Speaking of Education

It’s been a good two weeks for The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education.

Last week we had a terrific opportunity to show a worldwide audience – at SXSWedu as well as the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conference – exactly what our faculty and graduate students have been doing to achieve nothing short of the reinvention of education, from pre-K level through college.

This week we got the big news that the College of Education has been RANKED NUMBER ONE, for the second year in a row, by U.S. News & World Report in their 2013 America’s Best Graduate Schools. After us, the next public university on the list is UCLA, coming in at sixth. We’re ranked third among all U.S. public and private universities, behind Vanderbilt (number one) and Harvard. And we outranked elite institutions like Columbia, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, and Berkeley.

Since the rankings’ inception back in the ’90′s, the College of Education has risen from 18th among public universities to the number one spot and from 27th overall to third. One of the best parts of the rankings news is that the college was named number one overall in outside research funding secured by faculty. This is the fifth year in a row that we’ve enjoyed that top spot. It’s a wonderful, extremely visible way for the faculty’s hard work and their impressive productivity to be recognized.

In addition to ranking entire graduate schools, U.S. News also ranks select specialty programs within a college or school of education and this year we had several areas do quite well. We came in:
- third among publics and sixth overall in Administration/Supervision
- fourth among publics and fifth overall in Special Education
- seventh among publics and 10th overall in Educational Psychology
- seventh among publics and 12th overall in Curriculum and Instruction

If you’ve ever been part of the college – as an undergraduate, graduate student, faculty member, staff member, supporter in any form or fashion – you’ve contributed to the college’s success. The significant good things that happen to a large program or organization don’t normally happen overnight and aren’t due to any one event or accomplishment or a single person. The College of Education is known for excellence because that’s what our students, our professors and our staff consistently pursue.

If you are, or were, part of the college, CONGRATULATIONS! Let’s enjoy this repeat performance for a little while before we start worrying about how things will turn out next year. A skeptic may assert that a one-time win is a fluke, but if you can swing it twice in a row….you’re legit! Hook’em!

SXSWedu, part of the uber-hot South By Southwest film, tech/interactive and music festival that takes Austin by storm each March, wrapped up yesterday. Of the three or four recurring themes driving most SXSWedu presentations, it was exciting to see that The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education is creating, advocating, analyzing, testing or implementing most of the suggested reforms to U.S. education.

Whether it was a game design guru talking or a Texas school teacher, the messages were consistent – we have to:
- make way for any time, anywhere learning and acknowledge that technology’s allowing students to access information 24/7
- drop the idea that because students are filling seats in a classroom they’re actually learning and segue to more competency-based learning and assessment practices
- develop better ways of mining the incredible wealth of data now available and quickly get it back to the people who need the feedback most, the teachers and students
- face the fact that the era of the teacher as “sage on the stage” is over and train our educators in new ways of guiding and facilitating learning
- make education truly collaborative and multicultural

Here are a few “pearls” dropped at presentations or overheard in the blogger’s lounge at SXSWedu:

- “In education, we’re worried about getting data to the wrong people – and then getting it to them with inexplicable slowness. Rather than handing it to the administrators, school board, policy makers and parents first, it should be going to the teachers and students, allowing them to self-regulate and find out if they’re heading in the right direction.” – Dr. Mark Milliron, College of Education alum and former faculty member as well as current chancellor of Western Governors University

- “Around 93 percent of 12-17 year olds are online and about 73 percent of them are on multiple social networking sites.” – Dr. S. Craig Watkins, associate professor in the College of Communication

- “By the time a child reaches the age of 21, he’s spent about 10,000 hours playing video games – to put this in perspective, if a kid had perfect attendance through all of middle school and high school, she would have been in class around 10,084 hours. And 92 percent of two-year-olds already are playing video games on mobile devices.” – Jane McGonigle, education game designer and New York Times best-selling author

“If we think we can continue to do business same as usual, we’re dead wrong. Just to give you an idea of how different things are now than they were for many adults who are attending SXSWedu — back when radio was the ‘new technology,’ it took 38 years for it to reach 50 million users. It took YouTube one year and Facebook between two and three years. Around seven percent of kids between six months and seven years of age have an iPod or other MP3 player. And 92 percent of 16-18 year olds have their own cell phone and texting plans. Students want it all and they want it now – that’s what technology already is giving them.” – Martha Lee, College of Education’s Institute for Public School Initiatives

“We have to stop teaching in a multiple-choice way and believing we’re creating critical thinkers. When it comes to preparing kids for college, it’s not so much about somehow getting them in, it’s about keeping them there. College costs are unlikely to go down any time soon. If we’re wanting students to graduate in four years – and obviously that’s a major concern right now – we better see that they’re prepared for college level work when they get there.” – Dr. Paula Moeller, College of Education’s Institute for Public School Initiatives

To see a sample of the kinds of things College of Education programs and faculty are doing to incorporate interactivity, self-assessment and immediacy into education materials for Texas students, read about the Institute for Public School Initiative’s OnTRACK for College Readiness program.

