CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Rebecca Bowers
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)KB: This is Wednesday morning, June 21, 2006, and I’m Karen Blair, about to interview Rebecca Bowers, Dean of CEPS – the College of Education and Professional Studies. [Tape is turned off. Interview resumes mid-sentence] . . . background before you came to Central, and tell us when you came.
RB: Okay, I’m Rebecca Bowers, and I came to Central – started August 1st of 2000. Prior to Central I was at Old Dominion University at Norfolk, Virginia, and I started there in 1989, first as an annual contract, and then position converted to tenure track, and I went through a national search and was appointed to the tenure track position. Started in Math and Science education in the College of Education there, and as an Assistant Professor I went through the ranks, was tenured in ’95, and during the time that I was a faculty member there I became the Director of the Master’s Program in Education, and from there I became the Director of a PhD program that was called Urban Services. And that was the directorship over the PhD program in three colleges – College of Business, College of Health Sciences, and College of Education. And then from there I became the Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
And as far as preparation to come here – as a Dean I taught in public schools for 17 years, mostly in middle school, and it was middle school math and science. And I also, in Greensboro, North Carolina, directed a program that was the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering, and we had a partnership with North Carolina A & T State University, and worked with our students, and actually developed and taught some Engineering courses for eighth and ninth graders. Then, at Old Dominion University when I decided that I wanted to prepare for a Deanship, I asked the Dean there – Dean of Education, Donna Evans – if she would be my mentor, so I was pretty much joined at the hip with her for three years, and doing a lot of things – going to meetings with her, and just basic, good, solid, intensive training. And I will say that when I first asked her if she would mentor me, she said, “I will, but you will never have worked so hard in your life,” and she was right on that.
KB: Where did you get your graduate education? What was your dissertation on?
RB: I got my graduate education at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro – my Doctoral degree, and that was a Doctoral degree in Educational Curriculum and Supervision with an emphasis on Science – Science Education – and my cognate there was in Physics. Prior to that my Master’s degree was from Old Dominion University, and it was a Master’s in Sciences and Secondary Education. And my undergraduate degree was from then Madison College, which is now James Madison University, and I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology, with minors in Chemistry and Physics.
KB: Did you have to do a Research Thesis or Dissertation?
RB: Yes I did. My Dissertation was on the interactions between cooperating teachers and student teachers, and from that I developed five models of cooperating teacher/student teacher interaction, and identified two of the models as very effective, two of the models as ineffective, and the fifth model was a traditional approach, which was, I would deem, somewhat effective. And from that I published, and have a publication, actually, for which I received a national award, and this was the – it was a chapter in a book called A Typology of Cooperating Teacher/Student Teacher Relationships: Perceptions of Student Teachers, and it was published in Partnerships in Education: Teacher Education Yearbook Two – the editors were Mary John O’Hare and Sandra J. O’Dale – through the Association of Teacher Educators. And this book was published in 1994, and as I said, it received a national award for cutting-edge research.
KB: Who gave you the award?
RB: The Association for Teacher Educators.
KB: Well congratulations!
RB: Thank you.
KB: And thank you for your verbal CV.
RB: Yes – so – my coming into Central as my first Deanship – I must say I felt very prepared as a result of the mentorship from Donna Evans, who then went on – I will say this for her – she went on to be the Dean of Education at the Ohio State University. And she and I have kept in contact, and she still is a very, very good mentor, although my phone calls of “Help!” have lessened for her. But I really owe her a debt of gratitude for what she did in terms of my preparation. Coming to Central I found this to be an extraordinary collaborative University in terms of relationship among the Deans, and the relationship among the Department Chairs in this college, and with the Provost.
KB: Were the – was the Education Department split in half when you came?
RB: No. It was – the Education Department was two departments when I came.
KB: It was?
RB: It was the Department of Teacher Education Programs, and the Department of Curriculum and Supervision.
KB: Okay.
RB: But the college itself was already – I understand at one time the college went under some reorganization, but it’s the College of Education and Professional Studies, as it was when I came.
KB: Okay. And how many departments and all are in your college now?
RB: We have seven right now. We’re probably going to have eight by the start of the new year – new academic year – because Flight Technology, which right now is under the Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology, has just this week submitted a request to become its own department, which I think is appropriate, and if that is approved through Academic Affairs Council, that department will become the Aviation Department. And they made that request because they have a strong, stable faculty now. We are expanding the program over to our Moses Lake Center, and we have enough students – we have a little over 200 students, and with the kinds of things they do, it’s appropriate for them to be their own department.
KB: Will this change your relationship with Air Force ROTC?
RB: No. Air Force ROTC is not part of Aviation. Air Force ROTC is its own department. Its department title is Aerospace Studies, and it comes under the auspices of the College, as well as the University and the Military. And the same is true of Army ROTC. Army ROTC is Military Science, which is its own department, and they, again, come under the auspices of the same thing. The Dean of Education is the Military coordinator, and then the President of the University, of course, as we go up the lines from the Dean to the Provost to the President – they’re under the entire University, but they also have to report to the Military. And each year I meet at least once with the Brigade Commanders who generally are stationed over in the Ft. Lewis area. But the Brigade Commanders are over the ROTCs for the entire Pacific Northwest region.
KB: Now wasn’t Leisure Studies a major when you came here?
RB: It was. It is now converted to Recreation and Tourism, because Leisure Studies is pretty much a passé term. And the whole program – the whole field of Recreation and Tourism has become very much more specific in terms of looking at tourism and recreation facilities that would be State, Regional, Nationwide and International. It also has some components of preparing students to work in Health agencies such as convalescent centers, retirement homes, youth organizations, and those kinds of things. And as a matter of fact, Recreation and Tourism has moved – and this was effective January the first of 2006 – they moved from the Health, Human Performance and Recreation Department over to Family and Consumer Sciences. That was for several reasons. One is, the Family and Consumer Science organization has developed the national standards for Recreation and Tourism, and it seemed to be a better fit there, under the entire Family Studies paradigm. And likewise, Nutrition – the Food Science Nutrition program – moved, effective January the first, 2006, over to Health, Human Performance and Recreation, so that department is now Health, Human Performance and Nutrition. That move was effected because the Exercise Science program and the Nutrition program wanted to join their efforts in terms of research and curriculum development for students, both graduate and undergraduate, and the whole area of Health and Human Performance seemed to fit those two areas. So they needed to be in closer proximity with each other.
KB: And do I understand that Dance is about to move?
RB: Not yet. We haven’t made a decision on Dance. There was talk, and some people that decision.
KB: I see. And that would not just be a physical move. It would – the idea that was being entertained was that it be actually moved to the College of Arts and Humanities?
RB: Right, mm-hmm. Yeah.
KB: I see. But that’s still in the –
RB: Yeah. There are a lot of reasons we decided not to do it, and that was the uncertainty about what would happen to some dance courses under the Activities program in the Health and Human Performance Nutrition Department, and also Arts and Humanities was having a transition from the prior Dean to the new Dean, and so we just decided to put it on hold.
