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From Dean Kalantzis
Summer 2007
Greetings to you all,
Our first academic year together has been an amazing one that has concluded on high notes in nearly every possible aspect. With our Campus and University still in a state of transition under new leadership and with a dean new to both the College and to the country, there were countless opportunities over the past ten months for things to go wrong – or at least to go awry. Instead, what I have seen is a College of faculty, staff and students who were determined from the outset that this year was a chance to reestablish ourselves as a voice of influence – on the campus, in our local community and across the nation.
The effort at all levels this year has been as impressive as it has been comprehensive. There were no small roles and no non-essential jobs this year. You have all distinguished yourselves as loyal and powerful advocates for the College and for education as a whole. From the dedicated administrative assistants who continually saw to it that the details – the essential business of operating – were not forgotten to the dozens of professional staff and faculty who volunteered to do the thankless work of re-imagining the culture and role of the College to the extended Management Team of department directors and executives who assumed the ultimate responsibility of steering the organization in a new direction this has been a remarkable example of team accomplishment.
And the world is taking notice – and investing in our future. This year alone, the Provost and Chancellor have committed over $2 million in new funding to jump-start our four strategic initiatives. Annual giving – individual donations by friends and alumni is up over 40% from last year. Corporations such as Motorola, Boeing, Caterpillar and Microsoft are meeting with us regularly and helping develop projects and proposals that leverage our expertise in learning and teaching. Peer colleges such as Engineering, LAS and Library and Information Science are seeking our faculty and staff out for new collaborative funding proposals on a daily basis. The original architect of the Education Building, Richard Williams, is returning to campus to work with a special graduate studio class in the School of Architecture to create a new, workable, vision of a remodeled and expanded College facility.
What we are seeing in short, is a growing perception that education, and in particular our College, is a central, driving force for economic, scientific and social progress on the Illinois campus. We have both sustained long-term relationships and earned a new place at the table in our community. Quite a year, really.
Following are a few updates on the accomplishments of the College in relation to our strategic planning efforts and to inform you of several changes in the Management Team for 2007.
Leadership and Organizational Changes
Core Activities Updates
Strategic Initiative Updates
The Road Ahead
Leadership and Organizational Changes
We face great challenges in the coming years as a College of Education, both within the University and within the educational establishment as a whole. Our successes will be measured by our impact on our world and by our engagement in our local and global communities. To see us recognize our true and full potential, it is essential that we as a College proceed with a shared vision and with common goals. Arriving at and communicating this broad vision must begin with the leadership of the College and the process for building this foundation needs to be a collaborative, collegial and joint effort. The College Management Team has embraced this broader responsibility and used it to effect positive and lasting change in how we do business as an institution.
As we have moved forward throughout the year, the College Management Team has continued to step up and assume more responsibilities for guiding the institution. This group has made great strides in increasing the understanding of the financial, personnel and business processes of the College. The result has been a shared and distributed governance of the organization and greater transparency in decision-making. This is no easy process and demands that all of us step beyond our comfort zones and areas of expertise. I commend all of those who have served as part of the Management Team this year and all of you who have participated in special projects as called upon. This College is truly setting a new standard and striving to be a model for academic governance at the University of Illinois.
Several changes in the College leadership team that need to be reported.
The first change is one of title and responsibility, rather than individual identity. Lizanne DeStefano, Professor of Educational Psychology and Associate Dean for Research, has been promoted to the full time position of Executive Associate Dean for Research and Administration, and will thus be performing formally as deputy to the dean. In that capacity she will be contributing to and overseeing, college policies, strategic initiatives and operations. The Business Office, the Research Bureau and the Special Assistant to the Dean, (reassigned as special projects officer) will report to the Executive Associate Dean. The Executive Associate Dean position is one that a number of our peer colleges of education around the Big Ten have adopted in recognition of the increasing administrative responsibilities of our respective universities.
Jim Leach, Professor of Human Resource Education, has officially ended his 15 year tenure as the Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs in the College. Jim attempted to take this step last year, but at my urging, agreed to remain in the position for one more academic year to assist me in this transitional year – a decision for which I and the College owe him a great deal of thanks. Jim is returning to his full time appointment as a full professor in the Department of Human Resource Education.
