Quality of Programs

February 16, 1995

The strengths of our programs begin with the quality of our faculty and students. The department has a tradition of attracting and retaining highly productive faculty. As stated earlier, an independent survey of educational policy studies departments found that our faculty ranks 3 nationally in scholarly productivity. A measure of our scholarly output over the past decade reveals that our current tenured system faculty (14) produced 20 books, 110 articles, and 44 book chapters. Many of the books were well received nationally and a few won such prestigious awards as the American Education Research Association's Outstanding Book Award, the American Educational Studies Association's Critics Choice Award, Choice's outstanding book, and the Gustavus Myers Center's Outstanding Book Award.

College, campus and national agencies have recognized EPS faculty for their scholarly leadership. As of the 1994-1995 academic year six or 50% of our 12 faculty (Perkins and Tozer are not counted here because both were on leave and neither would return) were recognized by the College as Distinguished Scholars. Five of our faculty (Anderson, Feinberg, Karier, Smith and Ennis) are College of Education Distinguished Senior Scholars and one (Burbules) is a College of Education Distinguished Scholar. Two faculty (Burbules and Smith) are editors of the major scholarly journals in their fields. Five faculty (Coombs, Feinberg, Alston, Ennis, and Smith) have received appointments to the College's Bureau of Educational Research. Three faculty (Anderson, Feinberg, and Coombs) have won appointments to the UIUC Center for Advanced Study. Two faculty members (Ennis and Anderson) have been named fellows at the Center for Advanced Study and Behavioral Science at Stanford University. Other forms of national recognition earned by EPS faculty include the Benton Fellowship at the University of Chicago (Feinberg); Distinguished Fellow, National Art Education Association and Outstanding Scholarship and Professional Leadership Award in Art Education (Smith); and Fellow, Academy of Korean Studies (Feinberg). Finally, four members of the department (Karier, Feinberg, Ennis, and Anderson) have been elected to the presidencies of the major national scholarly societies in philosophical and social foundations of education. Both Ennis and Feinberg have served as presidents of the Philosophy of Education Society, Karier and Anderson as presidents of the History of Education Society, and Feinberg has also served as president of the American Educational Studies Association. We fully expect the next generation of EPS faculty to achieve similar leadership positions and awards.

EPS faculty have also earned recognition for outstanding teaching. Nearly all of the faculty have been cited several times on the Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students. Since the Fall of 1990 nine faculty (Trent, Coombs, Page, Violas, Alston, Ennis, Burbules, Barnett, and Karier) or 64% of our tenured track faculty have been cited as excellent by their students. EPS faculty have won other prestigious teaching awards. Bernice McNair Barnett won an Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Georgia in 1986 and was a nominee for the College's CGSE Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Advising Award in 1993. Ralph Page won the CGSE teaching award in 1986. Paul Violas won the Harriet & Charles Luckman Undergraduate Distinguished Teaching Award in 1993. When judging potential faculty we assess their technical expertise, research accomplishments and potential, but also we observe carefully their desire and ability to teach and act as mentors for our graduate students. The outstanding quality of the faculty in both research and teaching is reflected in the honors and awards bestowed for research accomplishments and for excellence in teaching.

A fundamental component of the quality of EPS is the talent of its graduate students. Although the Department has become increasingly involved in undergraduate education at the College and campus level, it is primarily a department of graduate study and research. Since the 1990-91 academic year the number of graduate students has increased from 42 to 70 and the quality of the pool has improved substantially. Clearly, our graduate programs are in great demand. The Department's outstanding record in placing its Ph. D. graduates in excellent faculty positions and its growing reputation as a program with a diverse faculty and graduate student body have combined to attract first-rate students from traditional and non-traditional networks. The average undergraduate GPA of our current students is 4.43 and future students will very likely have to achieve an even higher mean GPA in order to gain admission. Over the past three years we have had 39 students on fellowships, not including fellowships too small to cover tuition and fees. Among our current group of 70 students 23 are on fellowships that also cover the costs of tuition and fees. In each instance, they have won these fellowships in campus-wide, or statewide competition involving graduate students from all academic fields. Although at this time we do not have precise data (new data are being collected on indicators such as student presentations at scholarly conferences), our students in general are making presentations at scholarly conferences. The increased cultural and ethnic diversity of our graduate students has also added to the quality of graduate study and research. Our seminars are filled by students from a broader range of social and cultural backgrounds and this diversity adds different and refreshing perspectives to classroom discussions and research projects. It has created a more enriched intellectual environment. The products of this environment will acquire personal and professional skills and attitudes that will help them in their lives and careers. They will have a decisive impact on the field of philosophical and social foundations as they finish their degrees and fill the increasing number of faculty positions that stress diversity.

The nation looks to EPS as a constant and valuable fountain of new talent in philosophical and social foundations of education. A list of our Ph. D. graduates and their placement since 1986 are provided in Appendix I. The success of our graduates in attaining tenure, their research and publications, and their leadership in the field nationally speak to the quality of their experience while at UIUC. They have contributed greatly to the national reputation of the Department.

In addition to maintaining and enhancing its graduate programs, in recent years the Department has developed a number of courses in keeping with the campus reform of undergraduate education. We created three new courses that meet the Writing Composition II and General Education requirements (i. e., EPS 210, Race and Cultural Diversity in America; EPS 311, Western Educational Thought from Greece to Renaissance; and EPS 312, Western Educational Thought from Renaissance to the Present.) EPS 201 has been revised and shows increasing appeal to LAS students as well as our own students in teacher certification programs. Consequently, as reflected in Table 5, the number of undergraduates from outside the College has become an increasing share of the Department's instructional units. These demands must be balanced against the increasing demand for more choice among graduate courses by larger numbers of EPS graduate students. In the past three years, aside from EPS 311 and EPS 312, we have created two additional graduate courses; EPS 314, Race and Ethnic Issues in Family and Education and EPS 417, Ethical Dimensions of Educational Policy.