KB: Now I can see from your background that you had experience in a lot of the college’s departments. Does it make – explain the rationale. Is it a sensible fit to have Education and the other Professional Studies as one unit?
RB: I think it does, for several reasons. One is – teaching is a profession now. There was a study conducted in the early 90’s by Linda Darwin Hammond, who’s at Stanford and a national – actually International expert in Teacher Preparation, and I remember in her early ‘90s – from ’90 to about ’93 – many of her writings and her speeches were about the US being at a crossroads from – at the point where teachers need to be defined, and teaching needed to be defined – was it a profession, in which teachers would be in a position to work with their colleagues and the administrative staff to make autonomous, but school-wide appropriate decisions, or were they skilled workers who had to be guided and given the directives to move forward? And so what has happened nationally is that teaching has become a professional area, and so teachers in just about every school district – especially in Washington – but teachers have become the professional, autonomous deciders. They still have to comply and make sure their programs are aligned with State standards, and in Washington, State standards are called the EALRS – the Essential Academic Learning Requirements. And the K-12 students have to be prepared for the WASL tests, which are the high-stakes tests in this State. But teachers really are a profession, so if we’re looking at a profession, then teaching fits under Professional Studies. In some instances this college does prepare our graduates – both undergraduate and graduate – for jobs, but we also prepare them to go on into advanced studies. But I don’t see a disconnect between the two, and if you take a look at our college mission, it does fit that.
KB: I am going to – well, it’s on the web site and I’ve looked at it recently.
RB: What we’re after – and this would be true for someone coming out of Teacher Education, or Information Technology, or Industrial and Engineering Technology, or Health and Human Performance, or Family Studies areas - we are looking to prepare competent professionals. So what is a competent professional? It can be a teacher, it can be an engineering technologist, it can be an exercise science specialist, it can be a nutritionist, an IT supervisor – and what we want them to be is competent professionals and leaders who will influence their respective professions. And we also want them prepared so that they are committed to a diverse and global society. Those are a lot of words, but that is what we really strive to do in this college for every program that we have, and every year, when the Chairs and Associate Deans and I meet, we review this mission statement not just one time, but several times during our regular meetings, and just have a discussion about how we’re complying to this mission, or how this mission guides what we do.
KB: Okay, well I’d love to go back to the beginning now. I’ve sort of diverted you from the year 2000, and very eager to learn about what you found. I know that NCATE had been a problem in ’91 and again in ’99, and I’d love your help to understand that. But tell me what you were advised to do – what you were wishing to do when you got here.
RB: Okay. When I applied and came out and interviewed, my focus, as directed by the person who was the Provost at that time – David Dauwalder – was to focus on NCATE. I also decided that for the interview purposes I would focus on the other aspects of the college, too – the other Professional Studies areas. And then, when I became one of two finalists, the Provost called each of us, as I understand, and asked us to write a plan to get the University through NCATE. Now I have to say – there’s a little story connected with this – this was on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. I had just finished – we had just finished packing our car to go to the beach for the weekend. I got this call, and the Provost wanted the plan in by Tuesday, in his office. So we went out and unpacked the car, and I gnashed my teeth a little bit saying “This is not fair, blah, blah, blah,” and I was reminded that if you want the position, do it. So I sat down – I asked for the NCATE report to be faxed to me, and it came that Friday afternoon, and I sat down that weekend and devised a plan to get the University through NCATE, and by Friday of that week I was called and offered the position, and was told that my plan was the best of the two that had been sent out, and the most complete.
So I accepted the position, and I came out August 1st. I had been told that most of the preparation had been completed – it was just a matter of getting it all together. I have to say that when I arrived very little preparation had been done, and I knew that they were coming around the first week of April – the NCATE team would be here the first week of April – and I had already determined that what we had to do generally took other Universities two years, and this was – because the University was on probation for NCATE. We had not lost NCATE in ’99, but definitively on probation. So this April 2001 visit would determine if we were accredited, or if our accreditation were terminated. So I have to say through the hard work of Andrea Sledge, David Shorr, and Jim DePaepe, and David Dauwalder – just getting together and meeting – and I also met with Liahna Armstrong, who was Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the time; Barney Erickson, who was the interim Dean for the College of Sciences – we got together. We decided that we needed committees from across the three colleges, and we needed regular weekly meetings of various groups to get this work done.
KB: Why wasn’t Business included?
RB: They don’t have a Teacher Preparation program.
KB: There’s not a Business Ed degree?
RB: There is, but it used to be in – at that time it was the Administrative Management Business Education department, which is now changed into Information Technology and Administrative Management, and Business and Marketing education have been moved out, along with the faculty, out of that department and into Industrial and Engineering Technology because it’s a better fit there. Business and Marketing Education comes under a State – actually, a National paradigm of Career and Technical Education, so placing that program and this faculty in the INET department is a better fit because we also have the Technology and Industrial Education programs there, and then we have in the Family Consumer Science department, the Family and Consumer Science Education. So those four programs fit with the CTE State model.
KB: Does Business now offer Ed degrees?
RB: No. No. They are – their focus is on the Business community itself, and the Business community – they’re offering degrees in Accountancy and Economics, Business Administration, and then some other specializations. So they’re not in a position to offer Business Education, but we are. Now to be sure, some of the courses are taken out of the College of Business, but it’s not a degree through them.
KB: And accountants might say that they’re a profession.
RB: And they aren’t – yes. [Laughter] But nationally they do fall under the College of Business.
KB: Thank you.
RB: So we’re back to 2000. The work that had to be done was immense. All I can say is we had meetings, we assigned people to write portions – the drafts – portions of the institutional report, and all of that material was submitted to Jim DePaepe and myself, and I wrote the second drafts of portions of it, and he wrote second drafts, and then we decided we needed – obviously – one writing style, so Jim DePaepe did the final institutional report and put together all of the drafts for it. We also made assignments for people to – faculty – to be responsible for different standards for NCATE, and to gather the exhibits, as they were called at the time. And that included course syllabi, samples of student work, budget materials, library materials – Gary Lewis, who was the Dean of the Libraries at the time wrote the Library portion for the standard, and Becky Gubser helped with the budgeting materials. And that was an interesting piece on the budget, because never before had Arts and Sciences had to submit anything about budget, and yet since Teacher Education is the business of the three colleges in the university as a whole, we enlisted Becky Gubser and Mark Lundgren to help us tease out budget information, faculty information, course syllabi, and so forth. So it really was a lot hours – a lot of hard work by some very excellent people. We did have a little resistance on a couple of things. One is, we had to have a standard format for faculty vitas, and they had to be no longer than two pages, and we were able to get all of those. We had three faculty who were so resistant they wouldn’t turn it in, so we had someone who wrote their two-page vita for them. And then the course syllabi had to be in a standard format, and we were able to get that accomplished. We – but I still want to go back and just give kudos to Andrea Sledge, and Jim DePaepe, and David Shorr for all the help that they provided.
