasa, PhD
Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs
University of Florida

In her current post, Dr. Mastrodicasa developed the UF Division of Student Affairs’ 2010-2015 strategic plan and submitted all materials for the SACS five-year accreditation review. She has made assessment an integrated part of the division’s work processes. In her previous position as associate director of the UF Honors program, she reorganized the university’s undergraduate research program and managed applications for Fulbright Scholars from UF. Mastrodicasa has co-authored a book about the millennial generation in the workforce and is serving her second three-year term as a Gainesville city commissioner.


Christopher Mullin, PhD
Program Director for Policy Analysis
American Association of Community Colleges (D.C.)

Dr. Mullin provides analysis and data to guide AACC’s advocacy efforts on causes such as federal student financial assistance and college costs and policies. He has written 30 policy documents, 10 peer-reviewed journal articles, four book chapters, and edited one book. Mullin serves on the advisory boards of the national Pathways to College Network, the National Education Finance Conference and the Gates Research Advisory Board of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.


Tina Barreiro O’Daniels, EdD
Associate Provost
St. Petersburg College, Tarpon Springs Campus (Fla.)

As the college’s No. 2 administrator, Dr. O’Daniels supports the provost in operating a 120-acre campus with 6,000 students at the Tarpon Springs campus of St. Petersburg College. She serves as associate provost and also is chief student affairs officer and student dean, while participating in collegewide strategic planning and policy implementation. She is an editorial board member for the Council for the Study of Community Colleges and continues to serve as an executive coach and learning plan mentor for UF’s Institute of Higher Education.


Brian Polding, PhD
Chair, College of Information Systems and Technology, & School of Business
North Florida campus of the University of Phoenix

Dr. Polding, the North Florida campus 2011 Outstanding Employee, has chaired the School of Business for 11 years and also is acting director of academic affairs. He supervises eight faculty area chairs and 80 part-time faculty members and is a member of the university president’s academic cabinet. He also teaches and serves on doctoral dissertation committees. He has consulted with companies such as IBM and AT&T on the development of management training programs. Polding is a Supreme Court certified mediator for the Florida Family Courts.


Kristy Presswood, PhD
Associate Vice President, College of Education
Daytona State College (Fla.)

Dr. Presswood has worked in numerous divisions in her 18 years at Daytona State. She was instrumental in the early implementation of a campus computer network and an online student services system, and currently oversees adult education and the School of Education. The education school has a robust system of tracking all pre-service teachers, and Presswood’s future plans call for automating processes that will advance faculty advising, student tracking and field experience tracking for the school and college.


Deanne Williams, EdD
Associate Professor and Chair, Hospitality Management Department
Virginia State University

Williams spearheaded the accreditation of VSU’s hospitality management program that led to its transition from program to department status. She also obtained grants to provide low-income students with scholarships, which had a direct effect on graduation rates. She also serves as an American Council on Education Internationalization committee member and launched the university’s first formal study-abroad curriculum. Williams is a member of the Petersburg Area Tourism Board and the National Advisory Board of the Disney College Program.

UF’s institute of Higher Education works closely with its affiliate colleges in offering continuing professional development opportunities for practitioners and conducting needed research in the field of higher education and community college administration.

The Community College Futures Assembly, now in its 18th year, convenes annually as an independent national policy forum for key opinion leaders to work as a “think tank” in identifying critical issues facing the future of community colleges. The group also conducts the nationally recognized Bellwether Awards to honor trend-setting community colleges.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Dale Campbell, interim director, School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education, Uf College of Education, dfc@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4300.

MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, Director, COE News & Communications, UF College of Education, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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UF launches $1.5 million effort to restructure teacher-preparation programs

Aided by a $1.5-million federal grant, the University of Florida has announced plans to restructure the College of Education’s special education teacher-preparation program to meet increasingly higher national standards for new teachers.

Co-researchers McLeskey and Cox

Like many American education colleges, UF is revamping its teacher-education programs to include more practical teaching experience. UF special education professors James McLeskey and Penny Cox are leading the effort.

Politicians, federal education officials and policymakers are holding U.S. colleges of education accountable for teacher education—and ultimately for student learning—as never before. Many cite the need for more hands-on classroom and field experience in teacher preparation programs.

Students in UF’s unified elementary ProTeach program complete a five-year blend of coursework and hands-on teaching experiences, resulting in a master’s degree in elementary education and the option of dual certification in K-12 special education.

McLeskey said UF’s special education program, ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey of America’s Best Graduate Schools, already integrates its theoretical and real-world teaching experiences. Under the grant, though, the researchers are working to relate the two more closely by applying research on effective instructional practices with work being done in real-world classrooms.

The UF effort, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, is called Project RITE—short for Restructuring and Improving Teacher Education. McLeskey and Cox will collaborate with special education professionals across the nation to ensure UF’s ProTeach graduates will be well prepared to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities.

The researchers will develop a statewide mentoring program that pairs each new special education graduate at UF with an experienced classroom teacher who will provide support and feedback in their first year of teaching. Mentor teachers will be selected in collaboration with local school district administrators for their knowledge of effective teaching methods, experience, and effectiveness in improving outcomes for students who struggle learning basic skills. The program emphasizes high-need schools to better prepare students for Florida’s diverse classrooms.

“Florida is a ‘majority minority’ now,” McLeskey said. “Wherever you go, you’re going to get students from different cultural backgrounds.” McLeskey is UF’s former chair of special education and also directs the college’s Center on Disability and Policy Practice.

“Increasingly, our student-teachers need to learn things in natural contexts, which means they need to spend more time in schools,” he said. “We’re moving teacher preparation much further in the direction of building everything into what they’re doing in the classroom.”

Cox said UF ProTeach students will begin to see the instructional changes next fall.

CONTACTS

SOURCES:  James McLeskey, professor of special education, UF College Education; mcleskey@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4278

MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

WRITER: Jessica Bradley, communications intern, UF College of Education.

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UF Teach receives share of $500,000 award from AT&T

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — UF Teach, a novel program considered to be the pillar of the UF College of Education’s science and math education reform strategy, will split $500,000 in support from AT&T with four other universities with similar programs, according to an announcement Jan. 19 by the National Math and Science Initiative.

From left: FSU President Eric Barron; Marshall Criser III, AT&T Florida President and UF trustee; Glenn Good, dean of the UF College of Education; and UF President Bernie Machen pose with oversized checks from AT&T.

The five benefiting programs, all modeled after the highly regarded UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin, will each receive $100,000. AT&T presented awards to UF Teach and to model programs at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Irvine, the University of Northern Arizona and Florida State University.

“AT&T deserves tremendous credit for its foresight in recognizing the growing importance of math and science education,” UF President Bernie Machen said. “If you want to get students interested in those fields, you have to reach them early. This gift is a long-range investment that will help the University of Florida graduate the teachers that are needed to keep our state and our nation economically competitive for years to come.”

UF Teach is a collaboration between the university’s College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the goal is to recruit the best math and science majors and prepare them to teach effectively. Master science and math teachers from the education college induct the students into the community of teachers by showing them the most effective, research-proven teaching methods in the given content areas and exposing them to supervised classroom experiences with schoolchildren beginning in their first semester.

The program, in its fourth year, offers education minors for their efforts in hopes the students will teach. Their degrees qualify them for teaching certification in Florida schools. Tom Dana, associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Education, co-directs UF Teach with Alan Dorsey, a physics professor and an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The first UF Teach class of 41 students enrolled in 2008, and enrollment jumped to 224 last spring. UF officials project that by 2015, UF Teach will graduate more than 60 students yearly who will be certified, and highly qualified, to teach middle and high school math and science in Florida schools. Dana said the number of math and science students in Florida served by UF Teach graduates should top 25,000 by 2015 and continue to grow exponentially each year.

NMSI has partnered with the UTeach Institute to implement the path-breaking program for recruiting and preparing math and science teachers in universities across the country since 2008 and is helping expand the program to 28 universities this fall. Enrollment in UTeach-modeled programs has tripled in the last three years, attracting more than 5,000 math and science majors across the country this fall.

“AT&T is acutely aware that our country needs more skilled workers in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and math,” said Marshall Criser III, AT&T Florida president and UF trustee. “All Americans will need to be more STEM proficient to be competitive in the 21st century.”

UTeach originated at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997. The program enables students majoring in math, science, or computer science to receive full teaching certification without adding time or cost to their degrees.