The Department of Educational Administration in The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education is home to the the oldest, most highly rated, most prolific producer of community college presidents, vice presidents, chancellors and deans in the U.S. – the Community College Leadership Program (CCLP).

Dr. John Roueche, who holds the Sid W. Richardson Regents Chair in Community College Leadership, is director of the top-ranked CCLP. Below, he offers some insights into changes we’re likely to see in community colleges over the next five or 10 years as budgets continue to shrink and the student population grows by leaps and bounds:

“Community colleges are absolutely caught between the proverbial ‘rock and hard place’ with respect to the economic realities and escalating enrollment growth they have experienced over the past five years. These changes will continue in the decade ahead. Community college enrollments have been increasing exponentially while state and federal support for these institutions has been in steady decline for the past 10 years.

Community colleges are ideally positioned to be their communities’ preferred learning providers if they are willing to offer programs and services at times and places that are convenient to the various constituencies that comprise their community. This challenge will obviously bring about many changes in the nation’s community colleges.

For example:

· The lines between K-12, community college and baccalaureate institutions will continue to fade and disappear. The community college educational mission will continue to expand, making these institutions the largest segment of American higher education.

· Student enrollments will increase four-fold on many of our campuses in the span of 15 to 20 years. Community colleges must become more aggressively entrepreneurial — not just in the raising of funds, but also in their willingness to collaborate and cooperate with business, industry, health providers, local school systems, county and state governments, and the like to share facilities, staff and budgets in the coming days.

· Managing these colleges will continue to be big business. Many of our urban community colleges already have more students and personnel than the majority of American universities. Community colleges will experience the loss of three of every four community college presidents to retirement over the next decade. New college leadership styles that are more cooperative and collaborative will be required as these institutions move forward into a more uncertain future.

· Technology will continue to enable and significantly improve faculty engagement. In the very near future, teachers and learning objects will virtually appear in three dimensions wherever and whenever students need them. Education will become increasingly mobile.

This is a most challenging time to be involved in American higher education, and the future will in no way represent our historical past.”

Established in 1944, the CCLP has graduated more than 600 students since its inception, with over 508 graduating in the past 40 years. Last year, around 300 of those graduates were on hand, along with many College of Education faculty and staff, at a celebration of Dr. Roueche’s 40th year as director. He’s only the second director of the program in its 67-year history.

It’s the first day of class here at The University of Texas at Austin, and the College of Education is hopping. Everywhere you look, there are new backpacks, pristine spiral notebooks and excited faces.

When it comes to first days of school, it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re a college student or kindergartener – you’re beginning something new, anything’s possible and you’re filled with curiosity, hope and a thrill in the belly.

But what about the teachers? How do they feel? What about those FIRST YEAR teachers, especially? What words of encouragement, reassurance and appreciation would energize them and give them confidence?

Come September, in the College of Education our thoughts turn, even more than usual, to our teachers who are in classrooms all over Texas – and beyond. Dr. Randy Bomer, chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and director of the Heart of Texas Writing Project here at the university is one of those faculty members who’s been thinking about our teacher education graduates, and he wanted to offer a few words of wisdom, from one teacher to another:

“The most important thing, early in the year, is to get to know the kids as competent, smart, capable people – find out what each one is good at. Once you know what they already know, you can build your teaching on the foundation of their strengths. Sometimes, in the beginning-of-the-year rush to get going on curriculum, build classroom routines and teach the things the kids need, we teachers forget to devote generous attention to our own learning about students as interesting individuals.”

Wherever you are, if you’re a teacher, we want to wish you a Happy New (School) Year!

[NOTE: To find out more about Dr. Bomer and the Heart of Texas Writing Project, check out The Write Thing.]

What starts here is changing K-12 education – in a BIG way!