KB: What was NCATE’s problem? At the time, the publicity said – Eddington, who was Provost at the time said that we had been following more emphasis on Liberal Arts and content courses, and NCATE didn’t like that. They also said that we were under-funded in terms of professional development for faculty. What’s your understanding of the issues that put us on probation in ’99?
RB: I think it was the presentation of the materials. I think that there were some funding issues, but we didn’t present those well – and I’m using “we” even though I wasn’t here. It’s still my college. We didn’t present the materials well. We didn’t present the budget well. We only had a budget that was specific to this college, not the totality of Teacher Education. We did not present how our majors – for example, the History Teaching major, or the Math Teaching major – fit with the overall program. We did not present how our student teaching was done. We did not present that well. And I think, as I looked it over, it was a matter of presentation. I think that we presented some information, but not all of it, and I’m saying that because as I was doing my study and my research to prepare that document that the Provost asked [of] the two of us finalists for the position, I could not understand why this University was on probation – because I came from an NCATE-accredited institution, I’ve been on a number of NCATE visits. And so what I determined from looking at the web site is it was lack of presentation; lack of coherency among the Arts, Humanities, Sciences, and Education faculty; lack of coordination between our teacher preparation courses and the student teaching experience; and the lack of presentation of what our budget was about. In terms of Liberal Arts – Liberal Arts, if there is too much of an emphasis on Liberal Arts and not enough on an actual major, can be a problem. So if that is the issue that the NCATE team determined, then we needed to focus more on what the actual teaching majors are, and the fact that they do come out – especially the Secondary area – they do come out of the content departments. We don’t award Education degrees here for Secondary educators. We award them out of the content colleges, and that was not emphasized enough.
KB: So Gen Ed looked like it was bigger than majors?
RB: Yes. Mm-hmm, it did, yes.
KB: Now are you saying that no changes were made from the time that probation was issued until we got our accreditation back?
RB: No, we did make some changes. We had to make some changes. You understand, I had from August to April to get these changes together, because I think that – and this is something that I picked up when I was here interviewing for the position – is that there was such a perception of being stunned by the NCATE probationary status – I think there was a lot of blaming going on, and when I came in August I determined that we had to stop the blaming. We had to get focused on what we needed to do. So the changes that we effected that we could do before NCATE came was in the relationships that we had among Arts, Humanities, Sciences and Education. So we began to reform, reformulate and revise – almost revision – the old UPEC organization that was the University Professional Education Council.
I started by talking with Liahna Armstrong as Dean of Arts and Humanities, and Barney Erickson as entering Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. I talked with them individually about us restructuring the entire government structure, because I said there is no formal mechanism here other than UPEC for people from the three colleges to talk and work together. And UPEC was a – an entity that had started blaming, and so when I talked to Leona and Barney [Bonnie?] about the possibility of restructuring to bring in more conversation and collaboration, they were all for it. And I told them – I said, “Furthermore, I want us to start meeting on a regular basis, because if we don’t talk, how can we expect faculty to talk and work collaboratively?”
And so we decided to start developing the plan and making the changes, but not to effect the change or implement the change until after NCATE was here, because we felt like that it would cause too much disruption and confusion. For example, in the intensity and the nervousness that occurs when an NCATE accreditation team comes, if we – if they start talking about government structure and some people are using the term “UPEC,” and other people are using new terminology, it can become very confusing, and that could put us into some difficulty.
I started going to the UPEC meetings, and through UPEC we would inform all of the members about what we were doing, and what we needed to do for NCATE. And UPEC became – the UPEC members became part of the NCATE task force team, although we brought in other members. We had decided that just doing the work through UPEC was too much for those members, and we needed to spread out the work so that we had more involvement. We felt like, also, that with faculty involvement from across the three colleges, there would be more investment in making the whole NCATE process work.
KB: So the Center for Teaching and Learning became the descendent of UPEC, then?
RB: Well the Center for Teaching and Learning had always been there. Evidently that was established – to my knowledge it was established in the Nineties as the oversight for Teacher Education, and there was a CTL Director. But when I came, the Director – there had been several directors from each of the three colleges, and no director would stay in place very long. So we took a look at the whole thing and decided to conduct an internal search for a director, and we were doing that during the NCATE year process. And so we had – Stephanie Stein was the Chair of the committee, and we had several other members. Again, our objective was to have membership from each of the three colleges on any committee that we have under the Center for Teaching and Learning. So we – Jim DuPate was named as the director for the Center for Teaching and Learning through that search, and then, after NCATE came, we re-established the entire governant structure so that UPEC and its name went away, and we now have a Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Council. And that council has subcommittees that operate, and every committee, every council – you know, I want to emphasize this – we have equitable membership from each of the three colleges. That’s important to us, to have that.
KB: So UPEC disappeared. Who is doing the work that UPEC used to do?
RB: The Advisory Council. The CTL Advisory Council. And we have specific membership on that now – the Chair of the Department of Education is a member, the Director for Field Experience (i.e. student teacher) is a member, we have a member from – we have three members from the Sciences, three members from Arts and Humanities, the three Associate Deans from each of the three colleges are members, and it is run by the Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning, who chairs the committee – I mean, the council. The committees under the Advisory Council are the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, the Graduate Curriculum Committee, we have an Equity and Diversity Committee, a Scholarship Committee that looks into and encourages faculty/student scholarship as well as award student scholar – financial scholarships, and then we have a committee that’s called the Carr Committee, and that’s the recruitment – it’s basically a recruitment and appeals committee – recruitment, retention and appeals committee where students can appeal if we don’t accept them into Teacher Education, or accept them on a conditional basis, or we decide not to award a teaching certificate, then they can come to that committee for an appeal before they would go to Student Affairs.
KB: So is it fair to say that the old CTL and the old UPEC have merged some of their functions into the new CTL?
RB: Yes, right.
KB: And in addition, there’s more conversation and exchange?
RB: Yes, more collaboration – far more collaboration. There’s one more structure, and that is the CTL Executive Board. And the membership there are – the Dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies chairs that committee, and the Dean of Arts and Humanities, the Dean of the College of Sciences, the CTL Director, and a school – K-12 school superintendent – are members of that committee. That committee meets twice a month, for an hour. The Advisory Council, which replaced UPEC, meets once a month unless we’re in a tight time with curriculum, and they may meet twice a month, especially trying to get things through the Curriculum Committee at the university level so the materials can go into the catalog. And then each of the committees meet at least once a month.
KB: Now obviously you weren’t here in 1991 when the first probation occurred, but you must have learned something about it.
RB: Mm-hmm.
KB: Is – did – were the criticisms the same in ’91 as ’99? Are you in a position to explain to me what went on the first bump in our road?
RB: I know there’s really minimal information about what happened in the early Nineties, other than the programs were not in compliance with NCATE standards or the State standards at the time. The programs were still operating much the same way that had been operating through the Seventies and Eighties, and they had not been updated. And that’s about the – the extent of my knowledge on that.
KB: So updates must have happened, because we finally were restored . . .
