The College of Education and Social Services shares President Fogel's vision for UVM to be the nation's premier small public research university. With everyone's help, CESS is transforming this vision into reality. We appreciate the need for a local and regional reputation, but we also need to strengthen our national and international reputation. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of the college's initiatives.
The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate is winding up its first full year of a three-year initiative. As Lee Shulman suggests, our CESS Carnegie Group has tenure track faculty, lecturers and graduate students, and we'd like to add field-based partners as well. Members of our group have already attended two national meetings, and will be attending the third up-coming conference in Palo Alto, California this June.
Because the Carnegie Initiative decided not to define the Ed. D. in a research category, our challenge becomes revamping our doctoral programs to allow us to be part of the vision of UVM as a high research university.
We have to rethink the structure of our graduate programs and identify best practices in terms of preparing professionals. For example, a three year vs. four year program, dissertation vs. project with relevance for type of work that they do or aspire to do in education, individual vs. group-based.
In addition to the Carnegie Initiative, for two and a half years, Dr. Stanley Witkin has been chairing the development of a Ph. D. in Transformative Social Work and Education and has produced a document that moves us forward in the process. Both the Carnegie Initiative and the Ph. D. development provide an opportunity for us to review our current Ed. D. and to ask whether we restructure and, if so, how might a restructured program connect to the initiatives in place?
We need to think not only about our graduate program, but also our undergraduates. To align with President Fogel's vision, we are exploring the creation of an Education Foundation undergraduate major grounded in liberal arts for students with a strong interest in education, but who don't want to teach. This will allow us to meet the needs of a significant number of students at UVM, and provides the potential to increase our undergraduate enrollment.
Another of my visions for CESS is to strengthen our international foci. I'd like to share a few of CESS' international education opportunities for students and faculty.
We are continuing to maintain a strong international reputation with the Asian Studies Outreach Program (ASOP) that was awarded the first Goldman Sachs' Award for excellence in International Education from the Asia Society. ASOP is viewed as a model for similar programs throughout the world. The US Dept of Education through Senator's Leahy office just announced an international grant. UVM and our Asia Initiatives are listed as one of the preferred programs to receive this grant. Faculty members Penny Bishop and Gale Burford are active in initiatives in New Zealand, Early Childhood has programs in Italy and Sweden, and Stan Witkin has been taking Social Work students to Finland for years. At the end of March, we co-hosted the ambassador of Finland with Senator Sanders.
A third, important vision is for our college is to encourage research and scholarship and to increase opportunities for our faculty. In order to accomplish this, I appointed Susan A. Comerford as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Research and established the Research Council, which is under her leadership.
We've strengthened support and mentoring opportunities for Tenure Line Faculty, and provided $30,000 in professional development money for conference travel and grant proposal development over the last two years for all faculty. I'd like to stress that this money comes from the Dean's discretionary account, which is generated through fundraising efforts. I will continue to do everything I can to continually replenish these funds through development efforts.
The number of grant proposals submitted in the last three years has positioned the college as a leader, outside of the College of Medicine, in the area of grant writing. Consequently, our grant dollars have increased and we rank as one of the leading grant recipients in the university.
As a result of our growing national and international visibility and our focus on research and scholarship, we've been able to attract top applicants to our college. For example, in the last three years, new hires have received their degrees from or been employed by Vanderbilt, Michigan, Syracuse, Loyola University Chicago, Denver, University of Colorado and Fordham University.
It remains a vision of mine and that of many of the faculty in the college that we continue to work with due diligence to diversify our faculty, student body, and provide opportunities for faculty to engage in critical dialogue that informs their teaching, scholarship, and understanding of themselves within a social justice context. Within the college, we have made and continue to make significant strides in all our areas of foci.
Another vision -- to strengthen our school and community partnerships -- is becoming a reality. I've appointed Janet Bossange as Associate Dean of External and Community Relations. She is strengthening our relationships with partners in colleges across the university, and after many years, is revamping our field and site based arrangements.
The college is on the move in many exciting and dynamic ways. We are positioning ourselves to be leaders in the University, the nation, and the world. Together we can achieve our goals.
Last modified April 30 2008 01:35 PM