The core elements of UTeach model programs include:

  • Active recruitment and incentives, such as offering the first two courses for free.
  • A compact degree program that allows students to graduate in four years with both a degree and teaching certification.
  • A strong focus on acquiring deep content knowledge in math and science, in addition to research-based teaching strategies focusing on teaching and learning math and science.
  • Early and intensive field teaching experience, beginning in the UTeach students’ first semester.
  • Personal guidance from experienced master teachers, faculty and public school teachers.

The National Math and Science Initiative was launched in 2007 by top leaders in business, education, and science to reverse the decline in American math and science education. Inaugural funding was provided by the Exxon Mobil Corporation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

CONTACT: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

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Edugator Nation

UF College of Education has produced a steady succession of outstanding educators and scholars in teaching, counseling and administration. We are sustaining an innovative edge into the 21st century with a heightened emphasis on emerging technology, distance education, advance graduate studies and interdisciplinary research – preparing tomorrow’s leaders in all education professions.

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UF education, medical colleges team up on new master’s degree to help doctors become better teachers

The University of Florida colleges of Education and Medicine have joined forces to offer a new master’s degree program geared toward not only helping physicians be better teachers, but also training them to be scholars in the field.

The online joint master’s degree program will begin in the fall and is open to physicians across the state.

“Most faculty arrive at their position without any formal training in teaching techniques and best practices,” said Marian Limacher, M.D., senior associate dean for faculty affairs and professional development in the College of Medicine. “They have been students so long themselves they have developed their own style, but it may not be founded in best practices.”

Teaching is generally not a skill taught in medical school, as physicians-in-training are more focused on learning about the process of disease and how to treat patients. But as physicians move forward in their careers and become teachers themselves, of medical students, residents and fellows, there is a need for more advanced knowledge in instructional strategies and also research methods used to measure educational outcomes, which differ from the research techniques used in medical science.

Black

“Many health science professionals have been exposed to a monochromatic view of education that is lecture-based and behavioristically driven,” said Erik Black, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the College of Medicine department of pediatrics and the College of Education School of Teaching and Learning. “That is not necessarily where medical education is going. Today, there is a growing emphasis on small group learning, team-based learning and constructivist principles of instruction and learning.

“There is a need for medical educators to learn about and incorporate more contemporary educational methods. It is something students request and something faculty want but do not necessarily know how to deliver.”

The 36-hour master’s degree program will arm physicians with instructional strategies they can use in the clinical education setting and give them the tools to assess educational efforts, as well. Courses include subjects such as instructional design, research methods in professional and medical education, adult teaching and learning and more.The program stems from a pilot project faculty members in the colleges of Education and Medicine have been working on for the past two years. As part of that project, funded by the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, five UF physicians and a pharmacist are receiving master’s degrees in education, with a focus on using technology in education.

“We see so much potential in the connection between our two colleges. It is a unique arrangement and has helped us to move this work along,” said Elizabeth Bondy, professor and director of the School of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. “At the bedside, there is a lot of teaching and learning that goes on in those moments. What we do in the School of Teaching and Learning is focus on teaching and learning in diverse settings.”

UF education technology professors Kara Dawson and Cathy Cavanaugh were instrumental in the degree program’s creation while Bondy and School of Teaching and Learning faculty members Kent Crippen, Dorene Ross and Sevan Terzian have worked on developing the curriculum.

Eventually, the program likely will be opened up to professionals in other health fields as well, Black said.

For clinical educators in the College of Medicine, the issue is particularly important. The college is currently revising its tenure and promotion guidelines so that faculty who have pursued advanced education in teaching and who are conducting research in medical education can use this in their tenure applications, Limacher said.

“We think this program will have appeal to a number of folks within the College of Medicine,” Limacher said.

CONTACTS

SOURCE:

WRITER:

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Higher ed professor co-authors policy brief to help Latino males attain college degrees

Ponjuan

University of Florida education researcher Luis Ponjuan has co-authored a policy brief distributed nationwide on Tuesday (Nov. 29) by the national Institute of Higher Education Policy that offers a blueprint for clearing the overwhelming barriers that Hispanic-Latino boys face on their educational journeys towards a college education.

The brief, titled “Men of Color: Ensuring the Academic Success of Latino Males in Higher Education,” is the first in a series of planned publications focusing on “men of color’ in higher education, produced by IHEP’s Pathways to College Network, an alliance of national organizations that advance college opportunity for underserved students.

The “Men of Color” brief, written by Ponjuan and Victor Sáenz, assistant professor of higher education at the University of Texas at Austin, outlines actions that organizations and communities can take in developing interventions to reverse the oppressive educational trends of Latino males.

“Our blueprint promotes rigorous new research and the use of evidence-based policies and practices that align efforts across middle school, high school and higher education in enhancing college access and success for underserved students,” Ponjuan said.

To download free copies of the policy brief, visit IHEP’s website at www.ihep.org.

The Institute of Higher Education Policy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that develops and supports research activities promoting access to and success in higher education for all students.

Latinos are now 15 percent of the U.S. population. Yet Latinos, or Hispanics, earn only 6 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, according to the American Council on Education. This is significantly less than whites, blacks and Asians. Latino males also have one of the lowest high school graduation and college enrollment rates in the country.

“While research on Latino males is limited and only points to the many challenges facing them, there exist a few promising practices that promote these students’ advancement in education—all the way from elementary to secondary and through postsecondary,” said IHEP President Michelle Asha Cooper.  “We present real-life interventions that can be taken advantage of today to help strengthen the educational success for all Latino males.”

CONTACTS

   SOURCE: Luis Ponjuan, assistant professor and director, UF Institute of Higher Education, UF College of Education, lponjuan@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4313

   WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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COE-P.K. Yonge researchers head $5 million effort to transform middle-school science education

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida education researchers will lead a $5 million effort, funded by the National Science Foundation, to transform how science is taught in Florida’s middle schools, with high-need schools in 20 mostly rural school districts serving as the testing grounds.

The researchers are chasing an ambitious goal — to close the gap in science learning between U.S. students and their peers in higher performing nations. Scores from a 2010 Program for International Student Assessment report showed the U.S. ranked 17th out of 34 industrialized countries in science scores among 15-year-old students.

Lynda Hayes

“We want to shift middle school science teaching to a goals-driven approach with learning experiences that excite and engage all students. This will increase their chances of success as students transition from middle school to more advanced high school science courses,” said Lynda Hayes, an affiliate faculty member at UF’s College of Education and director of P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the college’s K-12 laboratory school.

“To catch up with our peers in other nations, we need to increase the size and diversity of our pipelines in science and math after high school graduation,” added Hayes. “We must ensure that disadvantaged students in small, rural and high-poverty schools are afforded equal opportunity to succeed in a cutting-edge science curriculum before they reach high school.”

Hayes is principal investigator of the five-year NSF project. Her UF co-investigators are science education professor Rose Pringle and Mary Jo Koroly, professor and director of biochemistry and molecular biology. Suzette Pelton, STEM coordinator of the Levy County School District, a project core partner, is also a co-principal investigator. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Recruiting and retaining more highly qualified middle and high school science teachers is a critical workforce need. The NSF project’s reform strategy calls for boosting student achievement by improving science content knowledge and professional development among practicing middle-school teachers.

The researchers are banking on an award-winning, on-the-job graduate degree program developed at UF called Teacher Leadership and School Improvement, with a focus on science education, to train “Science Teacher Leaders” in new, research-proven practices in science instruction. The TLSI program won the Association of Teacher Education’s coveted 2011 Distinguished Program in Teacher Education Award.

TLSI blends 36 credit-hours of online and face-to-face instruction by UF professors. The program is free for participating teachers with the NSF grant covering their tuition, valued at $21,000 each. Another novel aspect of the coursework is its “inquiry-based” approach, in which the teacher-students collaboratively assess their own teaching practices and share new knowledge with each other.

UF’s College of Education will enroll one teacher from each partnering school district in the degree program, which upon graduation will qualify them as district Science Teacher Leaders.

“In exchange for free tuition, the Science Teacher Leaders must remain at their high-needs schools for five years, including their two-year coursework,” Hayes said. “This will help our most challenging middle schools support and retain some of their best science teachers.”