RB: Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. As a matter of fact, in the 2001 visit and the letter that we received in October of 2001 from the National NCATE board, we were accredited with no weaknesses, and that is an astounding accomplishment because only about 1% of the institutions in the US receive that kind of accreditation report.
KB: Wow.
RB: And I have to give all credit to the faculty, and again those people that I’ve mentioned, because they worked so very hard: Martha Kurtz from the Chemistry Department; and Gary Lewis, as I mentioned, who was Dean of the Libraries; Mark Oursland; Bruce Palmquist; people in your department – I believe you were working on it somewhat – and people in the English Department. We had Patsy Callahan, and Terry Martin, and Bobby Cummings, who just worked on extraordinary hard work and made this happen.
KB: Have you any forecasts for the next visit in May of ’07?
RB: I think we’re going to do just fine. We are in a process now of preparing. We’ve hired an external consultant – and many of the Universities now hire an external consultant – because the NCATE standards and process have completely changed. The standards that we were under in – when the visit occurred in 2001 were the old ’97 standards in which we basically just presented – I don’t want to minimalize it, but we had to present the curricula of the programs via the course syllabi, examples of student work, the faculty vitae, the faculty scholarship, the budget, the library resources, financial resources, and school officials where we placed student teachers. Now we have to have assessments. So what I call – I call the old standard and the way of preparing for an NCATE visit show and tell. Now we have to have absolute hard data, and it has to be presented electronically.
So we have – we selected a software called Live Text. We did that because some faculty had been in a conference, and they decided to go to the exhibits and look at the different kinds of electronic presentation systems, and came back – we had actually talked about using another software called Live Text Pro, and faculty came back so excited from this conference about Live Text, so we called the Live Text people and asked them to come out and give some demonstrations to us, and then we decided – we had some faculty groups look at some other software systems, so we decided to use Live Text because it’s a web-based software. It’s secure. The company has multiple backup systems.
And so we have to present electronically – we have to present how students are performing in their programs, and that is different. The old standards, we just had to present the syllabi and samples of student work. Now we actually have to demonstrate electronically how students are performing in terms of meeting competencies and standards. And we will be doing the same thing as we move into the fall quarter. We’ll be asking faculty for their syllabi and for their vitas to put up on our web-based exhibit room, and we have to demonstrate faculty performance – not individual faculty performance, but aggregated faculty performance in terms of their teaching effectiveness, their scholarship, their service to the community and schools, and to the University. We will have to demonstrate the performance of our curriculum delivery compared against our budget, and the performance of our library resources, and student access to library resources. I think that Central – and our NCATE consultant is very much on top of this – we believe that we are fine.
We believe that we are able to demonstrate – the slowest part has been getting faculty convinced to use Life Text. And I understand where they’re coming from, because I decided before I would ask faculty to use Life Text I’d go through the training myself, and there were days when I wanted to pick up the computer and throw it right out the window. But once that magic click occurs in one’s skill set of using Life Text it really becomes easier and easier. Life Text for faculty is time-intensive at the beginning, and yet faculty who have really been using it had that transition into, “Oh yeah, this is what it’s all about,” are finding it very, very easy to use, and very beneficial for them in their overall teaching and coach presentations, and feedback to students, and getting ready for NCATE.
KB: We’ve spent a lot of minutes on NCATE. Why is it important that – it’s optional, isn’t it, that a university uses their accreditation system?
RB: It is optional, but any university who is proud of its program would welcome an external review process. Because with an accreditation, whether it’s NCATE or another national accreditation system, NIAC, it really gives a public stamp of approval of “You’re doing a good job,” or “You’re doing a great job,” and you now have the evidence to show it. So any time that we have programs that have an accrediting agency and are doing a very, very good job, one of the best ways to demonstrate this to the public, to the tax payers, to the students, to the faculty, is we get accredited, and the accreditation is as good as an Academy Award. And I’m very, very proud that we’re an NCATE accredited institution.
KB: No, I understand that for the first time next May the State – the Northwest Accreditation Board is coming simultaneously – like they’re folded in?
RB: It’s not the Northwest, it’s the Professional Educator’s Standards Board for the State, which is a Governor’s appointed board – and I will say I’m a member of the board, but I won’t be able to participate because of conflict of interest. But yes, and the State’s standards – accrediting standards – have been designed along the same thing as NCATE. So what I say to the faculty is that we have to go through the State process. So the State requires the same thing – same standards, except they have two additional: one is the State-required, legislatively mandated Professional Advisory – Professional Education Advisory Boards, which are called the PEEPs, and so we have to – we have a standard on how we’re meeting the PEEP criteria, and the Professional Certification Program, which is a program that we offer for teachers in their first through fifth year of teaching of – at the end of the fifth year of teaching, a teacher must earn a Professional Certificate. So there’s that extra. In the NCATE standards, that Pro-Cert program is judged or assessed under the advanced programs. But yes, the State is the same. They require the same kind of data, they require it to be accessible electronically, they require it to be aggregated and then disaggregated. They don’t want to see it per faculty or per student, but they do want to see it per program, and the State is here to approve the programs. So what I tell faculty and the people working on NCATE – it wouldn’t matter if NCATE’s coming, we still have to do the same thing for the State. And if the State comes in and does an approval program, then we can’t offer that program any more. But on the other hand, I don’t like the negative talk because I know our programs are good, I know our programs are meeting the State standards and they’re meeting NCATE standards, and it’s our job, since we have these very excellent programs – it’s our job to demonstrate it.
KB: Every once in a while somebody says that Central produces more teachers than any other of the State’s schools. Is that true?
RB: It is true. There are times that we’ve run – we’re always in – if you look at it as a competition, it’s between us, Western and Eastern, but most of the time we have the – we produce the most teachers. Actually, nationally, by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, we’re among the top ten producers in the nation, and that speaks well for us because people would not be coming here for teacher preparation if we didn’t have an excellent program. Sometimes you wonder – if you’re the largest producer, or one of the largest in the nation, what does it really say? Well it says that we have excellent programs. If not, the students would leave.
KB: And what size are you talking about right now?
RB: We graduate between five and six hundred a year, and certify between five and six hundred a year. At any given time we will have about 2000 students in Teacher Education.
KB: Graduate and undergraduate?
RB: Right. Mm-hmm.
KB: Could you talk a little bit about the Centers and their relationship to the Ed program?
RB: Yes, I’m delighted to. Our largest Center is at CW Des Moines, and we have Early Childhood and Elementary Education there. We have so many students who want to transfer into the program, we actually have a waiting list. We have faculty who have been assigned to the Centers. Cory Gand – Dr. Cory Gand and Dr. Tina Jorgensen are the coordinators of the program in Des Moines. Dr. Steve Nurse is assigned to Des Moines, and then we have Melanie Kingham, who’s an annual contract person, and we have several others assigned at the Des Moines Center.
KB: Assigned means that they commute from here?
