coe-staff: AAU Education Dean's meeting notes

[Randy Kamphaus]

Dear Faculty and Staff,

The annual AAU Education Deans meeting was held in Washington, DC, this past Thursday and Friday. Dean’s attended from Northwestern, University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, University of Florida, Ohio State, Teacher’s College at Columbia, Texas A & M, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, UC Santa Barbara, University of Missouri, and University of Arizona to name some of the participants.

Three of the dean’s in attendance hailed from our college including, Mia Tuan from the University of Washington, and Charles Martinez from the University of Texas at Austin. Glenn Good, Dean at the University of Florida, holds a masters degree from our college. I share this information to remind everyone that the national visibility of our college is as high as any, and trending higher.

These meetings help me gauge how our challenges and opportunities compare to those of our peers. My overall impression is that, for the most part, we share much in common. There are a few exceptions, but very few. For example, we share the financial limitations of most, and concerns about finding new sources of revenue. It seemed that the majority of our peers, however, use a version of a Responsibility Centered Management resource allocation approach, whereas we just moved away from that.

All reported experiencing softening demand for their teacher education programs, and increased competition from private providers, school districts sponsored programs, and other independent teacher training institutions. And many reported that they were in various stages of rethinking their teacher education curricula to ensure our Long-term viability as education personnel providers. No easy solutions were offered.

Representatives from Penn State, UNC Chapel Hill, and the University of Florida led a discussion about on-line practitioner doctoral programs. The University of Florida has five entirely on-line doctoral degrees launched, and Vanderbilt has about 260 students enrolled in their relatively new – 18 months old – on-line Ed.D. program. I will share ideas regarding faculty participation, stewarding capstone projects, finances, staff support, student recruitment, and other discussion points with our EMPL faculty. For example, the University of Kansas conducted a survey of their graduates’ affinity for the university, comparing on-campus versus on-line instruction. They were surprised to discover that their on-line doctoral students reported more affinity for the university than on-campus doctoral students. This result may be due to the greater intentionality directed at linking on-line students to campus activities and culture.

A presentation by the new director of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provoked numerous new ideas for the use of large federal datasets. The detailed data available for teachers and school leaders - their highest degree earned, geographic concentrations, and other details - could prove useful for market research. Related to this point, a couple of institutions did not report favorably on their use of education market research firms to gauge the viability of launching new academic programs.

Representatives from CAEP and AACTE shared some information about the typical shortcomings encountered during their first 200 accreditation visits. They noted, a) few assertive and effective recruitment plans for diversifying their cohorts, b) lack of diverse students at clinical placements, c) lapses in candidates’ ability to teach diverse students, and d) poor evidence of implementation of continuous improvement strategies.

Work climate surveys of faculty and staff, and employee conduct policies and guidelines were also topics of discussion. Several universities noted that their institutions were at various stages of planning and implementation regarding these issues.

The closing session was devoted to social media. My reading of the consensus was that guidance for our internal and external communications will continue to develop rapidly, and caution is warranted in the interim.

I’ll stop here, and share more information from the meeting as it seems relevant to particular units and decisions.

Wishing everyone a great weekend,

Randy

c Office of the Provost, Graduate School



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists-prod.uoregon.edu/pipermail/coe-staff/attachments/20181117/a5cda753/attachment.html>