Back in December of 2009, Dr. Paul Resta, the director of the College of Education‘s Learning Technology Center, convened an invitational summit that drew around 100 top education leaders and stakeholders from all over the nation. The group analyzed, evaluated, recommended, estimated and predicted for three days in Austin, with a commitment to answer the “big questions about education,” like, “What are the characteristics of a 21at century learner?”, “What would be the elements of a successful digital age teacher education program?” and “What local, state and national policies will support the programs we need?”

When the dust settled, a set of recommendations had been created that the 100 leaders agreed upon and that described what’s needed to prepare digital age students and prepare teachers to teach these students.

Resta and National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future president Dr. Tom Carroll took the recommendations and headed to Washington, D.C., presenting them to Congress and making a case for a radical, turn-it-on-its-head transformation of K-12 education and teacher education programs. In the meantime, several states, knowing a good thing when they saw it, began to implement recommendations offered in the post-summit report.

New Hampshire has taken the lead and had organized a state summit modeled on the Austin summit by May of 2010. State education stakeholders from all arenas and all levels embraced the recommendations and have begun the incremental process of making significant changes. Among other things, they’ve developed the New Hampshire Minimum Standards for School Approval, which call for:

• the personalization of learning environments and strategies
• harnessing untapped local resources that can help schools and students
• using more flexibility in developing a school calendar
• extended learning opportunities for credit toward graduation
• distance learning and technology to access new learning opportunities and support the learning process
• moving from a Carnegie Units-based system to a competency-based one

New Hampshire has even set up a second summit for this May and is looking at pushing forward yet another phase of major changes.

Wisconsin has embraced the Austin summit recommendations but is implementing them in one area of the state with a plan to scale out to the rest of the state in time. In California, they’re focusing on the teacher education program reforms and the University of California System will be totally revamping their programs.

In March of this year, Resta, who has been shepherding much of the progress and information dissemination following the University of Texas at Austin summit, was invited to Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative think tank to speak about redefining teacher education. The think tank drew education stakeholders like IBM Foundation president Stanley S. Litow, who is a former deputy chancellor for New York City schools, and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller. It was broadcast to 1000′s of individuals worldwide – because it was a webinar, a worldwide audience was able to participate.

In April, Resta was in Washington, D.C., again, this time to update invited U.S. Department of Education leaders and Capitol staff on the impact that the Austin summit has had in the past year and a half and the reforms that are being adopted across the nation.

Despite doomsday headlines, it seems that positive change is afoot – and it began with a spark lit by Dr. Paul Resta and The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education, gaining traction for the past year and a half.

Congratulations to Dr. Resta and the Learning Technology Center for taking on the BIG issues – and changing the landscape of education.

It’s kind of a matter of “embarrassment of riches” when you talk about the number of high achievers we have here in the College of Education. Of those, doctoral student Christopher J. (C.J.) Stanfill is probably one of the most accomplished. Stanfill, who’s in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, recently was awarded a Luce Fellowship for the research he’s been doing with Dr. Jody Jensen, and he was one of only 15 scholars nationwide to receive this very prestigious honor.

The Luce Scholars Program is a nationally competitive American-Asian fellowship program that places top American university students in Asian countries to spend a year doing work related to their area of study. The fellowship is for individuals who show promise as future leaders and it offers stipends, language training and individualized professional placement in places like Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

I had an opportunity to interview C.J., find out what sort of research he’s engaged in and get an idea of why he was selected for the Luce Fellowship.

Read the Q&A below to discover how C.J. is changing the world:

Q: What was your undergraduate degree in?

C.J.: I received my Bachelor of Science degree in kinesiology from the University of North Texas.

Q: What’s the nature of the graduate work you’ve been doing with Dr. Jensen?

C.J.: Since I have been at The University of Texas at Austin, all of my work has been focused on child development. This line of inquiry allows me to study how the growth and movement of children typically develop. With this information, a researcher is able to compare growth patterns in “typical” children with growth patterns in children with disabilities and create adaptations that will improve any decrements in physical function.

Thus far, the bulk of my work has involved looking at differences in stability at various ages in young childhood and measuring the differences that exist between typically developing children and children with autism. This project served as my thesis material when I was working on my master’s degree, which I received in the fall of 2010. With the completion of this project, I plan to turn my focus to the development and improvement of the rehabilitation process for children with prosthetics.

Q: I heard that you were going to be placed in Laos through the Luce Scholars Program – why Laos?

C.J.: Originally, when I applied for the fellowship I stated that I hoped to spend the year in Cambodia. I specified Cambodia due to the high number of land mine victims there and the thousands of Laotians who receive inadequate prosthetic treatment and care each year.

