Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back to the College and the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year. I know that the summer months, although outside the scope of the regular academic year, are some of the College’s most productive. Our faculty members are conducting their research and preparing publications in a focused manner, drafting and submitting ambitious and forward-looking grant submissions, and offering online classes to our students worldwide. And our staff and administrators work steadily to finalize reports and prepare for the new academic year.  I hope that during the summer period you have all also had time for what is called ‘recreation’ – it matters that we take the time to refresh our spirit.

It seems that daily we have to cope with colliding realities of hope and despair, beauty and atrocity, generosity and cruelty, privilege and disadvantage — in our own communities, the nation and the world. Much of the difference is a consequence of the accident of birth, our sense of self interest and our values choices.  As educators, we feel more keenly the need to make a contribution to a world that is more peaceful, just and creative and in the interest of the common good. Our role is to prepare learners, workers and citizens who are compassionate and astute stewards of their communities, shared resources and the earth that sustains us. These are easy things to say, and clichéd when too easy – but we must seek every opportunity to reaffirm our purpose and honor the responsibly that comes with the privileges we share as members of the College of Education, no matter what our role.

Each year brings new opportunities and challenges and this one is no exception. I am truly excited by what is continuing and unfolding – all equality vital to our future.  To welcome the Class of 2018 last Friday was uplifting as they embrace their futures as teacher leaders (see picture below).

First, we have experienced a significant turnover in our community over the past 3 years that amounts to 20% of our current faculty. So let me congratulate this year’s new faculty and announce some changes in roles for existing faculty.

NEW MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY
We are excited to welcome seven new faculty members to the College this August, whom you can meet informally at a welcome breakfast on September 11^th, as well as formally at the College’s fall faculty meeting on Friday, September 26.  Please join me in welcoming:

• Associate Professor Kristen Bub and Associate Professor Jennifer Cromley, in the Department of Educational Psychology;
• Professor Patrick Smith, Associate Professor Luz Murillo, and Assistant Professor Stephanie Smith in the Department of  Curriculum and Instruction;
• Assistant Professor Meghan Burke in the Department of Special Education; a
• Professor Eboni Zamani-Gallaher in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership.
• We also are pleased to welcome Dr. James Gallaher as the Executive Director of the Executive Leadership Academy.
• Additionally, Dr. Chad Lane will be joining the Department of Educational Psychology in January 2015.  Be on the lookout for more information about all of these new colleagues in the very near future.    

Several new academic staff members have joined our team as well.

• Ms. Katelyn Jacobs will be Assistant Director of Advancement, with the responsibility of generating major gift development. Katelyn most recently served as Annual Fund Gift Officer for Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia. In that role, she fostered a large portfolio of annual donors and made a significant impact on the Randolph advancement program.
• We are pleased to announce the addition of Ms. Sunny McMurry to the staff as the Clinical Experiences Specialist, filling a vacancy left by Eric Hillman’s retirement last December. The Office of Clinical Experiences has been renamed School and Community Experiences as part of the creation of I-Teach /I-Lead.

• Ms. Stacey Livingston joins the Advancement team as well as office administrator, and Ms. Stephanie Rayl has joined the AISO staff as an office support associate.

PROMOTIONS
Just before Commencement weekend, the College received good news regarding the promotion of three of our faculty members and the Board of Trustees officially approved them in July.  We would like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge the success of these members of our College whose promotions will be effective August 16, 2014.  Please join us in sending our heartfelt congratulations on their achievements. Tenure in our College is highly prized and an acknowledgment of stellar performance that not only is a credit to each scholar but enhances the profile of our whole scholarly community.

• Ruth Nicole Brown, EPOL, who was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure
• Hedda Meadan-Kaplansky, SPED, who was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure
• Stacy Dymond, Special Education, promoted to full professor

AWARDS and ACCOLADES
The Dean’s Office has been notified of a few notable accomplishments over the summer months.  Please feel free to forward any additions to this list.

• Congratulations to Associate Professor David Huang, who was selected for the 2014 Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Division of Distance Learning (DDL) Journal Article Award for a quantitative focused article, as well as a Crystal Award winner.  He also will be recognized at the 2014 AECT convention later this year.

• Professor Micki Ostrosky, head of the Department of Special Education was selected to participate in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation’s Academic Leadership Program for 2014-15.

