EduCoug

Guest blogger Sarah Goehri (’10) interned in the College of Education communications office in 2009-2010. Sarah is putting her communications degree to work in Los Angeles, where she is a public relations account coordinator.

My assignment:  Learn what I could about the the history of education programs at Washington State University by fishing through more than 100 years of course catalogs.   It was tedious and it was eye-opening.  I decided early in the project to focus on my second reaction.

As mentioned in the article that resulted, The Evolving WSU College of Education, Pullman only had 350 residents when Washington State College opened in 1892. I think some of today’s 101 classes have more freshmen than that now!

Overall growth wasn’t the only thing that intrigued me in my quest for historical highlights.  Cultural changes caught my eye. For decades, every catalog referred to WSU students as “he” or “him.”  It wasn’t until 1959 that the catalogs started using “student” as a more general term.  Of course, there were women majoring in education, psychology and physical education during those years but the catalogs only used male pronouns to describe everyone.  These days, I am so used to reading politically correct and gender neutral writing, that reading all-male references struck me as strange.

Aside from the years of departmental and structural changes, there were hundreds of changes in the education classes offered.  Some of the classes that I found interesting were:
•    Carpentry (making bird houses, dog kennels and mini barns)
•    Constructive drawing (floor plans, elevations, cottages, barns)
•    School hygiene (affecting the personal health of students: heating, lighting, ventilation)
•    Shorthand and typewriting (offered as a major/minor for students teaching secondary education)

Mentioned early on in the catalogs, 1919 to be exact, was the Alpha Beta Club.  I like to think of this as predecessor to the Education Graduate Organization (EGO), which I wrote about during fall semester.  The catalog described the club as a collection of advanced and graduate students in the education department. Its members met monthly.  Oddly, the 1919 catalog was the only one that made a reference to the Alpha Beta Club, so we can only guess at how popular it was.  Clearly students had the right idea, given that the present-day EGO is very successful and has a strong presence within the college.

I tackled this research project during my final semester at Washington State.  I was able to learn parts of the university’s history that otherwise I would have never known — which was important, considering I called Pullman home for four years.  Learning how much WSU and the College of Education have grown during the past century reminded me of the inevitability of change.

Go Cougs!

The master teacher, the über teacher, the best of the best.  That’s the one that all parents want in their child’s classroom.

But how does someone know whose skills are top-notch?  Since 1987, one important indicator has been National Board Certification. More than 82,000 teachers have met its standards through study, expert evaluation, self-assessment and peer review.

The certification process is tough, but teachers don’t have to go it alone. Support programs are available, including the National Board program offered by the WSU College of Education. Director Debra Pastore and her team of certified instructors have helped 900 teachers from 95 school districts.

“WSU helped launched the statewide National Board Certification support system in 2000,” says Deb. “That’s when our dean, Judy Mitchell, wrote the initial grant proposal along with Pat Wasley of the University of Washington, Patty Raichle of the Washington Education Association, and Lin Douglas of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.”

The Gates Foundation, Stuart Foundation, and Washington Mutual came through with $4.5 million. Since then, a new group of teachers has started WSU’s program each June. They work with facilitators all over the state. Some even complete the program on line.

Each teacher invests approximately 300 hours of work outside of the classroom during the year-long program. Much of their labor involves documenting student learning through work samples and videos. Those materials are part of what goes into a portfolio—aka “the box”—that is mailed off for assessment in late March.

“This is an extremely important day in the process,” says Deb. “The only other day more important is the day scores are released, usually in late November.”

Between 65 and 70 percent of teachers enrolled in the WSU program get good news, compared to a 40 percent national success rate. In Washington, those who earn certification get an annual bonus of $5,000 from the state, plus an additional $5,000 if they teach in a high-needs school. Those who continue teaching get the bonus for 10 years, until the certificate expires.

There is no expiration date on the pride of being at the top of their profession.

“Teachers have been the scapegoat for what’s wrong with education for many years,” says Deb. “Anyone who believes that has not spent time in the classrooms of these teachers.”

First, let’s pause to acknowledge A.G. Rud‘s first day as our dean.  To welcome him to Cougar land, here is the WSU fight song like you’ve never heard it before:  a banjo rendition by Don Peckham, ’74.

As A.G. tackles a new administrative role, the journal Teachers College Record is highlighting his scholarship with a review of a book he co-edited, John Dewey at 150: Reflections for a New Century.   Coincidentally, TCR is also headlining an opinion piece by WSU Associate Professor Jason Margolis titled “Why Teacher Quality is a Local Issue (And Why Race to the Top is a Misguided Flop).”

Jason wrote the commentary with a passion fueled by his experiences as a teacher and researcher.   It may be just coincidence that Dewey is among  the educational philosophers cited in one of five comments that were quickly posted regarding Jason’s article.  (Such comments in the journal are rare, says Jason, who was tickled that his opinions had stirred things up.)

Jason’s perspective on Race to the Top is the subject of a “Tip Sheet” sent out by WSU News Service, titled “Education Expert: Demand for ‘Teacher Quality’ Could Doom U.S. Schools.” Earlier in August, the expertise of Professor Phyllis Erdman was likewise featured in “Your Parents or Me! Book Explores How Culture Impacts Relationships.”

Phyllis was busy this summer as she went into the home stretch of her stint as interim dean.   As she explains in an article she wrote for the journal Animal Human Interaction, she’s been working with two WSU colleagues on an equine-assisted growth and learning program for kids called PATH to Success.  The trio spent a week participating in the Horse Warriors program in Jackson, Wyoming, where they were mentored by nationally known specialists in the field of equine mental health and learning programs.  That’s also where Phyllis was smitten with a horse named Beau.

In other faculty news: Professor Brian McNeill has been elected a fellow for Division 45 Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues of the American Psychological Association.  Brian’s expertise is Latino healing traditions, and he is co-editor of the book Intersections of Multiple Identities: A Casebook of Evidence-based Practices with Diverse Populations (Routledge, 2009).

And Associate Professor David Greenwood is saying his farewells. After nine years on the Pullman campus, he’s heading up to Lakehead University on the shore of Lake Superior, where he will swat black flies, hear wolves … and hold the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Education.

What began as creative conference organizing became, for Heidi Stanton, an introduction to some marvelously open people.  And a course in  exhibit planning. And an unexpected dissertation topic.

Heidi is the Washington State University employee and education doctoral student behind “The Power of One” exhibit at Pullman’s Compton Union Building Gallery.  It features poster-sized photos of 30 students, faculty, staff and community members, all paired with handwritten observations about their lives or the role of diversity.

You can see some of the posters in the WSU Today article published last spring, when Heidi expected them to be displayed in connection with Northwest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) student leadership conference.  The project took longer than expected, however, and the CUB display has only now gone up.

Heidi directs the Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center. When planning the conference, she wanted to bring the “Shared Heart” poster project by photographer Adam Mastoon, which features gay teenagers.  That wasn’t available, but Mastoon suggested he create a project for the WSU community.  Heidi loved the idea. She  sought participants via the LGBT e-mail list and the general campus announcements.

“I started getting interest from people who I would never have thought to invite, and it ended up being a really rich sampling of the community:  administrators, community members, parents, youth, gay, straight … all different kinds of people, all excited about telling their stories,” said Heidi.

Adam flew from his Rhode Island home to Pullman, where he introduced himself to participants by describing his own journey from out-of-place gay teen to happily partnered professional.  That session was the start of much labor on his part, and Heidi’s.

Meanwhile, Heidi planned the conference, ran the resource center, and continued working toward her Ph.D. in higher education administration.  She was struggling to find a focus for her dissertation on campus climate.  (“Administrators tend to think that the campus is safe and inclusive, and the students have a different perspective,” she explained. “Both sides are true.”)

One day, she mentioned to Associate Professor Paula Groves Price that the portrait project would someday be a good research topic.

“Paula said ‘No, that’s your dissertation. That’s something you’re passionate about,’ ” Heidi said. “When I talked with my committee, they were all on board with that. ”

Her dissertation title:  “Writing in the Margins: How participants in the Power of One Project perceive campus climate.”

“I think there is an assumption that the portrait project is about gay and lesbian people, but it is really about how these 30 people experience campus climate.  It really isn’t about sexual orientation, it is about visibility and mattering,” she said. “Fewer than half of the participants identify as something other than heterosexual. Each one was remarkably open.”

“The Power of One” (which includes the EduCoug blogger among its subjects) will be on display in the first-floor CUB Gallery until Sept. 10, when it will close with a 1 p.m. reception.

The luggage didn’t make it, but the cats did.

A.G. Rud, our new dean commencing mid-August, is in Pullman this week for meetings and house-hunting.  His busy schedule got off to a slow start when he and his wife, Rita, had an unplanned overnight stay in Spokane, where they waited for their luggage to catch up with them.  Two of the family’s cats did make it on board the Ruds’ flight, although the critters reportedly were not thrilled about their day of air travel.

The Ruds are pet people, as attested by posts on A.G.’s blog, source of this picture of their cat Wendy.  That blog is on hiatus, but you can find a link to it at the end of the  WSU Today article announcing his appointment. The article includes links to his biography and the journal of the John Dewey Society, which A.G. edited for the last six years.

His interest in animals is professional as well as personal.  He is fascinated by the human-animal bond and research into the use of pet animals in the classroom.   Maybe that will be one of his future topics on the College of Education’s dean’s blog.  In a recent email, he mentioned a former WSU dean of veterinary medicine:  “I’ve read about Leo Bustad’s work and am thrilled to be going to work at what folks have called the place where the serious study of the human-animal bond started, with Bustad the father of the bond!”

In addition to three feline household members, the Ruds have a dog and may be getting another.  A.G. confesses to having “a major Chihuahua obsession.”

Think of it as the Goldilocks perspective on WSU’s education doctorate program: “Not too easy or too difficult, but just right.”

That’s a description offered for a WSU Today article by Matt Coulter, a veteran teacher from Olympia who is earning an Ed.D. specializing in teacher leadership.  Matt made his comment during the Summer Institute in Pullman that’s part of the four-year, part-time doctoral program designed for working professionals.

If the program is not too difficult for Matt and his classmates, it’s probably because teachers make outstanding, discerning students. They are keenly aware of both course content and the quality of instruction, and are bound to critique the class in ways other students don’t. Associate Professor Rick Sawyer, who taught a Summer Institute course called Action Research for Teachers, put it this way:

“Instructors in courses with experienced teacher leaders have to be aware of who their students are, what they offer, and what their motivation and goals are. In a course like that, the students will bring the curriculum alive, but the instructor has to orchestrate that process. Instead of delivering content, you have to construct opportunities for the students to generate curriculum together in meaningful ways that respect their time. A two-week summer course moves very quickly and the instructor has to ‘listen’ to the course and the students and be very adaptable. I was lucky because this particular group was just so smart, motivated, and generous. I just had to keep up with them!”

In another story about the institute, which appeared in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, participants talked about what it was like to be college students again.   Said Wendy Watson, an assistant principal from Spokane who is studying educational leadership:  “People are staying up late, late at night.”

“Yay for the power of the arts!”

That was Pauline Sameshima‘s response when she heard that the use of methamphetamine among Idaho teenagers dropped 52 percent between 2007 and 2009, after a series of dramatic video ads.   It isn’t just the writing and acting that give the ads their power, but something also dear to the heart of the assistant professor: research.  The videos were based on key emotional messages that had been tested and shown to influence teens.

The ads deal graphically with prostitution, violent crime and lost lives.  When Pauline showed the ads to participants in the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Leadership Camp, a few of them laughed — maybe out of uneasiness, or because that’s just what teens do when they think adults are trying to impress them.  But the students dived into their assignment, which was to add their own artwork to more than 200 signs printed with the anti-meth mantra “Not Even Once.”

The signs are now posted along U.S. Highway 95 in Plummer, and constitute an entry in the Idaho Meth Project’s Paint the State public art contest.  Two of the teens created their own entries, including this bright banner at the tribe’s Wellness Center.  You can watch for the winners and view the video ads at the Idaho Meth Project Web site.

Talk about power couples.   Paula Groves Price and Cedric Price channel the energy of 39 teenagers for every waking hour, five June days in a row,  then invite them back to WSU Pullman for another week in August.

The two dynamic directors of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Leadership Development Camp give much credit to other camp faculty and counselors. It wouldn’t happen without the tribe, which has sponsored the event for six years in a row. The Prices also give high-fives to the teens, who learned a lot about storytelling at the first session of the 2010 camp.  Their biggest assignment: tell a story about yourself with pictures you choose and a script you’ve written and recorded.

In August, the teens will use their storytelling skills on a research project. They’ll interview adults in their community, then analyze why they did, or didn’t, continue their education.  Camp faculty will followup this fall by teaching monthly classes at Plummer’s Lakeside High School. Their audience: ninth graders.  That’s because most kids who drop out of Lakeside have done so after freshman year, says Paula.

In their own audiovisual stories, the leadership campers chronicled the passions and pains of the modern teenager.  Of basketball and buddies, of grownups who let them down and others who hold them up. The backdrop they used was a beautiful Idaho landscape — woods for hunting, rivers for fishing — at the crossroads, it seems, of the whole country.  Teens told of moving in and out of the Coeur d’Alene Reservation from Boston and Los Angeles, from Arizona and Alaska.  Of struggling to adjust to rural life, then missing it.   Most of all, they told about their families.  Dad as best friend. Sister as sidekick.  Grandma who is gone but far from forgotten.

The teens shared their stories with each other and with family members.  The very personal “movies about me” aren’t posted online, but you can read more about them in  WSU Today.

A year ago, supporters  rallied to protect the College of Education’s Sport Management Program from state budget cuts. That started a round of conversations about the future of the program. What’s the latest news?

One possibility is the creation of a new program in concert with the University of Idaho’s Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, says Sport Management director Cathryn Claussen. Writing in the program’s 2010 alumni newsletter, she explains what it will take to make a bi-state merger happen.

The newsletter includes the success story of Jeff Griffin (’05), general manager of sales and marketing for the Missoula Osprey Professional Baseball Club. Jeff explains that, to score with the public, a sports team needs to do a lot of work outside the ballpark.

“I preach on a daily basis both in my office and at a national level that one of the most important things to operating my ballclub is taking a genuine interest in improving my community. I or someone on my staff is on nearly every community board in town (and that’s saying a lot because Missoula has more non-profits per capita than any city in the country).”

Jeff’s staff includes another WSU Sport Management grad, Byron Dike (’08), director of stadium operations.

Weighing in on the hottest sports topic

Faculty member John Wong is an expert on the subject of building fan bases. So he was the go-to guy when a Washington State Magazine blogger got to wondering if the World Cup will usher in a golden age of soccer in the United States.

“What is encouraging is that European top leagues are taking notice of American players and some even play overseas now. This development is similar to what is going on in other lesser leagues around the world where talent is moving out of the country in search of better competition and paycheck,” John said. “This is a double-edged sword however. One the one hand, the U.S. is beginning to produce skillful players. The down side is that they are not here to promote the game locally.”

You can read John’s complete answer on Larry’s Clark’s Discovery blog.

Science and engineering programs could do more to prepare students to be ethical, creative, and insightful professionals. That’s how Briana Keafer sees it.  Which is why, with a masters in microbiology under her belt, Briana switched career paths and started work on a Ph.D. in education at WSU Pullman.

Her goal is to be a consultant who focuses on the development of university-level science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and instruction.   She wants to help faculty develop programs that appeal to more women and minorities, and that produce graduates who make a positive difference in the world.

Briana is the graduate assistant for WSU’s $5 million, five-year ADVANCE grant, part of a National Science Foundation program aimed at recruiting and retaining women in university science and engineering careers. Specifically,  she’s researching how Washington State can better attract, keep and promote women in the STEM disciplines.

Briana donned a familiar lab coat for the above photo in her former workplace with her College of Education advisor, Kelly Ward. She works closely with Professor Ward (see “Researcher looks for ways to boost women’s academic careers“).  She says she also connects with administrators, faculty and staff from the colleges of Science, Engineering and Architecture, and Agriculture, Human, and Natural Resources Sciences.  “My responsibilities include collecting indicator information for NSF, interviewing faculty and department chairs, meeting with department liaisons, and reviewing literature and universities’ practices to find recommendations for WSU.”

As for the future, Briana says her ideal job would take her overseas. In that case, the best academic practices that she’s helping to define at WSU would have an even broader impact.