RB: No, they live on the West side, and their – if you want to call it a duty station, it is at the Des Moines Center. We have at the CW in Lynnwood a couple of programs. One is Math Teaching program that we call the Career Switcher, because it’s for people who have a background either in Engineering or actual Math – some other type of Math background – who’ve been in another career, and they want to go into teaching and get a teaching certificate. So we offer -
[End of Side One]
I was saying we have the combined program of Special Education / Bilingual [sounds like “Tessel”], and we’re looking at starting other programs at the Lynnwood Center. Haven’t made the decision yet because we need to obviously do a market study to see what the need is in the area. We also have graduate program in the Master Teacher Program at the Des Moines Center. We have a Teacher Preparation program at the CW Wenatchee Center. Dr. Lee Pluard is assigned there, and we have faculty who do travel from Ellensburg to Wenatchee to offer courses, along with Dr. Lee Pluard. We never want a one-person program. And we typically offer there the Elementary program, but we also, on a rotational basis will offer Special Education endorsement, or the Reading endorsement, or another type of endorsement as a program. The same is true for Yakima – our Center at Yakima. We have an ongoing Elementary – Early Childhood Elementary Ed program, but we also have an advanced Reading Education program for a person who wants to get the Reading Specialist certification, or a person who wants to get a Master’s in Reading, and we, this September, are starting a new program at Pierce Community College, and that will be in Elementary Education with a Reading focus. That program has come about because we applied with Pierce Community College for grant funding from the State, and we were awarded the contract, and so the students will go through Pierce College for the first two years, and then we’ll be there for the third and fourth years, for their endorsement. And we have hired a coordinator for the Pierce campus – or the Center at Pierce – and we will have other faculty who will travel back and forth to do the courses. We also have a relationship with Green River Community College, which is not a CW Center, but we’ve had this relationship going now for four years in which the students there, of course, finish their Associates degree at Green River, and then transition to us for specialization in Elementary Education – or they major in Elementary Education with a Specialty in Science, and Bruce Palmquist has been key in establishing that program. We have new Middle School endorsement areas. We have one in Math and Science, and one starting in Social Science and English, and so we’re looking at the possibility of offering those at the Centers. We have not made the decision, but we’re looking at where the need is.
KB: Can any of these courses be taken online?
RB: We don’t have a specific online program right now, but we have some faculty who are talking about developing it. We have actually a new faculty member coming in this fall who has a specialty in developing online courses, and we are going to be talking with her about the possibility of her doing, for example, the Ed courses EDF 301, which is our Foundations course – possibly doing some online components of that course.
KB: So what percentage of the Ed graduates here study at the Centers?
RB: Probably about 33-35%.
KB: Wow. And are most of the other degrees at the Centers in CEPs?
RB: Yes. Right now we’ve been trying to figure out how to do some of the Arts and Humanities and College of Sciences degrees over there at any of the Centers. Part of the issue – other than the math – part of the issue is the population. I think that if we were to work with Arts, Humanities and Sciences faculty to develop some online components, we might be able to deliver some of the secondary programs at the Centers.
KB: But clearly your CEPs programs dominate the ones that Business offers over at the Centers.
RB: Yeah, right. Now Business Education we probably, by next Fall, will be offering at one of the Centers on the West side because there is a high need for Business Ed and Marketing Ed teachers on the West side, and we know there’s populations of potential students on the West side to do those programs.
KB: Now I’d like to bring up the question of Early Childhood Education. It’s my understanding that Central had very formal Nursery and Kindergarten on campus from ’33 to ’55, and early ‘60s until ’82.
RB: Right.
KB: Now, though, the day care that’s available – there is some at Brook Lane, and there is some at Michelson in Omak. I don’t think there’s still any in Psychology. But it’s certainly not very formalized.
RB: Right.
KB: Is there a reason why that’s no longer formal?
RB: It has to do with funding base. The one at Brook Lane falls under – here on campus falls under Student Affairs and Enrollment Management. The one under – the one that’s in Michelson falls under a State funded support through grants under the Family and Consumer Sciences program. And there is one in Psychology. There are two classrooms of children there that started two years ago, and they are under the auspices of the Psychology Department. Now the State, under an initiative promoted and passed by Governor Gregoire, the State is looking for a Certification or Teaching Endorsement for Early Childhood – and by that they mean birth through 5 years old, or birth through 3. There is a State Committee that is conducting studies on the most appropriate endorsement area, because Governor Gregoire wants to – in her Education initiative – wants to promote Early Learning and readiness for regular school. And so we are – the Standards Board – of which I mentioned that I’m a member – is going to be taking up this – the consideration once the Statewide committee finishes their study. And if there is a proposal to come through the State process for an endorsable area in the Early Childhood birth to 3 or birth to 5, it is the Standards Board who would approve that.
KB: I see.
RB: So I will be talking with our Department of Education and our Family and Consumer Science chairs and faculty about their becoming ready to offer this type of endorsement, because I have full belief that it’s going to happen Statewide.
KB: I see. Now I understand that you are under a lot of pressure from external sources.
RB: Mm-hmm.
KB: OSPI and the HEC Board – how do they shape your world these days?
RB: Well OSPI works closely with the Standards Board first, in terms of program approvals.
KB: Office of?
RB: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. OSPI also has – and this is the office with which we work most closely – is the Office of Professional Education and Certification. And so we work extraordinarily closely with that office because we have to – every University has to submit to that office the names and the credentials of the people that we’re recommending for Teacher Certification or Add-on Endorsements, and so we have a very close working relationship with that office. Dr. Arlene Hecht is the Director of the program – she’s been there for three years – and Larry Lashaway, who is the Assistant Director of that office at OSPI, is our liaison. And each College or University that has a Teacher Preparation program is assigned a liaison from OSPI. That liaison is the person with whom our Certification Director or Associate Dean can contact any time, 8:00-5:00 Monday through Friday, and we do keep in contact with Larry Lashaway to ask questions about – one never knows what kind of questions are coming up.
But – for example I had a phone call myself from a person who was already teaching in the State, held a certificate, was teaching in middle school and held a certificate in Language Arts, but in the middle school in which she was assigned, was also teaching Social Studies and wanted to know how to add the endorsement for Social Studies. And so I told her that – I said, “It’s very easy. If you feel confident enough, go ahead and take the Praxis 2 in Social Studies. If you pass it, contact us with your scores and pay us the fee, and we will recommend that you’re endorsed.” She said, “Oh, I don’t have to complete a program?” I said, “No. You’re already certified, you’re already teaching. The Standards Board has determined that the teaching methods between Language Arts and Social Studies are similar, therefore all you have to do is take the test.” Now if someone had called and said, “I’m teaching – I’m a high school teacher, and I’m in this rural community, and I’m teaching Biology, but they also have me teaching History, and I only hold a certificate endorsement in Biology. What do I need to do?” And I would say to that person, “The methodology of teaching Biology and History are different, therefore you first take the Praxis Test – the West E – in History. If you pass it, then come to us and we will establish an internship for you at the same school where you’re already teaching, so you don’t have to leave your job, and we will assign a Supervisor to you, and if you meet the State competencies for teaching in History, then we will recommend you for endorsement in History. If you don’t pass the Praxis 2 – which we call the West E – in History, then you will have to come back – hopefully to us – and go through the History Teaching program for your endorsement.”
