Education school gets top honors
The John H. Lounsbury School of Education recently received the nationwide 2008 Wisniewski Award. A prestigious honor, this award shines the spotlight on an academic arena that has grown and developed significantly at GCSU in the past 25 years.
The Wisniewski Award recognizes one institution per year that has made “singularly significant contributions to the theory and practice of teacher education.” The Society of Professors of Education (SPE), the oldest professional organization for teacher educators in the United States, presents the award in remembrance of Dr. Richard Wisniewski who is a past president and treasurer of the Society of Professors in Education, a former dean of education at the University of Tennessee, and even a past president of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Association.
On March 27, dean of education Linda Irwin-Devitis and nine other faculty members traveled to New York to accept the award during the annual American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference.
Dr. Carol H. Bader, assistant dean for the John H. Lounsbury School of Education, shares her opinion on how GCSU won this award.
“First of all, we have truly dedicated faculty who go beyond what is expected. Secondly, our program allows our students to work with different levels of education and with different types of students – rural, city, rich, poor and all kinds. They are getting these experiences to know what the teaching program is going to be like. It’s not going to be something they made up in their heads; it’s going to be true,” said Bader.
Interestingly enough, when the John H. Lounsbury School of Education applied for the education cohort program it faced a lot of opposition. Now, decades later, the GCSU program serves as a model to other schools. Five years after graduation, 91 percent of GCSU education graduates are still teaching, whereas the national average is 50 percent. Likewise, pre-education and cohort students contributed about 3,456 hours of service learning between 2006 and 2007.
Since 2006, the John H. Lounsbury School of Education has received more than $2 million in grants. Some of those grants include the National Writing Project, Special Education Grant, Early College Grant, and PRISM Grant for math and science.
“We expect high quality from ourselves, our students and the people we collaborate with. I think this is the first step in gaining national recognition. Statewide we already have positive recognition,” Bader said.
Over the last few years, the education graduate program has been steadily increasing in applicants. More and more applicants are getting turned away, because there are not enough host teachers and mentors available.
“It was getting harder to get the quality we were expecting of ourselves and our host teachers. We decided we wanted to go for the quality rather than the quantity,” explains Bader.
Overall, the John H. Lounsbury School of Education has been flexing its muscles over the past decade, growing in status and merit. The 2008 Wisniewski Award merely saluted all the hard work put into the program by faculty, students and mentors.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 25 2008. Filed under News.
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