Enrollment of new freshman isn’t the only thing growing in the NIU College of Education, which is celebrating a 6.5% jump in that headcount this fall.
Also climbing is the energy and momentum behind several college-level initiatives advancing equity, belonging, student success, engagement and more.
Dean Laurie Elish-Piper spent much of the Aug. 16 All-College Meeting describing the progress of efforts to ensure that all are welcome, valued, heard, seen and safe as well as an evolving slate of dynamic programs that deliver higher education in innovative ways.
She opened with a slide showing eight of the scores of Post-it notes created last spring to encourage students with positive messages.
“I want to share these with you this morning because I think they capture the level of gratitude and appreciation for what all of you do to create opportunities for success for our students, the ways that you collaborate with one another and the ways you rise to the challenges we face,” Elish-Piper said. “You are amazing, and I am grateful.”
Good examples were plentiful.
Now in its second year, the Dr. LaVerne Gyant Mentoring Program is expanding to include master’s students. The Social Justice Summer Camp returned to an in-person format for its fifth edition.
One dozen participants – two per department – completed the Academic Equity Team’s first Racial Equity Academy to learn, talk, reflect and create projects to incorporate equity and a culture of belonging in their work.
Members of the college’s Curriculum Committee completed a review of aspects of social justice within every degree program, determined recommendations and are continuing that process; the College Council now is exploring, in alignment with that work, how to adopt a lens of equity in the review of faculty service reports, promotion and tenure dossiers, third-year reviews, manuals, handbooks, policies and procedures and more.
Likewise, Elish-Piper said, the Strategic Enrollment Management Committee tasked with looking at academic equity gaps was able to close or eliminate most. A few remain, however, which means that the work will go on.
“Those of you who know me well know that a report is good but, without action, a report is not necessarily all that useful,” the dean said. “We need to take it to the action-step level.”
Jumping into action is Eric Junco, the college’s first Director for Equity, who will guide efforts already underway and new initiatives yet to begin.
“Eric is going to help us coordinate that work, serve as a resource and provide leadership for that work so that we can not only elevate, but hopefully enhance and extend, the impact of that work,” Elish-Piper said.
Boosting student success includes not only the programs under Elish-Piper’s PLEDGE (Partnering to Lead and Empower District-Grown Educators) umbrella but also a proposal from the college’s Teacher Education Committee on making those degrees more accessible to all.
“Oftentimes, we want to place our educator licensure candidates in schools or settings that are particularly meaningful, diverse and supportive, and sometimes they’re further away,” Elish-Piper said.
“The financial burden on individual students can be huge as they’re driving back and forth to complete these experiences,” she added. “We sometimes hear from students that they sit out a semester to save money to afford to complete student-teaching.”
Now the Office of the Provost has agreed to provide some of the university’s unused COVID-19 relief dollars to pilot a program that will assist in covering travel costs through individual grants of $75 for early clinical-candidates, $150 for late-clinical candidates, $200 for those enrolled in eight-week student-teaching and $400 for those with experiences of 12 weeks or longer.
If a sustainable source of funding is found, the dean said, the simple idea will help to serve a greater purpose.
“Another call from the state level and nationally is to diversify the educator workforce,” Elish-Piper said, “so we’re thinking about what we can do to remove barriers to allow more people from a wider range of backgrounds, to come into education.”
SUPPLYING AND DIVERSIFYING the educator workforce is also the goal of PLEDGE, which continues to achieve results.
PLEDGE acknowledges that school districts are struggling to address the scarcity of teachers and principals; promises to inspire those who aspire to become teachers by empowering them to achieve their goals; and champions the philosophy of preparing new teachers who will stay in (or return to) their home communities.
The second cohort of Elementary Education majors at Elgin Community College posted a 100% graduation rate, just as their predecessors did one year earlier.
“Many of these people in this photograph are adult learners,” Elish-Piper said. “Many of them have children. All of them work. Many of them have other family responsibilities. Most of them are paying for themselves to be able to get this degree, and the ability for them to do that is really contingent on what we do to support that … from advising, to teaching, to supervision, to mentoring, all of these components have really come together.”
Elish-Piper also showed a photo, formatted in the style of class photos from elementary school, of future special education teachers in Rockford currently enrolled in PLEDGE’s Licensed Educator Accelerated Program.
“I smiled for days after seeing this, because the story that we hear is that most of these individuals say, ‘I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I’ve got three kids. I’m a single parent. I have to take care of an aging family member. I don’t have money. I have all of these things going on,’ ” she said, “and this program makes it accessible for them.”
Rockford’s 20 paraprofessionals on the fast track to LBS-1 degrees are joined by 35 more in Elgin School District 46.
When they complete their employer-paid coursework, they will stay in their districts to provide “homegrown” qualified and committed teachers who already know, understand and are part of the learning communities.
Others are paying attention, Elish-Piper said.
“As we think about the shortage across the state in special education, this is a model that can be replicated, not just across our region but across the state and the nation,” she said. “It’s exciting that some these models are now being identified by the Illinois State Board of Education as gold-standard models. We’ve been at meetings where people he held up the Principal Residency Program as an aspirational model that other institutions should be looking at implementing.”
Members of the NIU Rockford Principal Residency Program’s first cohort completed their degrees earlier this month.
Launched in 2020 in collaboration with Rockford Public Schools, the partnership develops school leaders who improve academic and social-emotional learning outcomes and post-secondary success in their buildings.
During the two-year M.S.Ed. program, students earn master’s degrees grounded in exceptional curriculum, professional practice and strong mentoring, which includes coaching from the Illinois Principals Association.