KB: And what about the HEC Board? Do you have relations with them?
RB: Yes. The HEC Board is the agency that oversees, as you know, all of the higher education in the State, and so if we want to start a new program, we work through the office of the Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Studies, who right now is Linda Beath, and we submit to her our intent for a new program, and we also would have to submit our intent for a new program to the Standards Board. And so actually we are working out what we need to do between the Standards Board and the HEC Board. I’m on the State Committee that’s developing those protocols, because now that the Standards Board has taken over all of Professional Education approvals, we believe that now we have to contact the HEC Board and Teacher Education, place a program at a site, but we go to the Standards Board for approval of the program. So we’re – this committee – we’ve been meeting monthly, and so we are looking into a protocol so that we just go to one agency.
KB: And does Central have any programs in the pipeline right now?
RB: Not that I know of. We accomplished all of the work that we were going to do during the Fall and Winter quarters – a couple of programs left over for Spring – but right now we’ve pretty much got established everything that we plan to do. We do contact the HEC Board, however, for the Professional Studies programs. And for example, when we were going to – when we decided to do the Bachelor of Applied Science program in Information Technology and Food Service Management, and we wanted – those were new degree programs. We had to go through the HEC Board for approval. Then we wanted to place the programs on the West side, either at Des Moines, or Lynnwood. We had to go to the HEC Board for the approval. Likewise for our Flight Tech program that we’re placing at Moses Lake. We had to go through the HEC Board – first the approval process through the University, and then the HEC Board – for the approval of putting the program at Moses Lake Center.
KB: Now do you have any autonomy at all? Can you tell me about things that you’ve changed in your six years here?
RB: Yes. I have to tell you that I am a – I prefer to do things by collaboration and input. I may have an idea – and in fact, I do have ideas, and I know the behind the scenes political thing enough to talk to people. But there are some major changes that we’ve had. One is that the – when I came, as I said earlier, we had two Teacher Ed departments. One was Teacher Education Programs, and one was Curriculum and Supervision. I appointed a faculty committee of [an] equal number of members from each of the departments to conduct a study, gave them 30 days, and asked them to interview every faculty member in the departments to determine if the two departments should remain separate, or merge. And so they did, and they wrote a recommendation, and the recommendation was – it was not 100% vote, but it was a two thirds to one third vote to merge the two departments, and to appoint a chair for two years, and also they wanted a new position, which we hadn’t had since I had been here, and that was Director for Field Experience. That was a position I wanted anyway, so I worked with this faculty committee and we did merge the two departments into one department. I appointed a chair for two years – it was Dr. David Shorr – and initially had funding to create a .6 FTE interim Director for Field Experience – that was Dr. Don Black, who unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago. But we conducted a search this past year and we hired Dr. Rexton Lynn, who will have a full-time, 12-month position as Director of Field Experience, and that was an exempt position that I created.
I established two Associate Deans for the college. Prior history is this college had one Associate Dean, and the Dean and the Associate Dean were always out of Teacher Education. And it seemed to me that Professional Studies – the other, non-Teacher Education programs were feeling second or third class even if they weren’t, but that was their perception, and my opinion is perception is reality. So I divided the Associate Dean position, and I started with a .5 appointment for an Associate Dean of Professional Studies, who has been Dr. Ethan Bergman, and an Associate Dean for Professional Education, who is Dr. Connie Lambert. Dr. DePaepe decided that he wanted to step down as the Director of the CTL so that he could put more of his efforts into assessment and research in Education, and so Dr. Connie Lambert has become a full-time exempt person. She’s the Associate Dean and the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. That was my decision, but again, collaboration on [among?] the faculty.
I made the changes of examining our programs as a result of our Academic Program Review process that the University has, and it was from the Academic Program Review processes that I made the change of Nutrition – Food Science Nutrition to the Health / Human Performance department, and Recreation / Tourism to the Family and Consumer Sciences department. It was my initiative that resulted in Flight Technology becoming its own department, and will be named Aviation. It was my initiative that removed Business and Marketing Education out of the ITEM department into the INET department. It fit better there. It was done as a result of my studying the curriculum and the direction that the ITEM department is going. I have charged the ITEM department with becoming the premiere Information Technology program in the State, and they’re working very hard to make that accomplishment. It was my initiative that reformed / revised our Professional Education government structure that now has the Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Council and the Executive Board – never had a formal meeting for the Deans, the CTL Director and the School Superintendent to meet before. I can go on, and on, and on, but –
KB: Well I’d like to go back to the merging of the two Ed departments. What’s gained and what’s lost by that change? Why were they split to begin with? That was, what? Ninety-four? It’s not beyond living memory that those were split. I guess size had something to do with it.
RB: Size. I think it was size. I think it was determined that the departments here at the University should be small departments, so they were split. And I think the disadvantage of that is they lost conversation, they lost collaboration as a result of it. And that’s what concerned me most, was they were acting as two independent departments, not as collaborative colleagues. And that just is something that evolves on campuses: one department trying to advocate for its own benefit and welfare. But what worried me, as we were preparing for NCATE in 2000 and 2001, and continued to be of major concern to me was much as we tried, the community of colleagues and the community of scholars – learned scholars – was not occurring. Collaboration on curriculum, collaboration on scholarship was not occurring, and then there were some turf issues that occurred, and as the State was making changes more toward having a required pedagogy assessment instrument to be used during student teaching, it just seemed to me that the departments needed some structure to be colleagues and collaboration of curriculum. It was the same concern I had about the lack of collaboration among Education / Arts and Sciences, and one of the reasons I wanted to restructure the whole CTL governance situation. So [the] benefits of staying the same – the faculty groups were smaller.
KB: What’s the total now?
RB: The total now is 43.
KB: Will that be unwieldy?
RB: No. It is not. And I tried to guide – I think I’ve done a very good job of guiding the Chair, because I came – I was the Chair of a department that had 57, and we actually have a new Chair who will be starting in the middle of July – it’s Steve Schmitz – and I think that the advantage is that now the programs are talking to each other, and there is far more collaboration that I am observing between the Professional sequence and the Secondary departments out in Arts Communities and Sciences, and within the Department of Education. They went through some rough bumps last year because it was their first full year as a single department, but I am quite pleased with the progress they’ve made, and I know they do collaborate with each other far more now than they ever have before. You know, this Fall I’m going to start some – I’m calling them Education Summits, and I’m going to have the Professional Sequence faculty have meetings with Arts, Humanities and Sciences faculty so we can begin more formal conversations. For example, “I’m in History, and I’m teaching this, this, this and this. I am working to prepare the students for student teaching and certification. What are you doing in Education? What are your Education Sequence courses about?” And I want them – I want to bring all the faculties together to have those conversations. “My students are complaining about the EDCS 311 course. What are you doing in that course, and how can I coordinate my courses – my methods courses – with what you’re doing in 311?” “Students are complaining about the Reading Across the Content course. What kinds of things do I need to offer in my Reading Content course that would benefit your students in Foreign Language? Or in Physical Education, and so forth?”