Violet Harris, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, officially assumed the position of Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs on May 17. However, as many of you know, Violet began assuming many of the duties of this position in January of this year. Her long experience in working with students, both undergraduate and graduate, along with her past experience as a department executive made her an obvious choice to assume this critical role in the College management team. This will now be full time appointment signaling a new set of expectations as the College moves to address the range of goals outlined by the Intellectual Foundation Task Forces.
Scott Johnson, Head and Professor of Human Resource Education, will begin a one year term as the newly-created Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Associate Dean for Online Learning. This is a half time, one year appointment to assist the college to design and launch its online learning strategy and programs, including negotiations with the Global Campus. The Director of the Office of Educational Technology will report to the CIO this year.
Reflecting these changes, the 2007 Dean’s Cabinet will consist of: Lizanne DeStefano, Violet Harris, Scott Johnson and Joan Tousey, the Assistant Dean for Development and Alumni Relations.
Also, with the end of the year, we will also see one of our department executives step down from his position.
We have been privileged to have Raymond Lewis Price, the William H. Severns Professor of Human Behavior in Engineering, join the College of Education in January, 2007 as chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and leader of the College's STEM initiative. As head of C&I, Ray created a strong leadership team in the department and together with that team, developed and refined department policies in key areas such as annual review, workload, and admissions. He catalyzed faculty interest in STEM research and teaching and strengthened connections among our college and other campus units, particularly the College of Engineering. During his tenure, he led the development of several grant proposals in STEM education including The Illinois Technologies Partnership (Math and Science Partnership grant to Illinois State Board of Education) and the UTEACH (an Education-Engineering-LAS partnership for math and science teacher preparation) to the Exxon-Mobil Foundation. Ray will be returning to the College of Engineering full time on July 16, 2007. Please join us in extending our heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Ray on a job well done.
Continuing Improvement in the Core Activities of the College
As we came together late last summer and took the existing framework of the College strategic planning efforts from 2005-06 and transformed it into a fuller vision of what we will become in the coming three years, one message remained constant and clear from all who participated: The core business of the College must always be our research, our teaching and our service to the educational community. Whatever breakthroughs we generate, whatever new strategic initiatives we undertake – they must grow out of the excellence of our fundamental, tri-fold mission. With that directive at the heart of our planning and implementation, the College has made considerable progress in our stated goal of continuing improvement in these core areas.
Research: Fueling innovation for the College
We have set high expectations for our research activity in the coming three years and we have made these public. We will increase our external funding by 50% over 2004-05. We will have 80% of our faculty serving as principal investigators. These are just two of our goals. And, already, in just the space of this year, research activity is up significantly. As of the end of April, the number of new proposals submitted through the Bureau of Educational Research was up more that 30% over the 2005-06 annual total – for a combined dollar amount exceeding $32 million. Currently, there are over 40 more proposals in line for submission by the end of the summer. To accommodate this new activity, we secured new funding from the Provost to hire a new Director of Operations for the Bureau and we anticipate adding another administrative support position in the coming months.
Cindy Clennon is the new Director of Operations, officially joining the College in April. Many of you had the opportunity to meet her at the Spring Faculty and Staff Meeting. For those of you unable to attend, Cindy brings nearly 20 years of experience within the University environment to the College. She spent several years with what is now known as the Office of Sponsored Research Activity and most recently, was the Assistant Director of the Center for Library Initiatives with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Working with the existing Bureau team, Cindy will assume budget oversight for the group and lead efforts to expand the collaborative opportunities for new research activity between our faculty and our peers across the University.
Teaching: Professional preparation and academic leadership for the next generation
If we want evidence of our continued excellence in our teaching – we need only look back to the May 13 College Convocation Ceremony to remind ourselves why we are here. Unofficial numbers show that 187 undergraduate, 115 master’s and 63 doctoral degrees were earned this year. These men and women are the future of education – from K-12 classrooms through policy decisions for the next century. They are academically outstanding and, perhaps more importantly, they are intellectually fully engaged in the effort to ensure that public education at every level is a successful endeavor for our society.