After I was selected, those involved with the selection process urged me to look into opportunities in Laos, as that country unfortunately has a tremendous amount of land mines as well. It didn’t take much research time – the research and recommendations from those close to me made it clear that Laos would be the optimal placement. It appears to be a beautiful country with the most gracious of people. Details on my specific job placement are still being ironed out, but as of now it appears that I will have hands-on experience with land mine victims in Vientiane as well as rural areas of Laos. I will be leaving at the end of June and returning 13 months later.

Q: What sparked your interest in this specific area of inquiry?

C.J.: As an undergraduate, I was given the opportunity to work with Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Dallas at a clinic called “Learn to Golf.” The clinic’s aim was to teach children with disabilities the fundamentals of golf. Children in the program ranged from those with cerebral palsy and autism to others who had partial paralysis and were using prosthetics. Working with these children during one afternoon changed my life and perspective forever.

Each of the children displayed more drive and determination than anyone I had ever been exposed to. My attention was drawn to the children with prosthetics and the way they managed their ability levels and created their own adaptations in order to produce the desired movement. They were an incredible group of kids and my experience with similar populations since then has been similar.

Q: Why are you in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education and not over in the College of Engineering, for example?

A: The Department of Kinesiology and Health Education’s Movement Science Program was appealing to me because it integrated several different fields of interest under one umbrella. This is something that might not have been as true in engineering.

While some of my own research and the work done by kinesiology faculty does relate to mechanics and engineering principles, the Movement Science Program provides students with the opportunity to have a specific focus area while also receiving a wealth of supporting knowledge about how the human body functions as a whole. While the central focus of my doctoral research is on child development, my colleagues in the Movement Science Program, as well as those in the College of Engineering, are terrific resources and are expanding my knowledge of the biomechanical properties of prosthetic devices.

Q: What are you going to do after you’ve gotten your Ph.D.? Do you have specific career plans?

C.J.: After I complete this degree, I have several short- and long-term goals. Ideally, I would like to teach and conduct research at a medical school where I could use my knowledge about rehabilitation programs while also expanding on research in that field. Ideally, while doing this, I would like to provide consulting services for rehab design and work with global organizations as an advocate for prosthetic users in developing countries.

I have spent the majority of my life in the education system, and I think I also would like to dedicate my life to advocating for students in higher education systems. I hope to involve myself in policy development at whatever institution I am associated with.

Q: What’s the benefit of being part of the Luce Scholars Program?

C.J.: Understanding the culture of Laos and seeing what sort of care land mine victims are receiving – or if they are receiving care – is the main goal of my time away. The Luce Scholars Program and the Asia Foundation are giving me this this incredible opportunity to be exposed to a whole new culture. I feel that the answers I obtain there and the experiences that I bring back with me will help me make significant advancements in the area of prosthetic rehabilitation. I see so many people benefiting from any improvements that we can make and knowledge that we can gain in this field of study.

Congratulations to C.J. on being named a Luce Scholar!

Welcome to The University of Texas at Austin College of Education’s new blog. It’s been a while in coming, but we’re ready to roll now and are looking forward to talking to you and having you talk back to us.

Although we’re called the “College of Education,” we have a lot more than teacher preparation underway here – a whole lot more. The teacher preparation program is stellar, of course, but we also have topnotch educational administrator prep programs; a kinesiology and health education area that’s doing mind-blowing research on health, fitness and nutrition; an educational psychology area that holds some real surprises as far as faculty members’ areas of expertise; and a special education area that ventures well beyond the training of special education teachers.

Among public universities, we’re ranked in the top five graduate education colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. And we’re in the top 10 overall, alongside Vanderbilt, Columbia, Harvard and Stanford.  We’re very proud of that, and I hope that the more you read about us, the more you’ll understand why we take the quest for excellence so seriously.

In addition to reading our blog, we hope you follow the College of Education on Twitter (UT_CoE) and Facebook (College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin) as well, and check out our website when you get a minute or two – www.edb.utexas.edu/education/home/.

Speaking of Facebook, I just saw that one of the College of Education’s instructional technology gurus – Dr. Karen French – posted something there about our IDEA Studio (it’s cool) investigating how the uber-popular game Angry Birds can be used by teachers in learning activities that they design for their students. Karen’s referring to it as “the Angry Bird project” and says you can read more about it in the IDEA Studio’s blog at http://blogs.edb.utexas.edu/ideastudio/tag/angrybirds/.

Color me there – this sounds very interesting…and different.

Hope you visit again soon,

Kay Randall, College of Education/Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs