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SWEA is an organization for any WSU undergraduate student interested in education, whether it be elementary or secondary education. Anyone in the College of Education is welcome to join, and we encourage non-members to participate in our many events and fundraisers.

SWEA is the student version of the state teachers’ union (Washington Education Association or WEA). We provide professional development, networking, and support to all future teachers on campus.

SWEA is a really great place to meet other students who have a passion for teaching and learning. Plus, it looks good on a resume!

SWEA strives to provide

Community service opportunities
Professional development seminars, such as edTPA, National Board Certification, advice from first-year teachers, etc.)
Networking
Political involvement in the Washington Education Association

Our popular yearly events are

Scholastic Book Fair
Family Night/ DR. Seuss’ Birthday Celebration
Holiday story time
Guest speakers
Center for Civic Engagement service projects
Washington Education Association’s Representative Assembly

Kinesiology Mission Vision Goals

January 4, 2016 robert.catena

Mission Statement

The mission of the program is to generate, interpret, disseminate, and apply kinesiology discipline knowledge across various contexts to enhance health, productivity, and quality of life.

The Mission is accomplished by:

Educating students in the states, traits, and dispositions for professional positions, certifications and post-graduate work associated with the kinesiology discipline.
Scholarly inquiry and dissemination of knowledge within the kinesiology sub-disciplines.
Providing community, state, national, and international leadership and service in the kinesiology discipline.

These pursuits are manifested in:

Degree programs
Research programs supported by internal and external funding
Publication and presentation of scientific research
Service to the department, college, university, and professional organizations
Kinesiology discipline service to surrounding communities

Goals

Upon completion of the Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology, students will:

identify moral questions, reflect on the implications and apply to discipline issues;
be continuous, collaborative learners who further their own professional development and use their abilities to contribute to the profession;
identify the central body of knowledge in kinesiology and use scientific literacy, quantitative reasoning and discipline knowledge to analyze contemporary issues;
communicate effectively to a broad range of audiences using appropriate traditional and emerging technological media;
use pedagogical knowledge to inform their practice;
promote respect of diverse populations and thought.

Student Teaching Overseas

October 29, 2015 b.chapman

Overseas Student Teaching option highlights and procedures used at WSU.

Full semester student teaching in DoDEA or Approved International schools.

Candidates enroll in full semester of student teaching through WSU.

Candidates apply to Office of Field Services and Certification 1 semester in advance.
- Competitive process – not everyone who applies is placed.
- Interview with 2-3 faculty and staff familiar with the program.
- Survey sent to instructors and faculty that candidate has worked with recently rating them on dispositions: problem solving, independence, confidence, reflection, professionalism.
- Review of all feedback to determine if candidate will be recommended for placement.

Application is submitted to DoDEA or approved International Schools semester prior to student teaching for placement.
- Candidate has a confirmed placement in Washington state as Plan A.
- Not all candidates are successfully placed, so we consider overseas their Plan B.
- Candidate provides any additional information required by host school.
- Candidate must fill out an application through WSU Study Abroad Office and pay an application fee – this is a provost requirement for all “study abroad experiences” – and attend several meetings/orientations. They do this process when their application is submitted, pending placement.
- Host school arranges placement and secures housing. Rent varies by location.

Candidate is financially responsible for:
- Full time enrollment in WSU.
- Round trip airfare.
- All housing and food expenses.
- All transportation and additional recreational travel expenses while in country.

Candidate is required to meet all Washington State Certification requirements and WSU student teaching requirements including but not limited to:
- Draft Professional Growth Plan.
- Meeting all dispositions on the WSU PDEFE.

Supervision:
- WSU Faculty member conducts bi-weekly video conference seminars with candidates placed overseas.
- Communication with mentor teachers, building administrators, and candidates via email.
- One on-site visit is planned approximately 6-8 weeks into the experience.
  - WSU supervisor travels to the school and spends 2-3 days with each candidate.
    - Formal observations and reflection.
    - Lesson Plan review.
    - Conferencing with all parties.

#AgentsOfChange

October 27, 2015 b.chapman

It’s our passion to make a difference that drives us!

Although we often celebrate and recognize the past, if you are someone who wants to make sure the present and future are even better, and are currently working toward that goal, then you’re an “agent of change.”

Introducing, our college’s Agents of Change campaign!

Goal: Showcase our amazing people like you, whether your faculty, staff, students, alumni… or just a supporter of our college and the work we’re doing.

Why: Because our folks rock! We want to highlight you and the reason you do what you do.

How: We’re going to showcase you through photos, video, blog posts, etc! We’ll put them online, and on social media with the hashtag #AgentsOfChange and hope you’ll share these, as well.

Wanna share why you’re an Agent of Change?

1	Register to be an Agent of Change
2	Script a 30-second statement about what makes you an agent of change. Sit down with our Marketing and Communications team to record this.
3	Agree to do some form of communication that would better connect you to students and alumni and help push your work out. This can be a blog, being a podcast guest, etc. You can use Marketing and Communications to come up with a plan that plays to your strengths.
4	Social mediacize the content all over the place (is "mediacize" a word?)! Use the hashtag #AgentsOfChange.
5	After your post, if you're in Pullman, come get a cool T-shirt that says #AgentsOfChange on it. If you're not in the area, email us your address so we can send one to you!

For questions, please email Brandon Chapman.

Sport Management Graduate Degree Overview

October 16, 2015 b.chapman

Program Mission & Description

The mission of the WSU Sport Management graduate program is to prepare students for a variety of careers as managers/administrators in the sport industry and for further graduate study in sport management, and to conduct research aimed at developing the body of knowledge in sport management.

The Sport Management graduate faculty are dedicated to meeting students’ needs as current and future leaders in a variety of sport settings within the sport industry. Given the growing economic and political significance of sport worldwide, there is a strong need for well-educated and professionally trained sport managers to ensure that sport is managed and delivered for the greater good of our global society. With that as our goal, the program provides a balanced integration of practical experience, theory, research, and policy.

Learning Objectives

Our graduate program trains students to:

Incorporate an understanding of ethical, legal, and socio-cultural issues in managerial decision making and policy determinations in sport
Employ sound principles of strategic planning, financial management, risk management, and human resource management in sport
Apply a fundamental knowledge and practical understanding of sport marketing, communication, and event management principles
Utilize critical thinking and abstract reasoning skills in analyzing sport management issues and in managerial planning and decision making
Demonstrate information literacy and oral, written, and group communication skills
Develop research skills in sport management

What We Offer

The College of Education offers a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Sport Management. Students choose between a thesis and non-thesis (comprehensive exam) option.

Our Pullman-based degree helps graduates build or improve their skills and become successful sport managers. Program alumni are employed across the industry, including:

intercollegiate athletics (in the areas of marketing, development, sales, sponsorship, sport information, administration, and compliance)
university and community recreation
professional sport
event management
sport media
high school athletics

Our program also prepares students to pursue doctoral or professional degrees.

START YOUR JOURNEY

Master in Teaching – Overview

October 12, 2015 b.chapman

Finish your Master’s degree in 13 months.

Our Master in Teaching (MIT) degree is a high quality, intensive, practitioner-oriented, teacher preparation program designed for those with non-education bachelor degrees. It is designed to prepare students to become effective elementary or secondary education teachers in just ONE calendar year.

Apply Today!

Program details:

Certificates: This program of study leads to a master’s degree and a Washington state elementary or secondary education teaching certificate.
Program Locations: The MIT degree, which consists of intensive study and internships, is available to students the Pullman, Spokane, Tri-Cities, and Vancouver campuses.
Program Length: The programs differ slightly from campus to campus; students in the Pullman/Spokane program obtain their teaching certificate and master’s degree in 13 months. Vancouver students obtain theirs in 15 months, while students on the Tri-Cities campus obtain certification in 20 months and their master’s degree in two years.
Program Structure: All of the MIT programs are cohort-based, forming a supportive network.