Rose Pringle...co-PI

Armed with new science knowledge and a research-proven curriculum, the highly-trained Science Teacher Leaders will form and lead “professional learning communities” of their peers—each leader training 10 teachers at their own schools and neighboring middle schools to continuously study science teaching practices and student learning. Their students, in sixth through eighth grade, will be taught the same inquiry-based science practices and critical-thinking methods that the teacher leaders learned in their own coursework.

“Our Science Teacher Leadership Institute will allow 40 middle school science teachers in 20 school districts to earn their master’s degree in science education in two years and coach 400 middle school science teachers in their home districts,” said co-investigator Pringle, the UF science education professor. “The Science Teacher Leaders will work as change agents to lead district-wide transformation in middle school science teaching and learning. Nearly 60,000 middle school students will be impacted, primarily in high-poverty rural and urban areas.”

Participating school districts will come from the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium — a support organization for 15 districts spanning from the Gulf coast to the Atlantic coast in north and central Florida. Five other counties also have committed: Columbia, Dixie, Hamilton, Union and Suwannee.

P.K. Yonge science teacher Mayra Cordero, pictured, will host a demonstration class for Science Teacher Leader trainees.

Under Hayes’ guidance, UF’s P.K. Yonge laboratory school began testing the experimental curriculum last year and is working with Joseph Krajcik, a leading authority on science curriculum development from Michigan State University, to align the curriculum with Florida’s rigorous new science standards. P.K. Yonge’s middle school science program will host demonstration classrooms to help train the Science Teacher Leaders.

Researchers will compare the impact of the new teaching approaches with conventional practices and disseminate their findings nationwide to drive science education reform in middle schools around the state and nation.

Other UF units contributing to course design, training, implementation and project evaluation include the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Center for Precollegiate Education and Training, the Division of Continuing Education and the CAPES (Collaborative Assessment and Program Evaluation Services) program, headed by professor David Miller in the College of Education.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Lynda Hayes, university school professor at UF’s College of Education and director of P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School (UF’s K-12 laboratory school), lhayes@pky.ufl.edu; 352-392-1554, ext. 223

SOURCE: Rose Pringle, associate professor, science education, UF’s College of Education; rpringle@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4190

WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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New online certificate in disaster counseling addresses shortage in field

Imagine 5,000 families, left homeless by the forces of nature, living in tents crammed in an area the size of a football field. Imagine their struggles and feelings of helplessness that come from the lack of basic necessities like food, water, clothing or even a bathroom. Since the catastrophic Haiti earthquake in 2010, thousands of Haitians still live in these post-earthquake “tent cities” and face overwhelming physical and psychological hurdles daily.

West-Olatunji

Now, imagine having the skills and resources to help improve the lives of such injured and traumatized victims in disaster-affected areas. After visiting Haiti and other disaster sites, Cirecie West-Olatunji, associate professor of counselor education at the University of Florida, is using her experience in disaster counseling to better prepare mental health professionals for work in the fledgling field.

West-Olatunji has designed a new online certificate program in disaster counseling for licensed mental health professionals and state-certified school counselors drawn to the field of disaster counseling. She said the 12-hour graduate program, due to start classes next spring, is one of three such programs in the country, and the only one housed in a college of education.

“Counselor educators have a perspective that lends itself very well to disaster counseling,” West-Olatunji said. “I hope the certificate program revolutionizes a cadre of people in the counseling profession going out in response to major disasters.”

She said the new course will explore how to enhance sensitivity and competence when providing disaster-response counseling in other cultures.

The online program, nationally accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), features courses in disaster mental health counseling, multicultural issues in disaster counseling, post-traumatic stress disorder, counseling vulnerable populations and a capstone-experience course.

West-Olatunji said the demand for disaster counseling is increasing because of the frequency of natural disasters happening lately. She said disaster counseling currently is not covered extensively in counselor education programs.

“What’s new is that catastrophic disasters have been on the rise and we’re finding we’re not adequately training mental health students to respond,” West-Olatunji said.

West-Olatunji said her first outreach trip to New Orleans after the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005 opened her eyes to the need for disaster counseling. She is developing a training model that can be used in places like New Orleans, Port Au Prince, Haiti, and Japan.

“The overwhelming majority of countries don’t have qualified counseling professionals, so when disasters occur, they need a rapid response,” West-Olatunji said. “The Red Cross can only bring so many people and can only stay so long.”

In Haiti, West-Olatunji and other counselors went to churches and other community groups to counsel people and gauge their needs. The team gave presentations on sexual abuse, which is a large problem in the tent cities due to the lack of security.

She is traveling to Latin America for another outreach trip next year.  She previously led national disaster, mental-health outreach teams on consulting and counselor-training trips to New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and has twice organized national teams of counseling students, faculty and practitioners to travel to South Africa and Botswana for “community-based counseling” of HIV and AIDS-infected individuals.

For more information about the online disaster-counseling certificate program, visit the program website or inquire via email.

Other related quick links: YouTube, Facebook, Blog.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Cerecie West-Olatunji, associate professor in counselor education and mental health counseling track coordinator, UF College of Education; 352-273-4324; Cirecie@coe.ufl.edu

MEDIA CONTACT: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

WRITER: Jessica Bradley, communications intern, news and communications, UF College of Education

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UF receives $2 million to assess students’ grasp of statistics under new national math standards

 

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Supported by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, University of Florida math education researcher Tim Jacobbe is leading a multi-center effort to create high-quality testing instruments in statistics, which will help teachers keep middle and high school students on track for meeting rigorous, new national math standards.

With 45 states, including Florida, already adopting new Common Core national math standards developed in 2010, many school districts are expected to add or expand the teaching of statistics in the middle and high school grades. Researchers, though, say more reliable assessment tools are needed to measure their progress accurately.

UF's Tim Jacobbe, lead investigator for the NSF multi-center study, explains a statistics principle to a UF math education student.

“We’ll base our testing instrument on American Statistical Association guidelines that identify three developmental levels for learning statistics. Students must progress through each level to develop sound statistical reasoning skills,” said Jacobbe, UF assistant professor of mathematics education and principal investigator of the NSF-funded study. “The new assessment tool will help teachers assess where students are at the beginning of the school year so they can plan instruction for the appropriate level of statistical understanding.”

Besides UF’s College of Education, the four-year study also involves scholars in statistics and assessment from the University of Minnesota, Kenyon College and the Educational Testing Service, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Princeton, N.J.

The Common Core State Standards are a blueprint for what all American students should learn in English and math, in each grade, from kindergarten through high school. They were coordinated in 2010 by the National Governors Association and a national council of chief state school officers for K-12 education. Florida schools are scheduled to start using the new standards by the 2013-2014 school year.

“Statistical thinking is very different from mathematical thinking and needs to be taught and assessed in a different manner,” Jacobbe said.

Current statistical instruction and assessment are grade level-specific, but Jacobbe said his research team is following a model identifying the three levels of understanding of key statistical concepts, regardless of a student’s grade level.

About 2,850 students in grades 6-12 will participate in the UF-led study. Two school districts, in Florida and Georgia, will administer initial pilot-testing of the experimental assessment methods. (The Florida school district is P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, UF’s K-12 laboratory school, which serves as its own school district). They will be joined by school districts in Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania for large-scale testing in the study’s fourth year.

The researchers will work closely with two national consortia of state leaders in government, business and education which last year received a combined $330 million in federal Race to the Top funds to create the next generation of tests to measure annual student growth in English and math. The two groups are the 25-state Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers, known as PARCC, which includes Florida, and the 31-state SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium.

To broaden the impact of their work, Jacobbe said his team will report its study results in peer-review journals and at peer-review academic meetings and will create a website featuring sample assessment tools and other resources for teaching statistics.

“Consistent standards in statistics and mathematics will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students regardless of where they live, and that’s critical in today’s global economy,” Jacobbe said.

CONTACTS
Source: Tim Jacobbe, assistant professor, mathematics education, Jacobbe@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4232
Writer: Larry Lansford, director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Workforce council recognizes UF-Teach math-science program

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—UF-Teach, an innovative teacher-preparation program that recruits some of the University of Florida’s top science and mathematics majors into the teaching profession, recently received STEMflorida’s Best Practices Award for excellence and accountability in targeted STEM teacher recruitment and retention efforts.

STEMflorida is a business-led statewide council created in 2009 by Workforce Florida, the state’s workforce policy and oversight board. (STEM is common shorthand for the technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, considered vital workforce skills in today’s competitive global marketplace.)