One other critical aspect of our teaching progress is found in our continuing engagement with the University of Illinois Global Campus Partnership. President White has made this online learning initiative the cornerstone of his plans for preeminence for the University and business, nursing and education have been identified as the top three priorities for degree program development. The College has over a decade of experience in developing online learning experiences that are both technologically elegant and sound in pedagogy. This history and expertise has given us the opportunity to be a critical participant in the planning process that will determine the shape and delivery method of the e-learning. The College has been adamant from the very beginning that the Global Campus must be as academically sound as it is financially successful. This is a tremendous opportunity for educational research and methodology to drive the creation of the technologies that will define student experiences in this new world. It was in recognition of this critical juncture that the College Management Team established the CIO and Associate Dean for Online Learning announced above. Additionally, Professors Scott Johnson and Nicholas Burbules and Vanna Pianfetti (Director, OET), Michael Williams (Associate Director, OET) and John Ory (Professor, HRE) have been asked to serve on a newly-formed campus committee for e-learning.
Service: Establishing the College as a partner in our communities
A recurring national criticism of colleges of education revolves around accusations of disconnections between the academic world and the real one. There are, admittedly, too many examples of institutions that are guilty of this. The College of Education at Illinois, however, is clearly establishing itself as an example of the counter-argument. At Illinois, for over 100 years, this College has been a presence in the local and regional schools – in the form of our students, our research activities in the community and through the personal efforts of our individual faculty and staff. We have committed publicly to being a full partner with our schools – both in teaching and in research – to build an system that seamlessly connects the resources of K-12 and higher education here in Urbana-Champaign. We have tied our own future success to that of these schools. We have established enhanced student performance and increased teacher retention as two of our own performance goals in the coming three years.
During the past year, hundreds of our students have volunteered in local schools as tutors, coaches and mentors. Over 100 research projects were conducted in conjunction with schools or other educational units in the local community. Faculty and staff from the College were to be found, literally, every day in the schools in Champaign, Urbana, Danville and Decatur. Local administrators were frequent visitors and guests here in the College, as collaborative research partners, as guest lecturers and as advisors to our own programs. Yes it is true that sustained, trusting, effective partnerships between universities and communities require great dedication and effort. But it is also true that here in the College, we have already established the foundation and the environment that will take this partnership from theory to practice.
Strategic Initiatives:
Breakthrough Thinking Generated from Our Core Strengths
Building on the core strengths already existing here and based on a collective assessment of critical educational areas in the coming years, the College identified four strategic areas where we can have significant impact on the world and realistically achieve preeminent status among peer institutions. These initiatives were further outlined in white papers generated last fall by working task forces of College faculty and staff. These white papers were critical in our success in securing seed funding from the Provost and Chancellor and in generating new interest from potential partners across the campus and throughout the state.
Throughout the year, the College has sharpened the focus on these areas and begun creating the infrastructure for implementation across the initiatives. Initially, the operations of the four initiatives will be organizationally located within the Bureau of Educational Research. All four have seen significant progress in transitioning from good ideas to productive centers of research and practice over the past 4 months.
In the upcoming year, through the realignment of existing funding, the College will initiate a new strategic investment account to provide seed or start-up funding for new research and program development aligned with the four initiatives. Program details and the application process will be released later in the summer.
Selected key accomplishments and activities for each of the four are included here.
The Center for the Study of Education in Small Urban Communities
Director and Graduate Assistants HiredWith funding from the Office of the Provost, the Center hired a new, full time director in April. Julia Johnson Connor, who holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, joined the College following a three-year appointment as the Assistant Director of the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society. Julia is charged with coordinating existing initiatives housed within the Center (such as the third year of the Chancellor’s Academy and a planned 2008 Youth Literature Festival) as well as working within the local communities to build new research and practice opportunities. Two graduate research assistants, Catherine Hunter (Ph.D. student, Curriculum and Instruction) and Tysza Gandha (Ph.D. student, Educational Psychology) have also been appointed to the Center.
Master Teachers Selected
The Center has also recently completed the search process for the first two of five Master Teacher positions, funded by the Office of the Chancellor. These 3-year, visiting positions will be filled by practicing teachers given leaves of absence from their school districts. The positions were developed and searches conducted by a committee consisting of College faculty and staff and of representatives from both Urbana and Champaign Schools. The Master Teachers, who are both anticipated to begin employment in June, will work intensively with university faculty and district and school leadership to planand deliver high quality professional development to K-12 teachers in the Champaign and Urbana School Districts. They will be highly involved in a small number of target schools with the greatest needs, but they will also be involved in planning and carrying out district-wide and cross-district professional
Chancellor’s Academy – Year 3
July 30 will mark the opening of the third Chancellor’s Academy. This joint partnership among the Champaign and Urbana Schools and the College of Education was established to develop new models for local teachers to enhance learning experiences for their students. Focusing on literacy (across a number of contexts), this program provides a week-long, intensive, team-oriented professional development experience for about 80 teachers each summer. A second strand, added last year, specifically developed for administrators will be offered again this summer.
