Text for Section Four: 2009-2015
(written by Nancy Meltzoff unless otherwise indicated)
There were many shifts in the staff and faculty around 2009. Shelly Knight came to take over the office after the Forest Grove campus recruited Kimberly Blazejewsky from us and promoted her to the top staff position in the COE. Faculty member Betty Sharp left, John Lockhart arrived, and Bob Bumstead went to part-time in 2009 and retired in 2011. Daniel Duarte stopped coming to Eugene to co-teach Learning Communities courses. Ex-students who were teaching for us around 2010 and 2011 were Linda De Spain, Brian Gulka, Burdy Smith, and Jenifer Wuite de Valle, and Anil Oommen. In 2010, Todd Twyman arrived. We had strong support with instructors who were well-respected in the community, such as Remie Calalang, Kip Vandenoever, Kerri Sage, Cindy Parker, John Lenssen, Valerie King, and Tom Horn.
Karren Timmermans, who had, by this time, become a long-time faculty member, took leadership in the areas of the Reading Endorsement and the ESOL Endorsement. Eventually, she and colleagues in Forest Grove would offer the endorsements as online programs. Karren shared her love of children’s literature, a great collection of books, and strong expertise in these and other areas. She also set up a partnership with a school in Chile, and some of our students enjoyed international experiences for the student teaching portion of their program. John Lockhart provided leadership in the areas of science education and Learning Communities courses. He added to the Learning Communities curriculum, bringing in the latest authors and speakers in the field. He also provided leadership when it was time to finally redesign the curriculum once again. Todd Twyman took on the task of keeping track of our assessments and, with Jesse Everett, organizing the information for NCATE reports. When Cheryl Spaulding was still there, upon the request of Dean Mark Ankeney, she took on the Herculean task of bringing all faculty together to redesign the MAT program. Mark Szymansky held down the areas of Educational Psychology and Technology, helping the students become leaders in the area of technology out in the schools.
Shelley Smolnisky kept a firm and competent hand on the tiller, and things went along fairly smoothly. We had a few partnerships with public schools; in particular there was a short-lived effort with Howard Elementary in Eugene and then another, which seemed to root more deeply, with Dos Rios in Springfield. After Anil Ooomen joined the faculty, he participated in the Dos Rios partnership, brought some nationally-known speakers to campus, started a course on Sexual Identity, and served as the leader of the undergraduate program. He worked with faculty at the Woodburn Campus to learn about their redesigned program for undergraduates, and brought those changes to the Eugene campus. Rebecca Schulte, who had been hired to work with the Special Education program, worked hard to move our students out of what she called silos, so that special education and general education students could take some courses together. Rebecca also took over the Critical Perspectives courses (which had taken the place of Learning Communities courses in the redesigned MAT program) after Nancy retired in July 2105. Mark Ankeney, dean during this time, provided consistent and transparent leadership. We always knew he was fighting for our best interests at the university as well as on the state level. He followed Willard Kniep to a higher position at the university. During 2014-15, there was a search for a new administrators in Eugene and Forest Grove, causing quite a bit of change on both campuses. Mark Seals took over the position of Associate Dean in Eugene.
In 2010, we suffered the loss of Alicia Elfring, an undergraduate student, from a car accident. See Document: Alicia.2010. In March of 2010, I took a small group of students to La Paz, Baja, California, hoping to initiate an international program there for both general education and special education. Unfortunately, due to violence just after that time in Mexico, that program was not allowed to continue. See Document: Baja trip.10
NAME
In the 2008-09 school year, Lockhart and I were advisers for the first official student chapter of the National Association of Multicultural Education. Although I had been a member of NAME for a long time, and we had resuscitated an Oregon chapter some years before (with Jean Moule at OSU, Arun Toke of Skipping Stones Magazine, and Steve Rhines of Willamette U.), NAME membership in Oregon had once again reverted to solely individual memberships. Although NAME had many state chapters, NAME had never before had a student chapter. We had a strong group of students who were on fire to work for equity and social justice, so we decided to form a student chapter. We drew up a charter and worked closely with national NAME. In 2009, we brought scholar and author James Loewen to Eugene to speak and meet with local groups. Lockhart served as program coordinator for the most successful state Oregon NAME (ORNAME) conference in history, held in Eugene in 2011, with keynote speakers Lee Mun Wah and Gary Howard. Pacific University students were instrumental in assisting with the organization and smooth operation of the conference, as well as contributing poster sessions. The chapter was very active for these years, and included both graduate and undergraduate students. We had meetings monthly, at which we showed videos and had discussions, listened to music with the theme of social justice, shared resources, and joined social justice events in the community. Members traveled to other educational conferences with a social justice theme and shared their new knowledge with their classmates. After this particular group of students graduated, and I moved to part-time, however, the organization slowly petered out and the Pacific University Chapter of Oregon NAME became inactive, approximately by 2013.
Social Work
Shelley Smolnisky wrote,
In 2014, the Eugene campus welcomed the addition of College of Arts and Sciences graduate offering, the Master of Social Work program. Additional faculty, staff and office space were added to support this new program. For the first time, the College of Education was not the only program at the Eugene Campus.
As part of the College of Arts and Sciences, this program was given excellent support, which helped our campus get a much-needed face-lift and attention from what we called the “main campus.”
In, 2014, a new position called Admissions Counselor, was added to the Eugene campus. Annette Willsey filled that position with a burst of energy that brought a spark back to the campus, working hard to reverse the trend of dropping student numbers due to the statewide economic downturn (as well as the resurgence of the University of Oregon’s education program). In the fall of 2015, Tracy Conaghan took over that position working on admissions for COE and for the MSW program.
Touch the Future
By this era, the Touch the Future program had been taken over by the university and the College of Education was not really part of it anymore. It continues to be a program that introduces students of color to university life and encourages them to pursue higher education. A Touch the Future scholarship collected funds and grew over the years, to be able to help contribute money for deserving students of color.
See Document: TTF.2011
See Document: Loewen.09