View FAQs

For more program info, check out the following:

Handbooks

MIT Coursework

Student Teaching

Student learning outcomes

Contact:

College of Education

Office of Graduate Education

gradstudies@wsu.edu

What Is News?

September 14, 2015 b.chapman

Sharing your great work

What you do is surely awesome! It’s your livelihood and you’re an expert in your field.

And now you’ve done something good, maybe even great.

Is it news? Well… maybe!
(How is that for toeing the line?)

What is “news?”

There’s no good way to define what news is. That’s because news is defined so differently by so many different entities, groups or organizations, for so many different groups of people. Communication schools, organizations, and think tanks all over the country still fight about this very issue.

Is news simply what people want to see or hear or read? Or should media have the ability (or responsibility) to tell people what the news is?

But, we can certainly try to determine something’s newsworthiness based on generally accepted criteria.

News criteria

There are always variations of what should be covered as news. In general, these are criteria often used:

The first part of “news” is “new.” Is this potential story new?
Is it unusual?
Is it interesting or significant?
Is it about people?

Obviously, the more of these that apply, the better chance something will be considered news.

Is it new?

The first three letters of “news” is “new.”

If it is not new, it’s not news.

If a professor is simply in the middle of research, it’s not going to make the front page (or any page) of The Daily Evergreen, let alone the New York Times. Why not? Because it’s not new.

However, if some new facts about the research become known for the first time, then there’s a component that is now new.

Note: Events which occur days, weeks, or months before can still possibly be considered news if they haven’t been reported before, because for those listeners or viewers, it is new.

A common example is that the death of Mao Tse-tung. The Chinese government held onto the news for several days. When they finally released the information, it was news.

Is it unusual?

If our dean wakes up, goes for a walk, goes to work, works, goes home, and catches a Gonzaga basketball game on TV while doing some more work, then it’s not news, because it’s what may happen on any given day.

Just because something happens and it’s new doesn’t mean it’s news. Usually, ordinary stuff isn’t news.

A professor just published an article in a journal. Not unusual.

Another common example: “Dog bites man” is not news; “Man bites dog” is news.

Is it interesting?

Events can be new and unusual, but might not be of interest to the general public. However, it might be interesting to a select group of individuals with similar areas of expertise.

In a peer-reviewed journal about kinesiology, something about athletic training might be interesting. The same news might not be as interesting in a counseling psychology publication.

Is it significant?

Therefore what? That’s the question that needs to be answered about any potential news story. You have something that is new, unique, interesting. But if there’s nothing that changes or progresses, then it might not be significant.

What’s the effect?

Is it about people (or animals)?

A fire burns down an apartment complex. Why do people connect with this story? It’s usually because they’re actually connecting with the people it affects. If the first was in the middle of nowhere, didn’t harm anything, and was quickly put out, there’d be little chance anyone would care because there’s no human element.

A journalist who is a good storyteller will always ask how something affects her readers, viewers or listeners’ lives or livelihoods.

A mudslide in small Oso, Washington was a story, not because of the mudslide itself, but because of the devastating effect on the people in that town.

Oh, and animals are like people. If Fido is affected by something, it will have the same effect on the viewer.

Our own editorial decision-making

The College of Education Marketing/Communications team will try and maximize the publicity on your news story if:

It fits within our mission and vision, and;
The team has the person capacity to make it happen, and;
We have editorial space, and;
We think that it will gain attention.

So, about No. 3… every newspaper has a finite amount of print space. Every TV station or radio station has a finite amount of time. So, as an example, when a TV news station is making their daily rundown, they first come up with a news budget, then talk about all options when deciding on placement.

We must also make editorial decisions based on the amount of space we have on the front of our website, on blogs, in videos, etc. We must also make decisions that take into account the various programs and the various locations. We can’t do story after story about Kinesiology (FYI, this hasn’t been a problem unfortunately). We can’t only do stories coming out of the Tri-Cities (also hasn’t been a problem). When Marketing/Communications does its “news budget,” meaning all the stories you’ve told us about, or which we’ve heard about from other sources, we still must break it down into what can be handled and where it goes.

