From the Dean

In this issue, we have featured our partnerships with nine Professional Development Schools in East Lansing, Flint, Holt and Lansing, Michigan. Professional Development Schools (PDSs) represent an important outreach effort of the college that spans our teaching, research, and service missions. Research collaborations between faculty in our college and in the schools have demonstrated the value of research grounded in practice. The findings of this work have resulted in changed practices in teaching both in the schools and in our teacher preparation program. Many of our juniors, seniors, and fifth-year interns who are placed in PDSs experience first-hand the mutual benefit of studying and developing best practices through a collaborative school-university process. In your reading, I hope you discover the rich environments that these PDSs offer our students and faculty for teaching and learning.

I also want to take this opportunity to report on some of the accomplishments of our faculty over the past year. We have placed a high priority on grant writing activity and this past year, the college has achieved a milestone in external grant and contract funding. We have been chosen as a lead collaborator in the Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, which is funded by the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). The college has also been selected to participate along with a number of other universities and organizations in the OERI-funded National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching. While we look forward to the opportunity these centers and others will offer the college over the next five years, we have achieved this milestone with small grants as well as large grants. In addition, the funding is quite broad-based representing support for research on technology and education, curriculum, exercise physiology, student learning, policy, higher education, special education, and rehabilitation counseling.

Over the past year, the college has done very well in other areas of revenue generation. The revenue generated through off-campus programs has increased by over 20 percent and we are expecting an additional 40 percent increase this year. We have initiated a high demand off-campus technology certificate program that is intended to build capacity for technology use in K-12 schools. Our off-campus programs represent a very important component of our college’s and the university’s outreach efforts.

Thanks to our alumni and other benefactors, annual giving to the college has increased by more than 30 percent. In the university’s endowment campaign, we exceeded our goal by over 20 percent. With these funds, we have placed a high priority on fellowships for graduate students and scholarships for fifth-year interns. This year we are able to begin a new fellowship program for doctoral students that guarantees new students three years of funding. We have called this the Erickson Fellows program and hope to be able to support six or more students a year. This program is intended to improve our competitive position in recruiting the very best graduate students.

The quality of our graduate programs continue to be recognized in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate programs in education. In the most recent rankings, we are ranked first by our peers for our programs in elementary and secondary education, third in curriculum and instruction, and fourth in educational psychology. In addition to these rankings, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has published a ranking of the top 100 federally funded universities that have published at least 100 papers in ISI-indexed education journals between 1992 and 1996. In these rankings, Michigan State University was ranked number one in number of citations per paper, which means our research and writing is visible and valuable to the broader community.

As we take note of our accomplishments, we have also set important goals for the coming year. Our college over the years has dedicated itself to the improvement of education for all learners, not only through our teacher preparation program and research programs, but also through outreach. While we continually strive to define the role of the college in the highly politicized environment of reform, we seek to expand our outreach activities in relation to K-12 education in the state. To this end, we have begun an Education Research Report series that provides summaries and applications of faculty research to educators, educational leaders, and policy makers in the state. In addition to providing information and support, we will continue to build collaborative relationships to create venues for input and access to our faculty and research. Our goal is to extend the scholarship of the college to the people of the state, to serve as a catalyst for public discourse around key policy issues in education, and to develop closer connections between the resources of the college and educators and policy makers in the state.

Over the past few years, we have made great strides in the college in the area of technology. Since the opening of the Technology Exploration Center, we have recruited new faculty in the area of technology and education, received major grants for research and development efforts, initiated off-campus programs to help educators gain competencies in applications of technology, and integrated technology into the teacher preparation program. This year we have begun a pilot program that provides portable computers to about 50 fifth-year interns. Although we have much to learn about how to use this resource with interns in the field, these computers will allow interns to be part of a "virtual community." We have also developed a set of technology proficiencies that are required of all our teacher preparation students. These requirements include use of email, the World Wide Web, word processing and presentation, database, spreadsheet and educational software. Students will be eligible to received a Certificate of Excellence in Teaching with Technology when they demonstrate ability to use multimedia technology creatively in educational settings. Technology is a priority in the reform of K-12 education, and it is our responsibility to make it a priority in the preparation of teachers. As we continue to develop our capacity in this area, we are mindful that our interest and investment is directed toward connecting technology with learning and subject matter.

As I am able to capture only a sample of our accomplishments and activities, I invite you to visit our Web site (www.educ.msu.edu) to learn more about our research, programs, new initiatives and events. The support of our alumni is important to our future as a premier college of education.

Carole Ames