IN OTHER ALL-COLLEGE NEWS, work is underway to update the Strategic Action Planning Framework enacted in January 2017 “so that it represents who we are today but also who we aspire to become over the next several years,” Elish-Piper said.
Leaders met with college-level committees in the spring to gather feedback from faculty, staff and students, which then informed creation of drafts during the summer. Further review is planned this fall with departments and committees, along with an anonymous survey, with the goal of launching the new iteration in January.
“The framework needs to represent who we are collectively,” Elish-Piper said, “and we need your input in order to do that.”
Education Partnerships and Learning Solutions, led by Jason Klein, is replacing the former Office of External and Global Programs.
The number of 2+2 programs with community colleges has reached 22, all signed since 2016. David Walker, associate dean for Academic Affairs, announced that negotiations with the City Colleges of Chicago should culminate this fall with articulation agreements for kinesiology, physical education and sport management.
Fall enrollment of new students, while up for freshmen (6.47%) – “one of the largest new freshman classes we’ve had in the college in the last decade,” Walker said – as well as new doctoral students (14.63%), is down for new transfers and new master’s students.
Enrollment of returning students is up 4.62% at the undergraduate level but down 6.45% at the graduate level.
Many of those new freshmen and new transfers come thanks to an innovative approach developed by Walker and Jennifer Johnson, senior director for Student Success.
Walker was reviewing data that showed nearly 100 students had paid orientation fees but had not scheduled orientation sessions required before enrolling in full course loads.
“Traditionally, orientation happens in the summer, Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30 and maybe on Friday,” Walker said. “Jenny, with her team, said, ‘No. Let’s do it on the weekends. How about Saturday? Meet the families. Meet the students where they’re at.’ ”
For some, Walker said, that included some aspects of the orientation process being offered online or in hybrid modality – and now the original list has dwindled to 20 names. “This is phenomenal,” he said. “These are about 80 students who probably would not have joined us.”
Clay Camic, associate professor of Exercise Physiology in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, has been named Senior Faculty Fellow for 2022-24. Camic will conduct research in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic on the efficacy and health aspects of recommended doses of pre-workout supplements for college-age individuals.
Amanda Baum, NIU’s regional coordinator of the Illinois Tutoring Initiative, has secured memorandums of understanding with nine school districts and is close to two more. Nearly 225 tutors will be hired for the fall semester.
“It’s a big job,” Elish-Piper said. “Amanda came in, hit the ground running and is doing remarkable work.”
The college’s eight participants in the Hanover Grant Academy already have applied for nearly $950,000 in external funding, said Todd Gilson, the new associate dean of Research, Resources and Innovation. By the end of the fall semester, that total is expected to exceed $1.8 million.
Gilson encouraged everyone to keep dreaming up great ideas for the college, mentioning the cards at every seat providing a QR code linked to the Commitment to Innovation website. “Feel free to take that and put that by your bedside so that, if you’re like me at 2:30 in the morning when you wake up and say, ‘This might be an idea,’ you can scan it,” he said. “It’s very quick. There are only three form fields, and only one of them is mandatory, which is, ‘What is your new idea?’ ”
Steve Howell was announced as the new chair of the Department of Kinesiology and Faculty Education, to which former Associate Dean of Research, Resources and Innovation Bill Pitney has returned as professor of Athletic Training.
Nine faculty members celebrated promotions and/or tenure: Xiaodan Hu (associate professor, CAHE); Jim Ressler (professor, KNPE); Emerson Sebastião (associate professor, KNPE); Ben Creed (associate professor, LEPF); Stephen Tonks (professor, LEPF); Natalie Andzik (associate professor, SEED); Stephanie Baker (associate professor, SEED); and Jesse “Woody” Johnson (professor, SEED).
Olha Ketsman, a longtime clinical assistant professor in ETRA, is now an assistant professor.
Several departments welcomed new faculty and staff:
- Yenitza Guzman (clinical assistant professor, CAHE).
- Tim Keller (office manager, CAHE).
- Injung Lee (assistant professor, CAHE).
- Kim Green (academic advisor, CI).
- Mike Manderino (associate professor, CI).
- Michael Tscholl (visiting associate professor, ETRA).
- Wonock Chung (assistant professor, KNPE).
- Shelby Ison (visiting assistant professor, KNPE).
- Dawn Norwood (assistant professor, KNPE).
- Matteo Carmignola (visiting scholar, LEPF).
- Kate Swope (office manager, LEPF).
- Julia Auch (clinical assistant professor, SEED).
- Anna Brady-Ruehs (visiting assistant professor, SEED).
- Kim Suedbeck (visiting assistant professor, SEED).
Joseph Flynn, associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, has been named executive director for Equity and Inclusion with the NIU Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
The college also acknowledged recipients of the 2022 spring awards:
- Excellence in Teaching by Faculty/Clinical Faculty: Daryl Dugas, LEPF.
- Excellence in Research and Artistry: Stephen Tonks, LEPF.
- Exceptional Contributions by an Instructor: Sue Dalton, SEED.
- Excellence in Service by Faculty: Nicholas Grahovec, KNPE.
- Exceptional Contributions to Diversity and Social Justice: Kimberly Hart, CAHE.
- Exceptional Contributions by Staff: Jeanne Johnston, KNPE
Before departing Cole Hall for the unveiling of the new “Belonging” display and the all-college group photo, Elish-Piper reaffirmed how thankful she is for her colleagues.
“Thank you for everything you have done and everything that you will do,” she said. “Together, let’s make this a great year. We can do it. The possibilities are endless – and they are endless only because of the expertise, the commitment and the work ethic that all of you have.”
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