The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Collaborative was envisioned as an institute to bring together the science content expertise and pedagogical strengths of the University of Illinois. Ray Price, the Interim Head of Curriculum and Instruction this year, also served as the head of the STEM Collaborative. The College has secured funding from the Office of the Chancellor to initiate a fall search for a new full-time faculty member in the STEM area through the campus faculty-excellence program. Of the four initiatives, the STEM Collaborative has perhaps been the most active in solicitation of new external research funding this year. Building on existing cross-College strengths in STEM areas (there were over 25 funded, active research projects in these disciplines in the College last year alone), faculty and staff have been working across the campus to initiate new research and outreach projects. Several notable submissions in process now include two Math and Science Partnerships to the Illinois State Board of Education, participation in four potential new NSF Engineering Research Center proposals across the campus and potential major projects with Motorola and Exxon-Mobil.
The Forum on the Future of Public Education
The idea behind Forum is to bring key issues and research across the educational spectrum into the public for open and productive debate – to both academic and general audiences. Stanley Ikenberry, Regent Professor in Educational Organization and Leadership will continue as Director of the Forum. He will be assisted by a post-doctoral coordinator for the 2007-08 academic year. Greg Kienzl, is a 2004 Ph.D. recipient from Teachers College, Columbia University. He leaves his position as a research analyst with the American Institutes for Research in Washington to join the College this summer. Among the many programmatic offerings this past year, the Forum brought two notable scholars to the University to open the debates about the status of higher education in America. Don Heller, of the University of Michigan and Peter Ewell, Vice President, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems were featured speakers. Additionally, the Forum has been advising the Provost in matters of the measurement and assessment of educational outcome and value as part of the campus planning for upcoming accreditation renewal review.
The Ubiquitous Learning Institute (ULI)
A search for a new Director of the ULI will be undertaken later this summer with the intention of having an individual in place before January of 2008. One of the first efforts of the ULI is the publication of a collaborative book title Ubiquitous Learning, edited by Bill Cope, Research Professor, Educational Policy Studies, tentatively to be published by the University of Illinois Press. The book is intended to both help create a public, shared definition of ubiquitous learning and to establish the University of Illinois as the leader in the area. Contributed chapters will come entirely from within the University of Illinois community, with collaborations from Engineering, LAS, Library and Information Science, NCSA among others. The ULI will play an integral role in the pedagogical and technical innovations that will drive our e-learning contribution and engagement with the Global Campus Partnership.
Finally, it is clear that we have moved forward in every part of our mission as a College. We have continued to provide an environment that allows and encourages our students to become active participants in their own education and in their communities. We have expanded our research activity – the work that will have the lasting impact on our world. We have significantly increased our engagement with the educational institutions of our state and nation. And, the most impressive part, is that we have done all of these things in a collegial, collaborative fashion. We have seen new partnerships, both within the College and across the University, emerge and we have made our peers around the campus and around the country stand up and take notice. We are indeed, a College on the move.
While this has been a significant foundational year, we still have much work to do. The goals we have set for the College are substantial and they are ambitious. Improving our graduation rates, dramatically increasing our undergraduate minority representation and raising nearly $30 million in private donations are just a few of the commitments we have made – commitments that have been critical to securing new investment from our campus administration.
We will meet these goals and the many others we have set out. But, as we move forward in the coming years and as we compare our progress to our strategic intentions, we must keep one thing clearly in mind - our success as a College of Education, our legacy, is going to be measured by how we answer a simple question. “What impact do we have on our world?”
This is truly our goal – to change our world. This is the point of our strategic initiatives. This is why we strive to improve our teaching, service and research each day. This is the shared vision that was present in 1905 when the College was founded and it was the vision that brought me here to join you one year ago.
The talent, the dedication and the sheer determination of our faculty, staff and students is admirable. These human factors will be the drivers of both the College and the University of the next decade. Thanks to all of you, Education has a renewed voice and influence here at Illinois. I look forward to seeing just how much we can accomplish together in the coming year.