KB: We haven’t talked about Summer School. My sense is that you get the lion’s share of summer school enrollments here, do you not?
RB: Generally we do. I’m a little concerned that our enrollments are going down. I think there are a lot of reasons. I think the enrollments in the other three Colleges are also diminishing somewhat, but yes, we do get the lion’s share. A lot of it has to do with the fact that it’s difficult to finish many of our professional programs in four years, and so rather than having to come back a fifth year many of the students will take summer courses so they can actually earn their Bachelor’s degree in the four years.
KB: And that’s true in the Centers as well as in Ellensburg?
RB: Yes. Absolutely. We’ve actually talked about the possibility of having five-year Teacher Preparation programs, but we are not ready to do that.
KB: Do other schools in the State do that?
RB: No. There are some schools in the State – excuse me a minute – some schools in the State that only offer Teacher Education at the graduate level, and we’ve had some requests here from Music and one or two other areas to do the same. In other words, the students would go through a Bachelor’s degree in their content major, and then come back for the fifth year to get their teaching credentials. I came from a University that did that, and I think it’s worth exploring. And if we do, I’d like to start with a couple of pilot programs, and see the effects of it. And since we’ve appointed Jim DePaepe as our Educational Researcher, I would probably ask him to develop the assessment instrument and do the study. But I’m interested in doing that. We have to realize that – and it’s something I have said at State meetings. In fact, I’ve been quoted lately on it. We’re not preparing the ten-year veteran teacher. We’re preparing the novice teacher. And we have to understand that. But that also doesn’t mean that we don’t prepare a strong teacher, but we do have to understand that that person is going into an entry-level position. But would the novice teacher be better with a five-year preparation program? As I said, I came from an institution that does that. I think we need a lot of conversation about it. We need to look at the research – the long-term research that has been conducted – to see if it’s more effective.
KB: The student would be more grounded in their discipline, and then add the Ed courses on top of that.
RB: Right.
KB: And so the question is, is it better to weave them simultaneously, is that right?
RB: Yes, mm-hmm.
KB: How is Central’s program different from others in the State? Is there pretty much uniformity, given all the regulations that you face, or are there uniquenesses?
RB: Well, first there are uniformities, because all of us – any institution in this state has to meet State competencies. So we know that we have to prepare students for classroom management, we have to have them grounded in content – that they’re groundedness is demonstrated by their passing the West E, which is right now Praxis 2 in the content area.
KB: That’s a new plan, isn’t it?
RB: Yes.
KB: That’s just instituted –
RB: This past September.
KB: September ’05?
RB: Right. And I’m proud to say that our pass rate right now is over 90%.
KB: Congratulations!
RB: And NCATE requires 80% pass rate. So we are pleased with our student performance in their content areas. We know that we have to prepare them to teach all students, so we have to prepare them in diversity. And we know we have to prepare them on making a positive impact on student learning. We have to prepare them for – to involve parents in the children’s learning processes. But then, there are unique things. For one, we have – on our Elementary programs, for example, we don’t offer just an Elementary Ed program, we require them to have a minor. So that’s why some of them will take a minor in Social Studies, or some will take a minor in – for example, the Green River group that I mentioned earlier has the Science emphasis. They may take a minor in Special Education. They may take a minor in Reading. What we’ve learned is that those people who graduate with just the Elementary endorsement have a difficult time getting a job. Those who have an endorsable minor or a specialization that may or may not be endorsable, but at least have the preparation, are more likely to be hired, and they become better teachers.
KB: And other schools do not require this?
RB: Some do, some don’t, but we’re unique – we’re specifically unique in that area. We’re unique in the fact that we are offering the Math teaching program for career changers. That we work with the people – we require them to take some content in Math, rather than just the education courses. Because even though they have a Math background that might be from their Engineering studies, or their studies in some other field, we know that they need to know the Math that is taught in the schools, and they need to know the approach to Mathematics as it’s taught in the schools. We have some opportunities for students to have intensive internship programs. We have the Mt. Stuart program, in which the students can be there for a year-long internship. That doesn’t mean they’re student teaching the entire year, but what they are doing is they spent some time every quarter in the school up to student teaching, and then student teaching, of course is full time.
KB: What are the teachers paid – the school teachers who take on our student teachers?
RB: It depends on the length of time and the school district, but it runs between $50 and $150. It’s not a lot.
KB: And does the State pay that?
RB: No, we do.
KB: We do.
RB: Yes.
KB: And that’s sort of a courtesy thing?
RB: It’s a courtesy. It’s a gratuity. And I will say that in the late ‘70s when I was a middle school teacher and I was taking student teachers, I was paid $50, so it hasn’t changed a lot.
KB: I see. In the ‘20s and ‘30s I noticed an awful lot of honor societies and professional societies were formed on this campus for students with career aspirations. Is that still the case? Is that important to the students’ career development now?
RB: Yes. We have an honor society, Kappa Delta Phi, for the undergraduate students, and it is an honor society. Dr. Susan Donahoe is the faculty advisor to that group. And then there is a graduate-level honor society that Dr. Steve Schmitz and Dr. Henry Williams are the faculty advisors for that, and we have honor societies in Aviation, and Flight Technology, and we have some – one in the Health Education area. Health Education – the specific regard is the public health specialization. And then there’s student clubs in Information Technology, student clubs in Family Consumer Sciences – Family Consumer Sciences is a student leadership club – and so we have a number of those that students are quite active in.
KB: And I guess students are encouraged to get involved in Scouting and other activities to enforce their understanding of the students they’ll be teaching?
RB: They are, yes. We provide opportunities for students to – the Teacher Education Students – to be involved with tutoring, to do community service with various student groups. We were, for a while – we couldn’t get it scheduled for this year, but for two years we had fifth grade students from the Thorp schools brought here before school started in the morning, and our Math students, Mark Arlslen and Keith Salier, were in charge of having either the Math students observing the teacher and the class, or they would tutor either one, or groups of the students in the class. In – especially in the summer, we have the reading program. Dr. Nancy Jurenka is in charge of this, but students come in, children come in and some of the students who are taking the Reading courses will tutor the students in Reading. And they are all over Black Hall. I see them at tables, upstairs and downstairs, and –
KB: Do you happen to know what the breakdown is for minority students at Central planning to be teachers?
RB: It’s about 14%, and most of those are on the West side at the Des Moines Center. But it’s about 14%.
KB: Well we’re almost out of time. What should Central be proudest of?
RB: I think the fact that Teacher Education – and I’ll say this for any area we have – Construction Management, Exercise Science, the Health Education area, especially in Public Health – our graduates are most often the number one selection for employment. They are – Construction Management has 100% hiring rate. Paramedic has a 98% hire rate. Teacher Education, our hire rate is about 92%, which is phenomenal. We have alumni, such as Christine Day, who graduated – received her degree from our Administrative – it was the old Administrative Management Business Education Department. She’s now the Vice President for Starbucks coffee, and the President of their International Division. We have people who have gone on – graduates who have gone on and made major, major contributions in their field, and society.