The award was presented recently during the STEMflorida Think Tank meeting in Orlando and recognized the UF Teach program’s role in addressing the critical shortage of math and science teachers in Florida.

UF-Teach master science instructor Griff Jones (left) helps a student on a class lesson.

UF-Teach is a collaboration between UF’s College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the goal is to recruit the very best math and science majors and prepare them to teach effectively. The program is funded by a $2.4 million grant over five years from the National Math and Science Initiative and a $1 million endowment from the Helios Education Foundation based in Tampa.

“In UF-Teach, we have master science and math teachers who induct the students into the community of teachers by showing them the most effective, research-proven teaching methods in the given content areas and exposing them to supervised classroom experiences with schoolchildren beginning in their first semester,” said Tom Dana, associate dean at UF’s College of Education and co-coordinator of UF Teach with physics professor and associate dean Alan Dorsey of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The program, now in its fourth year, offers students education minors for their efforts in hopes they will take to teaching. Their degrees qualify them for teaching certification in Florida schools.

Dana

The first UF-Teach class of 41 students enrolled in 2008. By spring of 2011, enrollment jumped to 224 students. Dana said projections for 2013 call for UF-Teach to graduate more than 30 students who will be certified, and highly qualified, to teach middle and high school math and science in Florida schools.

“That number should double to 60 graduates by 2015. By then, the number of middle school and high school math and science students served by UF-Teach graduates should top 7,500 and continue to grow each year,” Dana said.

For more information, contact Dana at tdana@coe.ufl.edu or Dorsey at atdorsey@ufl.edu, or visit the UF Teach website at https://education.ufl.edu/uf-teach/.

CONTACTS
SOURCE: Tom Dana, UFCOE associate dean and co-coordinator, UF Teach, tdana@coe.ufl.edu.
WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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New senior development director joins COE from Fine Arts

The UF College of Education has appointed Maria Gutierrez Martin as the senior director of development. She has served for the past four years as director of development and alumni affairs at UF’s College of Fine Arts.

Maria Gutierrez Martin ...sr. dir. of development

Martin has more than 10 years of experience in fundraising, strategic planning, management, marketing and communications. At the fine arts college, she was responsible for identifying, cultivating, soliciting and stewarding major gifts and planned giving of $100,000 or more, and garnered the college’s single largest gift of $3 million. She also oversaw the college’s alumni relations, marketing and communications operations.

A graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences Louisiana State University, Martin previously worked for nearly four years as development director at Children’s Home Society of Florida, Mid-Florida Division, based in Gainesville. She also has professional experience in business and non-profit management, sales and marketing.

Martin succeeds Matt Hodge, who left the college recently to become assistant vice president for development at the UF Foundation.

CONTACT:

SOURCE: Maria Gutierrez Martin, Sr. Director, COE Development & Alumni Affairs, mmartin@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4144.

 

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Couple adds to $2 million gift to make up for losses during recession

 GAINESVILLE, Fla. — When former teachers Bill and Robbie Hedges saw their 2005 donation of almost $2 million to the University of Florida’s College of Education drop in value during the global financial crisis in recent years, they feared the education research supported by their gift would suffer from the reduced funding.

College officials announced today that the retired Gainesville couple has added another $63,000 to their endowed research fund to restore its value to previous levels.

Bill and Robbie Hedges

“We had hoped our gift would grow (through the university foundation’s investment program), but the stock market tanked shortly after we made it,” said Bill Hedges, a retired professor emeritus at the College of Education. “We had some stocks that appreciated, so we decided to add another contribution to make up for the loss. We wanted to keep the research fund strong.”

Hedges and his wife committed more than $1.9 million to the college six years ago to support research aiding slow learners. It was the second largest individual donation ever made to the College of Education. Their gift was made in the form of a charitable remainder trust, which provides them with a variable income for life until the trust terminates, when the remaining assets will be transferred to the college.

The resulting William D. and Robbie F. Hedges Research Fund will support sorely needed studies to develop better teaching methods and curriculum materials for marginal students who fall behind, become discouraged and tend to drop out of school before graduation. The Hedges’ latest gift will boost the amount of annual interest earned on the total fund value.

“We hope to generate more attention and research that yields a more pleasant and productive educational experience for this frequently overlooked and neglected segment of our school population,” said Hedges, who spent the final 20 years of his half-century teaching career on UF’s educational leadership faculty before retiring as professor emeritus in 1991. Robbie Hedges gave up teaching to raise their two sons in 1971 after they moved to Gainesville for her husband’s new UF faculty appointment.

“This gift is a testament to the Hedges’ belief that all children need specialized attention to their learning needs if they are to succeed in school and society,” said Tom Dana, associate dean for academic affairs at UF’s College of Education. “Their contribution will fund research that can make a significant difference in kids’ lives.”

CONTACTS

WRITER/MEDIA RELATIONS: Larry Lansford, director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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UF, Pinellas schools partnership wins statewide award

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—The University of Florida Lastinger Center for Learning and Pinellas County Schools (PCS) have won a prestigious, statewide award for their groundbreaking professional development partnership.

Sylvia Boynton

The Florida Association of Staff Development (FASD) presented the 2011 Outstanding Professional Development Practices Award Sept. 20 at its Fall Leadership Conference in St. Pete Beach.

“This award recognizes the remarkable collaboration between Pinellas and Lastinger in establishing a professional culture across a large and complex school district,” said Sylvia Boynton, a UF Lastinger Center-affiliated professor-in-residence in Pinellas County. The Lastinger Center is part of UF’s College of Education.

The district greatly values this partnership, including its academic cornerstone, inquiry, which guides Pinellas educators to identify challenges in their classrooms and schools and study and test possible solutions, said PCS Professional Development Director Lisa Grant.

“A key element of the partnership is the connection between research and practice,” Grant said. “The inquiry stance enables teachers and administrators to continually improve.”

The Pinellas educators’ inquiry projects target “real problems of practice, often focused on students who struggle, on curriculum that isn’t quite working or on educator strategies that need refinement,” noted Alyson Adams, UF assistant professor of education and the Lastinger’s Center’s associate director.

More than 800 educators recently presented their inquiry project findings at the Lastinger-staged Pinellas County Learning Showcase & Inquiry Celebration held recently in Clearwater.

The FASD professional development award, Boynton said, “reflects the profound respect that the district and Lastinger have for the knowledge generated by those who work with students every day – teachers and administrators.”

CONTACT

SOURCE:Alyson Adams, associate director, UF Lastinger Center for Learning, 352-273-4107, adamsa@coe.ufl.edu

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Special ed researchers winning competition for federal grants

UF principal investigators on active federal IES grants, pictured from left, are Stephen Smith, Mary Brownell, Ann Daunic, Maureen Conroy and Joseph Gagnon. (PIs Cynthia Griffin and Patricia Snyder were unavailable for group photo; they are pictured below.)

Faculty researchers in the University of Florida’s special education program, ranked fourth nationally, have built an impressive track record for winning large, highly competitive grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Education Department.

College of Education researchers in early childhood and special education recently received two IES grants worth a combined $5.5 million, supporting two studies aimed at reducing problem behaviors and improving the classroom learning environment. UF professor Maureen Conroy, working under a $4 million award, is examining the efficacy of an experimental intervention in early learning settings—called BEST in CLASS—that showed high promise in a preliminary study. The second grant, worth $1.5 million, supports professors Stephen Smith and Ann Daunic who are developing a lesson series teaching middle school students with significant behavior problems techniques to control their emotions and behavior in social situations.

“Grants awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences are selected because they are the most innovative, important and well-designed projects in a huge pool of applications,” says Jonathon Shuster, a faculty research professor with UF’s Institute for Child Health Policy. “These studies are large in scope with potentially huge payoffs. If new generalized ways can be found for interventions, the investment will be returned thousands of times over by translating these methods to the nation.”

These two latest awards raise the total number of IES grants held by UF special education faculty in 2011 to eight—worth a combined total of more than $15 million. Smith and Daunic recently completed another $1.6 million intervention study that helps students deal with aggressive behavioral issues in the classroom. Supported by a $2 million award, Mary Brownell and colleagues in Colorado and California have developed research-proven professional development packages to help practicing teachers advance their literacy instruction skills for students with learning challenges. Brownell, Smith and Daunic have documented the positive impacts of their respective studies on student reading achievement and behavior.

Four other IES grants active in 2011, each worth about $1.5 million, support other vital projects in special education:

— Daunic, Smith and Nancy Corbett are developing a reading curriculum that combines storybook reading techniques with social stories to encourage students’ critical thinking about managing their emotions and behavior;

Cynthia Griffin

— Joseph Gagnon and Holly Lane are evaluating new literacy instruction and professional development methods for helping teens in juvenile corrections facilities improve their reading skills while they are incarcerated;

— Cynthia Griffin and co-investigators Stephen Pape (mathematics education) and Nancy Dana (teacher leadership for school improvement) are developing an online professional development program for elementary school math teachers serving students with learning disabilities.

Patricia Snyder portrait

Patricia Snyder

— And, in studies involving seven institutions, UF’s Patricia Snyder and co-researchers are documenting the effectiveness of new professional development packages focused on preschool teachers’ use of embedded-instruction practices and the impact of social and emotional influences on early learning.

CONTACT:
Writer: Larry Lansford, News & Communications, UF College of Education, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; (352) 273-4137

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UF names new education dean, citing research strength as key

Glenn E. Good, an education and counseling scholar and an associate dean at the University of Missouri College of Education, has been named the 13th dean of the University of Florida College of Education.

Dean Glenn E. Good

Good’s appointment, the result of a nationwide search, was announced Monday by UF provost Joseph Glover. Good will assume his new post Sept. 29. He succeeds Catherine Emihovich, who is stepping down after nine years as the college’s top administrator. She will remain on faculty as a tenured professor and researcher.

Good has held education associate dean posts at Missouri since 2008. His current title is associate dean for administration, research and performance excellence. He also is a professor of counselor psychology and has been a Missouri faculty member since 1990. His research focuses on gender issues in education, mental health, counseling and psychotherapy.

He has generated close to $1 million in research grants in his career and twice was named Researcher of the Year by the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, a division of the American Psychological Association. He currently is conducting a clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, assessing the effectiveness of student-provided interventions for smoking cessation and diet improvement.

“Dr. Good’s exceptional background in education research and research funding made him an ideal candidate and an excellent choice. We look forward to his arrival,” Glover said.

Good has completed the Management Development Program at Harvard University and the President’s Academic Leadership Development Institute of the University of Missouri system. He previously was named mentor/adviser of the year by the College of Education and has received several awards for teaching excellence, including the Kemper Teaching Fellowship which is the University of Missouri’s highest teaching honor.

He is a licensed psychologist in California and Missouri and is a fellow in numerous organizations, including the American Psychological Association, Psychology of Women, Society for the Psychology of Men and Masculinity, and the Division of Psychotherapy.

He is the author or co-author of five books and some 88 published journal reports and book chapters on counseling and psychotherapy.

“This is a transformative time in education,” Good said. “I look forward to assisting the outstanding faculty, staff and students of the University of Florida College of Education in pioneering innovative advances in educator preparation and associated fields upon which the future of our society depends.”

Good received his doctorate in counseling psychology in 1987 from Ohio State University. He has a master’s in counseling from the University of Oregon and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis.

At UF, Good will assume leadership of a college of education with national credentials similar to his current school. The Florida and Missouri education colleges, coincidentally, share the No. 52 slot in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings of America’s Best Graduate Schools in education. Both schools also have top 10 counselor education programs, which is Good’s academic specialty, with Missouri ranked eighth and UF second.

Good inherits a 105-year-old college at UF with four other top 20 programs: in special education (No. 4), elementary teacher education (15th), curriculum and instruction (17th) and secondary education (19th). UF’s College of Education is considered a national leader in contemporary education reform, partnering with more than 300 public schools across Florida in whole-school improvement efforts and free, on-the-job degree programs and professional development for teachers at high-need schools.

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CONTACTS:

SOURCE: Glenn E. Good, newly appointed dean, UF College of Education; GoodG@missouri.edu; 573-882-9644

WRITER: Larry Lansford, Director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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coE-News: July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011                                                      The Friday Post                                                 Vol. 7, No. 1

You’re reading coE-News, an electronic newsletter produced several times a year by the College of Education News & Communications Office to keep faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends up-to-date on college news, activities and achievements.

GOT NEWS? We want to hear it. Submit individual or unit news and calendar events of collegewide interest to llansford@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. (Include full titles and program areas of featured faculty and staff; for featured students, include their program area, degree status and major or concentration area.)

Headlines

Researchers awarded $5.5M in grants to help teachers reduce disruptive classroom behavior

University of Florida researchers in special education and early childhood studies have received two federal grants totaling $5.5 million to conduct studies aimed at reducing significant behavior problems in children that can disrupt the classroom learning environment. Their intervention research targets at-risk children during two of the most critical times of their development—before they enter kindergarten and the transitional middle school years (grades 6 through 8). The  grants were awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Maureen Conroy is leading the prekindergarten study, while Stephen Smith and Ann Daunic are developing a lesson series teaching middle school students with significant behavior problems techniques to control their emotions and behavior in social situations. (more)

Businesswoman’s $1M gift creates professorship in early childhood studies

Entrepreneur Anita Zucker, a 1972 UF education graduate, last year challenged fellow alumni who had never contributed to make an annual donation to the College of Education. sweetening the deal by matching such gifts dollar-for-dollar. Today, Zucker is leading by example, pledging $1 million to create a second endowed professorship in early childhood studies at the college. (more)

Re-igniting middle school reform is goal of Shewey Scholars program

photo of 2011-12 Shewey Scholars

Newly appointed Shewey Scholars are, back row: Maureen Shankman, Darby Delane, Colleen Swain, Odalis Manduley, Donna Reid; Front row: advisers Kathy Shewey, Paul George, Nancy Dana. Not pictured: Scholars Phillip Koslowski, Joy Schadkow.

UF’s College of Education has launched a professional scholars program–teaming UF education faculty with Alachua County middle-school teachers and district administrators–to ignite a grassroots movement to reform the nation’s troubled middle-school education system. Three UF education professors and four Alachua County middle school teachers were introduced recently as members of the inaugural class of the Shewey Scholars program. They include COE faculty members Colleen Swain (curriculum and instruction), Darby Delane (university-school partnerships coordinator for the School of Teaching and Learning) and Joy Schackow (STL/Lastinger Center professor-in-residence in Pinellas County schools). (more)

 


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College News & Notices

Course syllabi going online starting fall semester

UF administration now requires that the syllabi for all courses and sections offered each semester must be posted on publicly accessible websites starting this fall. Syllabi must be posted in PDF format at least three days prior to the first day of classes–that’s Aug. 19 for the fall semester. The mandate applies to all courses offered face-to-face, online and in blended formats. The COE has created designated space on the college website for posting the syllabi of all COE courses. For more information, contact your school director or Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Tom Dana.

Submit your scholarly works to UF’s ‘Open Access’ digital archive

UF’s Institutional Repository is soliciting journal articles, grant proposals, dissertations, monographs, podcasts, and other scholarly work from faculty and students to be archived and made publicly available through Open Access, the digital archive for the intellectual output of the University of Florida community. Open Access provides free, permanent, web-based access to to all scholarly publications and academic artifacts submitted. It’s a way to improve visibility for faculty and student scholarship and share scholarly work in the broadest forum possible. Visit the IR@UF site (http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ufirg) for more information and a self-submittal tool, or contact Ben Walker, head of the UF Education Library, at 352-273-2545.

Subscribe to COE’s YouTube account

The College of Education has its own YouTube account on the “educationUF” channel where you can view a number of informative videos about the college and the activities of its faculty, students and alumni. The site also allows visitors to subscribe and receive notification when new COE videos are posted. Seven videos are currently posted, including “EduGator Nation,” an overview of the college, and “Molding Master Teachers,” describing the award-winning Florida Master Teachers Initiative of the college’s Lastinger Center for Learning. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/educationuf#p/u. Additional videos are planned.

Staff dedicates lounge to dean

The college staff recently dedicated Norman Hall’s staff lounge to Dean Catherine Emihovich (pictured, right, at ceremony holding framed photo). Emihovich, who is stepping down from the college’s top executive post in August but will remain a tenured faculty member, said she recognized the need for a staff lounge immediately upon her arrival at UF in 2002 and made it one of her priorities. The lounge, which opened in 2010 as part of extensive renovations in Old Norman, features a kitchen, microwave oven, refrigerator, sofa, chairs, table and a full bookshelf.

Did you know . . . about UF and Google?

The University of Florida heads the current list of the top 20 most googled colleges and universities in the United States,according to CampusSplash, a blog on college life and admissions hosted by the Huffington Post news website. Campus Splash staff took it upon themselves to compile the list based on stats provided by Google’s traffic estimator.

 

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Honors & Appointments

Faculty

Ponjuan draws widespread attention to education barriers facing Latino males

Ponjuan

A report written by COE Assistant Professor Luis Ponjuan on “The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher Education” was the most downloaded article in 2010 in the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education. Ponjuan, director of the college’s Institute of Higher Education, continues to draw attention to the academic plight of Hispanic-Latino males in America’s education system. On June 16, he presented his research findings on the topic at the headquarters of the National Education Association in Washington, D.C. His audience of NEA governance leaders, executive managers, staff and invited guests heard his 90-minute report on the overwhelming barriers that Latino boys face on their educational journeys towards higher education. (See news media coverage generated by his reports at end of this e-newsletter under “In The News.”)

Students

Doctoral student featured in TV news report on iPads as teaching tool

Jon Munford, a Collier County fifth-grade teacher and a doctoral student in the COE’s online Ed.D. Professional Practice degree program, was featured recently in a television news report by WBBH-TV (Ft. Myers/Naples NBC affiliate) on the use of iPads as a teaching tool. That happens to be a topic covered in one of Munford’s distance-learning courses the previous semester by UF education professor Nancy Dana.

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In the News

Below is a sampling of recent news media reports featuring the College of Education and its faculty, students and alumni.

 

June 30, 2011

Gainesville Sun / Independent Florida Alligator: M. Conroy, S. Smith, A. Daunic (Spec. Ed)

Conroy

The Gainesville Sun and the Florida Alligator (UF’s campus newspaper) both published front-page stories on two grants from the U.S. Department of Education, worth a combined $5.5 million, awarded to UF researchers in special education and early childhood studies to pursue interventions aimed at reducing significant behavior problems in children that can disrupt the classroom learning environment. The UF researchers were Maureen Conroy, Stephen Smith and Ann Daunic.

June 26, 2011

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Luis Ponjuan (UF Institute of Higher Education)

The Chronicle covered Luis Ponjuan’s presentation June 24 at the Latino Male Symposium, in Austin, Tex., in which he declared that Latino men are “vanishing from the higher-education pipeline, a trend that could spell serious trouble given current demographic trends.”

June 26, 2011

St. Petersburg Times: Lastinger Center for Learning

Pinellas County superintendent Julie Janssen told School Board members last week that Melrose Elementary School will proceed with plans to create a partnership with UF’s Lastinger Center for Learning to transform Melrose into the district’s first professional learning school. The Times reported the story in an article published June 26. An earlier story, June 7, in Gradebook, the Times’ education blog, had reported the temporary postponement of the partnership.

June 21, 2011

Gainesville Sun: Anita Zucker (distinguished alumna/donor)

An article in the Sun reported on 1972 education alumna Anita Zucker’s $1 million pledge to create an endowed professorship in the college’s early childhood studies program.

May 2, 2011

Hispanic Outlook magazine: Luis Ponjuan (Institute of Higher Education)

Ponjuan was quoted in a 3-page article about how Hispanic males lagged substantially behind Hispanic females and other minorities of both genders at nearly every critical juncture of the higher education pipeline. The article also mentioned two upcoming symposiums on the topic, June 13 at UF and June 24 at UT-Austin, organized by Ponjuan and co-researchers Mary Ann Clark (UF counselor education) and Victor Saenz (UT-Austin).

April 28, 2011

Education Daily: Lastinger Center for Learning

With $5 million from the U.S. Education Department’s Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund, UF’s Lastinger Center will expand its Master Teacher Initiative, which gives K-12 teachers working in high-poverty schools job-embedded, classroom-oriented training to include pre-K educators. This news report also appeared on the website of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).

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Middle school reform is goal of professors, local educators in UF scholars program

The University of Florida’s College of Education has launched a professional scholars program–teaming UF education faculty with Alachua County middle-school teachers and district administrators–to ignite a grassroots movement to reform the nation’s troubled middle-school education system.

Three UF education professors and four Alachua County middle school teachers were introduced as members of the inaugural class of the Shewey Scholars program recently at a reception at UF’s Norman Hall.

The program is funded under a $600,000 endowment created three years ago by Fred and Christine Shewey of Gainesville, who made the gift as a tribute to their daughter-in-law, Kathy Shewey, a prominent figure in middle-level education in Alachua County and around the nation for more than 30 years. The Shewey Excellence in Middle School Education Fund supports new research and programs aimed at middle school reform and enhancement.

photo of 2011-12 Shewey Scholars

Newly appointed Shewey Scholars are, back row, Maureen Shankman, Darby Delane, Colleen Swain, Odalis Manduley and Donna Reid; Front row are Kathy Shewey, Paul George and Nancy Dana. Not pictured are Phillip Koslowski and Joy Schadkow

The newly appointed Shewey scholars from the college faculty are Colleen Swain (curriculum and instruction), Darby Delane (university-school partnerships coordinator for the School of Teaching and Learning) and Joy Schackow (STL/Lastinger Center professor-in-residence in Pinellas County schools). Alachua County educators receiving yearlong appointments are Maureen Shankman (Loften middle grades curriculum teacher), Odalis Manduley (Westwood Middle School Spanish teacher), Donna Reid (Lincoln Middle School English education teacher) and Phillip Koslowski (school district coordinator of the Positive Behavior Support program).

Professor Nancy Dana, who heads the advisory group for the Shewey Fund, will steer the scholars program, assisted by Paul George, a UF distinguished professor emeritus in education who has been identified by Middle School Journal as the nation’s “number-one ranking scholar” in middle grades education. Kathy Shewey, supervisor of staff development for Alachua County public schools, also is involved.

The scholars’ first group activity was attending the Florida League of Middle Schools’ annual conference together last month in Sarasota. The Shewey Scholars program covered their travel and registration expenses.

“By immersing themselves at the conference in the discussion of middle school practice and current issues facing middle level educators, the Shewey scholars helped to spark a renewed interest in middle-level education and future partnership work between UF and Alachua County schools in middle-school teaching practice,” Dana said.

She said the scholars will reconvene in the fall to share their experiences and plan future middle school reform activities with other local middle school teachers and administrators.

Paul George

While UF scholars—including Paul George—were among the first, some 40 years ago, to campaign for the creation of separate transitional schools to meet the needs of children in early adolescence, they also are among the first to publicly call for reform and a reexamination of middle schools in today’s school system. George recently headed a panel of Florida educators that produced an assessment of critical issues for middle school reform in Florida.

Early work funded by the Shewey endowment includes two research studies conducted to capture the current state of middle level education and document how high-stakes standardized testing and accountability is shaping middle school education.

At last month’s FLMS conference, George presented an historical perspective of the middle school movement and said it’s more important than ever for middle-grades educators to “hang tough.”

“Many middle schools are no longer serving their original function,” said George, who retired from teaching in 2007 but remains active in his specialty field. “Many schools are too large and too focused on standardized testing to meet the special developmental needs of adolescents. We are looking at ways to improve instruction that is appropriate for students in their early teens.”

CONTACTS

Source: Nancy Dana, professor, School of Teaching & Learning, UF College of Education, 352-273-4204; ndana@coe.ufl.edu
Source: Paul George, distinguished professor emeritus, UF College of Education, 352-372-4615, pgeorge@coe.ufl.edu
Writer: Larry Lansford, UF COE News & Communications, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

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Researchers awarded $5.5M in grants to help teachers reduce disruptive classroom behavior

University of Florida education researchers have received two federal grants totaling $5.5 million to conduct studies aimed at reducing significant behavior problems in children that can disrupt the classroom learning environment.

Their intervention research targets at-risk children during two of the most critical times of their development—before they enter kindergarten and the transitional middle school years (grades 6 through 8). The highly competitive grants were awarded by Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

Maureen Conroy

The prekindergarten study, funded by a $4 million grant, is a joint effort between special education and early-childhood specialists at UF and Virginia Commonwealth University. Co-researchers Maureen Conroy of UF and Kevin Sutherland of VCU will examine the efficacy of their experimental intervention—called BEST in CLASS—that showed high promise in a preliminary study.

The four-year investigation will involve 120 voluntary prekindergarten classrooms, most of them in Head Start programs, split between UF’s home region in North Central Florida and VCU’s hometown of Richmond, Va. Each year, 90 children identified as high-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders will undergo the intervention; a second group of 90 at-risk children will serve as a comparison group.

“As many as one-fourth of children in Head Start classes exhibit significant problem behaviors that place them at elevated risk for future development, and most have never been in structured classroom situations before,” Conroy said. “Through 14 weeks of classroom-based coaching, we will train teachers to implement effective instructional strategies for improving children’s emotional behavior competence.”

Conroy said the BEST in CLASS model emphasizes both individual and class-wide interventions to improve interactions between the teacher and students and enhance the overall classroom atmosphere for learning.

“Teachers discuss classroom rules and routines with students and praise specific positive behavior—for example, sitting and waiting their turn in a circle during a game or sharing time,” she said. “Such strategies aren’t necessarily new, but we show teachers how to use them more precisely and intensely for given situations.

“The teacher works to prevent any problem behaviors during typical classroom activities.”

The treatment also has a home-school component where teachers send home a daily “behavior report card” stating, in a positive manner, how their child behaved or which corrective behaviors they learned that day.

Stephen Smith

The second federal grant, worth $1.5 million, supports the work of University of Florida special education professors Stephen Smith and Ann Daunic, who are developing a lesson series teaching middle school students with significant behavior problems techniques to control their emotions and behavior in social situations.

“The middle school years are difficult enough for students in their pre-teen and early adolescent years. Those with serious emotional and behavioral disorders face tremendous obstacles to learning,” Smith said. “They require focused attention to help them develop the essential skills for modifying their behavior, and we need to catch them before they drop out of school or end up in the juvenile or adult justice systems.”

Smith and Daunic are developing a curriculum for teachers of children with emotional and behavioral disorders, and they’ve given it a name—In Control—that’s as much a mantra for the students as it is the title of their program. It’s actually a two-unit, 26-lesson curriculum that shows students how their minds work and how they can use that knowledge to take control over their own behavior and their learning process.

“We are developing lessons that tap self-control skills such as monitoring your thoughts, inhibiting impulses, planning better, and adapting to changing situations,” Smith said. “These high-level skills—known collectively as ‘executive functions’—are fundamental to helping students set personal goals, control their emotions and improve their social problem-solving abilities.”

Ann Daunic

Starting in August, the researchers will spend two years developing and testing the In Control lessons in collaboration with special education teachers, school counselors and school psychologists at two Gainesville schools—Lincoln and Fort Clarke middle schools. Participating students will be from small classrooms especially for students with emotional and behavioral disorders.

Smith and Daunic will continually refine and polish the curriculum and expand testing in the third year. If their curriculum effectively improves students’ behavior and learning, the researchers will publish their preliminary findings and develop a professional development package for additional large-scale testing.

“Up to 10 percent of middle school students have significant behavioral issues that merit some attention outside of what is normally provided in our education system,” Smith said. “There aren’t many intervention resources available for these students that are effective and teacher-friendly. Our comprehensive program will provide long-term instructional impact.”

CONTACTS
Source: Maureen Conroy, professor in special education and early childhood studies, UF College of Education, 352-273-4382; mconroy@coe.ufl.edu
Source: Stephen Smith, professor in special education, UF College of Education, 352-273-4263; swsmith@coe.ufl.edu
Source: Ann Daunic, associate scholar in special education, UF College of Education, 352-273-4270; adaunic@coe.ufl.edu
Writer: Larry Lansford, Office of News & Communications, UF College of Education,; 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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Businesswoman’s $1 million gift creates professorship in early childhood studies

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Entrepreneur Anita Zucker, a 1972 education graduate of the University of Florida, last year challenged fellow alumni who had never contributed to make an annual donation to the College of Education. Zucker, a 2010 recipient of UF’s Distinguished Alumni Award, sweetened the deal by matching such gifts dollar-for-dollar.

Today, Zucker is leading by example by pledging $1 million to create an endowed professorship in early childhood studies at the college. Her contribution will generate an additional $120,000 in funds from the Faculty Now incentive program established by UF President Bernie Machen to generate more faculty endowments. Zucker’s is the first gift made to the College of Education through the program.

Anita Zucker

The post’s formal name will be the Anita Zucker Endowed Professorship in Early Childhood Studies. College officials say they will fill the professorship with a top scholar in that academic specialty. Yearly interest earned on the gift will fund groundbreaking research, teaching and clinical programs conducted by the appointed scholar.

Zucker’s gift follows the creation of a new interdisciplinary Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies in December. The campuswide center is a model training, demonstration and research site where UF scholars—in fields as diverse as education, medicine, law, public health and the life sciences—work with local, state and national partners to advance the science and practice of early childhood development and early learning.

The Zucker professorship becomes the second endowed position in the College of Education’s early childhood studies program. World-class scholar Patricia Snyder occupies the David Lawrence Jr. Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies, created in 2007.

“Establishing this new interdisciplinary professorship, alongside the existing Lawrence chair, ensures that early childhood studies will remain a strong focus at the University of Florida, and a resource for the state and nation, for years to come,” said Snyder, who was instrumental in mobilizing the university’s top specialists in childhood education, health and well-being to create the new center for excellence.

Zucker is a former teacher, a lifetime education advocate, a history-making businesswoman, and one of Charleston, South Carolina’s leading citizens. She and her late husband, Jerry, received bachelor’s degrees from UF in 1972 — Anita in education and Jerry with a triple major in math, chemistry and physics. Anita taught elementary school for 10 years and also has a master’s in educational administration and supervision.

When Jerry Zucker died in 2008, Anita succeeded him as chief executive officer of the Hudson Bay Company, North America’s oldest company. She is the company’s first woman CEO. She also heads the family’s InterTech Group company, the North Charleston-based global conglomerate.

“The early childhood years are the most critical time for learning in a young person. That’s when they build their foundation and learn their vocabulary needs for life,” Zucker said. “Creating this professorship ensures the University of Florida will always have a top scholar who can prepare our future educators to teach our youngest children so they can succeed in school and life.”

She raised almost $100,000 last year in her Anita Zucker Alumni Challenge, including her dollar-for-dollar match of nearly $50,000. She says she hopes her latest gift inspires other large contributions to the College of Education.

“Education unlocks all doors for the future and we need to provide it to our young people to increase their chances for success,” Zucker said.

CONTACTS:
Source: Pat Snyder, 352-273-4291, patriciasnyder@coe.ufl.edu
Writer: Larry Lansford, 352-273-4137, llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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P.K. Yonge research head named school’s new director

(Listen to related WUFT-FM radio news report)

GAINESVILLE, FL — Lynda Hayes, director of research and outreach at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School and an affiliated university school professor at the University of Florida’s College of Education, has been named the new director of the school.

Lynda Hayes

She will assume her new position July 1, according to UF education dean Catherine Emihovich, who announced Hayes’ appointment Monday (May 16). Hayes succeeds Fran Vandiver, who retired in April after 13 years as director. P.K. Yonge has served as the K-12 laboratory school of the College of Education since 1934.

Hayes is a Triple EduGator—earning her bachelor’s (1981) and master’s (1986) degrees in childhood education, and her doctorate (1992) in curriculum and instruction, all from UF’s College of Education.

She has worked at P.K. Yonge for 24 years in several teaching and administrative positions. A serious researcher herself, Hayes has garnered more than $35 million dollars in external funding in her career. She’s a recognized leader in Florida school reform, having worked with hundreds of schools and district leaders to implement research-proven teaching methods for aspiring and practicing teachers in public schools.

“P.K. Yonge is poised to make important contributions to the local, state and national conversation about improving K-12 public education for all students, with a progressive 21st century approach to personalized learning,” Hayes said. “Our success will depend on furthering our partnership efforts with faculty scholars in the College of Education and across the University of Florida, and continuing our relationship with the Florida Department of Education.”

Hayes has worked closely with UF education researchers on numerous cutting-edge projects and holds an affiliated faculty position with the college’s School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies. She said she hopes to heighten P.K. Yonge’s role at UF in broader impact programs and research efforts in the vital STEM fields–science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Hayes’ three-year appointment will begin July 1 and continue until June 30, 2014, when the next dean of the College of Education may exercise the right to reappoint her for an additional term. (Dean Emihovich is stepping down Aug. 14 and a national search is currently underway for her replacement.)

Hayes said she will continue to collaborate with college and UF administrators in developing a teacher evaluation system for P.K. Yonge that meets the requirements for federal Race to the Top funding and Florida Senate Bill 736 (creating a statewide teacher merit pay plan). She will work with interim school director Eileen Oliver as she prepares for her new responsibilities.

“We were fortunate to find someone with Lynda’s credentials and experience,” Emihovich said. “Given her long history with P.K. Yonge, she understands where the school must go next to realize the vision of being a premier developmental research school at a major research university.”

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Lynda Hayes, newly appointed director, P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, lhayes@pky.ufl.edu; (w) 352-392-1554, ext. 272

WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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Lastinger study aids $8M effort to help at-risk children in south Fla.

NAPLES, FL — A recent study by the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center for Learning was key in helping a south Florida community divide nearly $8 million in charitable grants among local social service agencies to meet the needs of more than 50,000 underprivileged and at-risk children.

The Naples (Fla.) Children and Education Foundation had commissioned the UF study to evaluate the current conditions and needs of children in Collier County and to document the impact of the group’s previous investments on the children’s lives. The UF researchers evaluated local aid programs such as medical and dental services, early childhood education and after-school programs, and program evaluation.

Don Pemberton

Don Pemberton, the study director and head of the UF Lastinger Center, said the UF research team interviewed NCEF, community and school leaders, reviewed social service agency reports and Internet sites, and analyzed date from multiple county, state and federal agencies.

NCEF officials said the UF study showed progress had occurred in serving children’s medical and dental needs, but also revealed huge spikes in children’s hunger and homelessness due to the economy, and indicated mental health and out-of-school needs remain critical.

“The study shows that NCEF has gotten off to a very good start, but there is a lot more to be done,” said NCEF trustee and grant chairwoman Anne Welsh McNulty.

During a ceremony in April, 22 charities received checks from the foundation totaling $5.8 million to help fund programs and services and expand offerings to children. Grants ranged from $25,000 to St. Matt’s Camps for Kids program to $1 million for the Boys & Girls Club of Collier County. NCEF also awarded more than $2 million for multi-year initiatives aimed at fighting hunger, addressing behavioral health issues and increasing early-learning opportunities for the community’s youngest children.

“We’re honored that the Naples Children & Education Foundation commissioned us to conduct a study of child well-being in Collier County and issue recommendations for improvements,” Pemberton said. “The foundation has a stellar track record in creating innovative solutions to transform child well-being.”

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Don Pemberton, director, UF Lastinger Center, UF College of Education, dpemberton@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4103
WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

 

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Special ed researcher is first to receive provost’s junior faculty award

Gagnon

University of Florida special education researcher Joseph Gagnon recently became the first College of Education faculty member to receive the UF Provost’s Excellence Award for Assistant Professors.

The annual honor recognizes up and coming junior faculty members from several colleges across campus for excellence in research. The award comes with a $5,000 stipend that recipients can use to fund travel, equipment, graduate students and other research-related expenses.

Gagnon is garnering national attention for his innovative research linking youths with emotional-behavioral disorders and learning disabilities and the services provided in juvenile correctional facilities and psychiatric schools. His research has been published in top journals in the field including Exceptional Children, Journal of Special Education, and Journal of Child and Family Studies and he frequently presents and national at international conferences.

A UF education faculty member since 2007, he has garnered nearly $3 million in external research grants and has served as the principal Investigator or co-PI on five highly competitive grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences and other prestigious organizations.

He has developed an impressive record of collaboration with UF faculty experts in law and medicine and holds an affiliated faculty appointment with the law school’s Center on Children and Families. He also serves as an expert consultant for several states’ juvenile justice systems under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice.

He received a College of Education Faculty Scholarship of Engagement Award in 2010 for his research on educational policies and programs for students in confinement. He also has published extensively on mathematics instruction for secondary students with emotional disorders and learning disabilities.

Gagnon has a doctorate in special education-behavior disorders from the University of Maryland at College Park.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Joseph Gagnon, assistant professor in special education, 352-273-4262; jgagnon@coe.ufl.edu
WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

 

 

 

 

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Special ed prof Holly Lane named 2011 Outstanding Graduate Teacher

Having earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in special education from the University of Florida, it’s understandable how Holly Lane, an associate professor in special education, can relate so well with her UF students at any stage of their college experience.

Her commitment to her students also explains why she was selected as the 2011 Outstanding Graduate Teacher at the College of Education.

Holly Lane...Outstanding Graduate Teacher

“(Dr. Lane) demonstrates her commitment to excellence by devoting her time to working closely with junior scholars,” says recent doctoral graduate Ailee Montoya (PhD ’10, special education). She also commended Lane for “helping minority students succeed in higher education.”

Lane taught special education in public schools for eight years in three North Florida counties before joining UF’s education faculty in 1994. She combines her strong teaching commitment with a penchant for landing major research and leadership grants, often in support of doctoral students in special education.

She has received two leadership grants since 2008 from the U.S. Department of Education to fund 12 doctoral students in special education, and she developed two new doctoral seminars on reading intervention research and literacy teacher education. She also has contributed to the development of a new doctoral student orientation program and served as the faculty advisor for the doctoral student organization.

Some of her former doctoral students are now award-winning faculty members in their own right at top-tier education programs such as the universities of Washington, North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Virginia.

Lane also has secured grant support and developed a series of online courses for master’s and specialist students in education, mainly in the field of literacy intervention for students with disabilities.

Her research interests include the role of teacher knowledge in student reading achievement, video models of effective teaching, and the effects of tutoring on preparedness in teaching struggling readers. She has published a multitude of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and a book.

“Reading is a cornerstone for a child’s success in school and throughout life,” Lane explains about her chosen research specialty area.

She currently holds three large federal grants related to literacy intervention and teaching:

—  an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for Project LITERACY: Literacy Intervention in Teacher Education for Reaching all Children and Youth;

—  she is co-principal investigator on a $1.5 million grant from the federal Institute of Education Sciences for Project LIBERATE: Literacy Based on Evidence through Research for Adjudicated Teens to Excel;

—  and, she is the PI for a $1.2 million grant from the Office for Special Education Programs for Project RELATE: Research in Early Literacy and Teacher Education.

CONTACTS

Source: Holly Lane, associate professor, special education, UF College of Education; 352-273-4273; hlane@ufl.edu

Writer: Larry Lansford, director, news & communications, UF College of Education, 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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UF taps Griffin for prestigious research foundation professorship

Cynthia Griffin

University of Florida special education professor Cynthia Griffin, recognized nationally for her research on teaching mathematics to students with disabilities, has been named a UF Research Foundation (UFRF) Professor for 2011-2014.

Griffin, a top-funded research professor in the College of Education, is one of 33 UF faculty scholars selected for the prestigious professorships. The UF Research Foundation awards the professorships annually to tenured faculty who have made recent contributions in research and have a strong research agenda likely to lead to continuing distinction in their fields. The three-year award includes a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 grant to support their research.

“Dr. Griffin has risen to national prominence for her scholarly leadership in linking mathematics education and special education, and she brings prestige to our school and college,” said Jean Crockett, director of special education, school psychology and early childhood studies (SESPECS) at the College of Education.

Griffin is building an impressive track record for winning highly-competitive federal grant funding for her studies. She currently holds $2.3 million in research and doctoral training grants from the prestigious Institute for Education Sciences.

She received an $800,000 doctoral leadership training grant in 2008 from the U.S. Education Department’s office of special education programs to prepare four doctoral students in special education and math instruction. That same year, the College of Education awarded Griffin with a three-year, B.O. Smith Research Professorship to study how teachers’ content knowledge and classroom practices in mathematics influenced their students’ learning.

She and co-researchers last year received a $1.5 million grant from IES to develop and refine an online professional development program targeting practicing general and special-education elementary teachers who teach math to students with learning disabilities.

Griffin became a full-time UF education faculty member in 1990 and is the college’s associate director for research and graduate studies in SESPECS.

She is co-author of a text on inclusive instruction due to be published in 2012 by Guilford Press. Since 2006, Griffin has published 18 research articles in leading scholarly journals including the Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, and Teacher Education and Special Education.

CONTACTS

SOURCE: Cynthia Griffin, professor in special education, ccgriffin@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4265

WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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