WSU Insider stories

The WSU Insider will write about many things, but the news bureau folks have started to have, as a policy, a desire to only share things that they believe will be picked up by media. Additionally, their data show that research stories outperform all others in terms of web hits and shares. And, it’s not even close. Media are interested in good research. They aren’t so much interested in a small award that someone won, no matter how much we think they’re wrong or how much it hurts our feelings.

For the WSU News folks to consider a research story, the story, with limited exceptions, must meet one of three prongs:

A new grant. They prefer grants with high dollar amounts and big awarding institutions. I’ve worked with them to understand that while we DO have those things from time to time, if we don’t get some leeway, we’ll get lost. Those conversations are starting to yield positive results.
A conference where the research is being presented. This could be a keynote address, a workshop being led, etc.
Newly published research results. Obviously, they like the big publications that draw a lot of attention in the science world. Just like my comments in No. 1, I’ve worked with them to understand that our research has major societal implications. Don’t tell me that the work Kristin Huggins is doing doesn’t matter just because it doesn’t include a petri dish and a pipette!

If there is ongoing research, but it’s not being presented at a conference, for example, then the WSU Insider does not want to publish it. Not only does it take time to write (us… sometimes them) and edit (they always look things over and modify), they don’t want to have research that falls within one of those three prongs get lost among the stories that don’t fall under one of those prongs.

It’s all about target audience

For our purposes, we aren’t so concerned about what news is to us, because it’s ALL news if it’s the latest with what’s going on in your world!, right ;)? Rather, we’re concerned with what someone else says it is if we’re trying to get into their newspaper, blog, radio news, TV news, editorial, etc.

In other words, your story might be news to WSU News but not to the New York Times (according to those organizations). Or it might be news to a small pocket of our alumni but not to the greater WSU community (again, according to those organizations).

Additionally, it’s not just whether a news organization thinks it’s news, but if it thinks it’s news for their audience. If we have a great kinesiology story regarding everyday exercise routines for indivuals in their 60s and beyond, we would have a lot more traction trying to pitch the story to Reader’s Digest than we would trying to pitch the story to Maxim.

Story Jurisdiction

A few things about our award stories and who is in charge.

You ever watch crime dramas and see two different agencies fighting over whose case it is, based on jurisdiction?

This isn’t a whole lot different than the considerations we have to make with on-campus news and stepping on each other’s feet.

A few examples:

Great (hypothetical) news: The Office of the Provost gives its annual distinguished faculty award to Yong Chae Rhee (congrats)! We get excited and want to put out a release.
Jurisdiction: It may be great news. But, as this is the provost’s award to give out, it’s also the provost’s office who has the right to put out a release announcing its winner. In these cases, we still will ask the provost’s communications team if they have any planned release. If they don’t, we request the right to do it. In most cases, these requests are granted.
Great news: Four faculty members from three different colleges win a prestigious research award. They win in different categories, but they all win. One of the winners is our faculty member.
Jurisdiction: If we send something in to WSU News, they will tell us that they don’t want to do separate stories for the different colleges. So they pick either an entity on campus that deals with all of them, or they have someone from WSU News itself do the article. Here’s a real-life example from 2016: https://news.wsu.edu/2016/05/26/three-wsu-advisors-receive-international-awards/. Notice how the Office of Undergraduate Education ended up doing the story about three advisors winning awards? Yes, one of our advisors was only that list, but so were two folks from other colleges. So, WSU News requested that a specific writer do a wrap-up.

Does my story have a chance?

So, tell us what’s going on. We can assess and see if there’s an avenue that might be worth exploring, even if it’s our own website.

Submit Potential Story

With this form, we’ll try to lead you through this in a way that can maximize our abilities to see the great work you’re doing as a “news” story.

MarComm Toolkit

September 11, 2015 b.chapman

We help increase your teaching opportunities