I think the second – and it’s not actually second, it’s number one, still, is our faculty. I am so proud of our faculty. They work hard, which somewhat makes them sound like workers, but they are so dedicated to the students. They keep up with the knowledge they need. They keep up with the standards. And this is for any area in this college. The scholarship has increased significantly since I’ve been here, and by the way, you asked me earlier what I had done on my own, autonomously? I established a scholarship policy for this college, and again, it was through the work of collaborating with faculty. There was no standard in the college when I arrived, and yet we were holding faculty to scholarship standards and it didn’t seem fair not to have a criteria to reach – just this kind of vague notion out there. So we established a –
KB: Does it trouble you that the scholarship expectations have risen when the teaching load has not diminished?
RB: Mm-hmm, it has. It has significantly, and we struggle with it. In fact, I had a faculty committee appointed when we started working on the scholarship policy, and that was the issue they kept bringing up over, and over, and over, and I said, “I agree with you, but the fact of the matter is,” I said, “Let’s look at reality. Expected to teach 36 credits. You’re expected to do scholarship and service.” And so I said, “If I could do anything about the teaching requirements, I would. But the fact of the matter is, we have to add in scholarship.” And so they groused and gnashed their teeth, as I would have done about it, but I am really proud of the progress they’ve made.
KB: I forgot to ask you: your website has a grid with all the accreditation agencies that have jurisdiction over various of the departments in this college. Was that thrust for accreditation a recent thing, or does that pre-date your years here? I see that the Dietician Association – I mean, various accrediting boards are looking after our departments.
RB: Well some of it occurred after I came, and some, we’ll say, I inherited. But again, other than – the reason for accreditation – I don’t think the reason for accreditation should be that we’re going to hold this stick over you, and you must comply. It has come from faculty – possibly with the exception of NCATE – but all the others have come from faculty who were very proud of their programs, and they are – there’s salient reasons to be accredited. For one thing, in many of the programs which are accredited, their graduates get first choice at employment. There are some employment agencies – for example, paramedic, nutrition, construction management – their graduates would be on the bottom of the employment selections if they weren’t accredited. I’ll give you another example. Recreation and Tourism requested this past year to begin the accreditation process, and so we were – what we’ve learned is that the program is accredited – when the graduates leave our program, they have a two-year jump on the career ladder in the Recreation and Tourism industry, whereas if we’re not accredited, they have to – they have more hoops to jump through. The same is true of construction management for the Industrial and Engineering Technology areas that are under [acronym, sounds like A-phed] accreditation.
KB: So should I assume that you are pushing, or President McIntyre is pushing departments with such possibilities to sign on?
RB: It’s me. It’s me. She’s supportive of it, but it’s me because I know there’s an advantage – first of all, for the visibility of the program, for students being attracted to the program, the prestige of the faculty, the jump that the students who graduate from the program receive on being accredited. It’s similar to having a blue ribbon, or, as I mentioned before, an Academy Award. Now NCATE – I do not know the history of the NCATE starting, but I do know the Board of Trustees here mandate NCATE, or they mandate accreditation. I did look into the possibility of going with TEAC vs. NCATE, and we’ve decided on NCATE.
KB: What is TEAC?
RB: TEAC is Teacher Education Accrediting Council. It’s about ten years old. It does not have the prestige as NCATE, and TEAC accredits individual programs rather than the entire Teacher Education activity here. So we decided on NCATE.
KB: So what are the problems – the challenges that we need to look at here?
RB: I think the thing – I don’t spend sleepless nights, but the thing which I think is probably true of every administrator is budget not meeting needs, and State governments continually cutting back on the support to higher education. And so we have our situation where we need more faculty, and we don’t have the funding to bring on more faculty. And I think, then, that is reflected in the increasing cost of student tuition. I think that’s the challenge. The second challenge, as we’ve already talked about, is the faculty having time to do all the responsibilities that they have. And yet they’re faculty, and I have to applaud them for this – they make a way for it to happen. They put their interests into their careers and their students, and they make it happen. I think the next challenge is the external pressures that we have. There are external pressures from the State, the taxpayers, all of the agencies now who develop competencies and standards that we have to meet. I’m not opposed to competencies and standards. What I think the challenge is, is responding quickly enough, and sometimes it appears that we’re having to respond on an annual basis. It depends on the program. I can’t just right now name the program, but I think Teacher Education is probably the one that has the most external impact, and that, to me, is a conflict between academic freedom and meeting competencies, and I think that Education faculty – and I’m not talking about just Education-specific faculty – but I think it goes into all of the departments in the Colleges of Arts, Humanities and the Sciences. I don’t think academic freedom has gone out the window yet, but the fact of the matter is – the challenge is if a certain faculty member decides that they’re not going to comply with those standards and competencies, we don’t have a program in that particular area, and that is a challenge. I think that faculty are little by little beginning to recognize that, but there’s always this tension between academic freedom and the challenges, and I think the next goes hand-in-glove with that, and that is the accountability which is a challenge. How do we – if we are in a position to develop our own accountability standards, how can we develop – what standards do we need that make sense? That really informs what we do? Because there are accountability standards, I think, that just meet political reasons, and then there are accountability standards who can meet the mandates that are set up by the legislature or other governing bodies, but also inform us better of how we can make our programs better. I think the other challenge is how do we meet the increasing needs and demands of our students to prepare them as best we can for what they’re going to do after they leave us – whether they’re going to go on to graduate studies, or, for the Master’s students, go on to advanced graduate studies, or if they’re going to go into a career, what do we need to do, and how do we get enough funding for appropriate faculty development?
KB: So a lot of grousing in the content fields that an awful lot of student emphasis is going into pedagogy courses. How do you feel about the balance? Do you think it’s about right at this point?
RB: I think it’s right, but I think it’s the reason that we need the Education summits that I’m going to be calling for to begin in the fall. I think we need to be talking to each other, because the students are reporting some repetition among the courses, and we need to look at it. I know that one of the courses in question is our EDCS 311. We absolutely need that course to meet the State standards to prepare the students for their pedagogy assessment, so if there’s repetition in that course, and there’s repetition in the History methods, or the Math methods, or whatever the content area course it is, what do we need to get that repetition out of there? Because I do not believe that students need to be paying tuition money to take the same thing twice.
KB: What is the course title?
RB: I just went totally blank on it. It’s basically our methods courses – our general methods course – and in that course we are preparing students intentionally to look at the curriculum standards the State has established in the area in which they’re intending to teach. But if they’re in middle school, we want them to know what’s going on in the elementary and the high schools, and if they’re preparing to teach high school we want them to know what’s going on from K to 8. The second area is assessment – conducting student assessment – that will inform the teacher on what learning activities need to be developed for the K-12 students, and the third area that is critically important is the classroom management, and the – every student survey – every student study that we ever have from our graduates – and this is not true just for Central, it’s true – [End of Tape. I don’t have a second volume.]