• University Primary School as selected for the 2014 Best of Champaign Awards for Elementary Schools by the Champaign Award Program.  The Champaign Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local organizations throughout the Champaign area that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

NEW ROLES
We are pleased to announce several new administrative appointments for the upcoming year. Congratulations to all and thank you for your commitment and service to our college and campus

• Professor Fouad Abd-El-Khalick’s appointment as Associate Dean for Research and Research Education, effective August 16, 2014.  Professor Abd-El-Khalick is uniquely qualified to play a pivotal role in promoting research, scaffolding pathways for novice faculty members to secure external funding to support their research programs, increasing funding for doctoral student education, and bolstering College ICR Funds to ensure that the overall research and scholarship portfolio of the College is commensurate with its public mission and with peer expectations of a Research I, Land Grant University.  He will remain the Head of Curriculum and Instruction, assisted by Dr. David E. Brown as the Interim Executive Associate Head for Administration and May Xiong as Assistant to the Head, who together will manage the daily administrative operations of the department. I will meet with the faculty in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction soon to discuss a strategy for a selecting a new head of department. We are grateful to Professor Brown for agreeing to serve again in a managerial role during this transition period, as he did in 2006-07.

• Professor William Trent’s appointment as the Director of the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities was effective July 1, 2014.  A professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership since 1983, and is a long time member of our community as a scholar, parent (three of his daughters are graduates of the Unit 4 schools), and citizen.  His research centers on educational inequality, and he has a host of national honors and prestigious fellowships. He currently serves as a member of the Social Science Research Council’s College Learning Assessment Committee.  He is Principle Investigator of an NSF-funded project examining undergraduate STEM participation for women and underrepresented minority students. In short, he brings a breadth of expertise and experience to the table and is exceptionally well qualified to lead the CESUC into the future.

• Professor Dan Morrow has become the Chair of Department of Educational Psychology, effective August 16.  The Executive Committee of the department forwarded his name as its recommendation upon receiving notice from Professor Jose Mestre that he intended to step down after three years as Chair and return to the faculty.  We welcome Dan to the College’s leadership team and thank Jose for his service to the Department and College as chair.

• Dr. Chris Roegge has resumed oversight of the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative program in addition to being the Executive Director of the Council on Teacher Education.  INTC staff members, meanwhile, have been relocated to the Council on Teacher Education office suite at 505 E. Green Street.

• Effective August 16, Dr.  Allison Witt has agreed to become the College’s Director of International Programs, in addition to her responsibilities as Teaching Assistant Professor in the Global Studies in Education online program.  We are grateful to the leadership provide by Professor Ron Jacobs over the past two years, as he has stepped down to take a larger leadership role in the Human Resource Development division to focus on its new online program and the undergraduate concentration in the new non-certification program.

• Associate Professor Jessica Li has accepted a two-year term as the Dean’s Fellow for Faculty Development and Diversity Initiatives.  In this role, she will be designing, implementing, and evaluating programs and policies aimed at developing, retaining, and revitalizing faculty. As a member of Dean’s Cabinet, she will be working closely with the Associate Deans as well as with the unit executive officers.

RESEARCH UPDATE
The Bureau of Educational Research saw a higher level of activity in FY14 with a total of 126 submissions and $8.6 million in new awards.  Looking forward, our faculty submitted 37 new proposals over the summer (May 15-August 15), an incredible pace for not only our faculty but the Bureau staff as well.  Well done to all of you!  And already for FY15 we are pleased to report nearly $3.8 million in new externally funded projects. The College submitted six proposals to the NSF Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies competition. The aim of this competition is to fund projects that “design and effectively use the learning technologies of the future (Future Learning Technologies) and provide an understanding of the processes involved in learning when learners have experiences that only technology allows (Cyberlearning)”. Of the six COE proposals – two were selected for funding. The funded Principal Investigators are Professors Robb Lindgren, Dan Hoffman, David Brown, and Emma Mercier.

Robb is actually a principal investigator on two proposals that were very recently funded by NSF (one under the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies competition and one under the EHR Core Research competition).  The first project is titled “Embodied Explanatory Expressions for Facilitating Science Reasoning and Enhancing Interactive Simulations” and is funded at $1,447,193 over a four year period.  The second project, a Development and Implementation award, is titled “Developing Crosscutting Concepts in STEM with Simulation Theaters for Embodied Learning” and is funded at $1,349,504 over a four year period.

Assistant Professor Emma Mercier was also funded under the Cyberlearning competition’s Exploratory Research opportunity.  Her project is titled “Fostering Collaborative Drawing and Problem Solving through Digital Sketch and Touch” and is funded at $549,995 over a three year period.

Associate Dean Fouad Abd-El-Khalick secured the editorship of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching through NARST, a  four-year $429,000 arrangement.  Several new awards have not yet been fully executed but stay tuned for upcoming announcements.

The new faces, the new students, the new redesign administrative structure – all of these are meaningful markers of the College’s bright future and our upward trajectory.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy and productive new academic year.

Dean Mary Kalantzis