The 2007 national rankings for scholarly productivity of doctoral program faculty were just released by Academic Analytics. The University at Albany placed in the top ten in the nation in three areas:

These rankings join with the “Top Ten” Academic Analytics ranking last year of the School of Education PhD program in Educational Administration and Policy Studies, and the 20 year record of the PhD program in Counseling Psychology in top scholarly productivity reported the 2005 The Counseling Psychologist, to place the University at Albany School of Education among the most outstanding in the nation.

The rankings were based on the index for ranking doctoral programs launched by Academic Analytics last year. The index evaluates over 7,400 doctoral programs in 172 disciplines in 375 institutions. It also ranks institutions in broader categories, such as humanities and biological sciences, as well as institutions as a whole. Index findings were released in the Nov. 16 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

For further information, see http://www.academicanalytics.com or http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/.

Dr. Arthur Applebee has been appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor by the SUNY Board of Trustees. Distinguished Professor is the very highest academic rank in the State University of New York, bestowed on a very select few faculty following a rigorous and exacting review of outstanding scholarly prominence and distinguished reputation in a given field though significant contributions to the research literature.

Dr. Applebee has long been considered the premier scholar in his field of English education both nationally and internationally. In brief, his scholarship has focused on the critical and complex problem of the relationships among language development, language use, and the development of writing and reading abilities, with a particular interest in the kinds of instructional and curriculum interventions that can support successful development. His books and articles are mainstays in English and literacy education graduate courses both in this country and across the world, and have created seminal shifts in thinking. Indeed, his work has had a major influence on scholarship, practice, and policy for over three decades.

Dr. Applebee joins two other Distinguished Professors in the School of Education – Daniel Levy (EAPS) and Judith Langer (ETAP). Further, his appointment brings the School of Education to the lead in the University at Albany/SUNY in recognition of research-based prominence and recognition.

School of Education Dean hosts luncheon for delegation and several members of SOE faculty

A delegation from the International Center for Teacher Education, East China Normal University, recently enjoyed a three day tour of UAlbany and the Capital Region hosted by the School of Education. Seven educators from Shanghai and neighboring provinces visited local public schools, and learned about school-university partnerships, teacher quality, and professional development. Their study tour included seminars with UAlbany faculty in the School of Education, Capital Region community education partners, the NY State Education Department, as well as a meeting with SUNY Chancellor John Ryan.

The delegation included:

Mr. Guotong Chen, Board Chairman, Zhejiang R.G.B. Education Group

Ms. Qiuxia Liu, Supervisor, Shaoxing Textile City Senior High School

Mr. Weidong Ma, Headmaster, Dongruan Shizhu School of Beijing Normal University

Mr. Yusheng Qiu, Principal, Wuxi Oriental International School

Mr. Xiaopeng Shang, Principal, Shijiazhuang No. 24 Middle School

Ms. Li Zhao, Assistant Director, International Center of Teacher Education, East China Normal University

Mr. Nanzhao Zhou, Director, International Center of Teacher Education, East China Normal University

This delegation’s study visit follows the Memorandum of Understanding with East China Normal University and the University at Albany initiated by the late President Kermit Hall. The School of Education also was a cosponsor, with the International Center, of the Second Annual Conference on Teacher Education held in Shanghai, China, in October 2006.

Dr. Lynn Gelzheiser, associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences. The study, Extending the Interactive Strategies Approach to Older Struggling Readers, focuses on the needs of older students who experience significant and severe reading difficulties despite remedial and classroom instruction.

Gelzheiser and her fellow researchers at the School’s Child Research and Study Center will adapt the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA), a remedial intervention program that helps distinguish between impaired readers whose reading difficulties are caused primarily by experiential and instructional deficits and impaired readers whose reading difficulties are caused primarily by basic deficits in reading-related cognitive abilities.

The Interactive Strategies Approach will be integrated with Reading Partners, an approach developed by Gelzheiser and her colleagues at the Child Research and Study Center that uses community volunteers to assist fourth grade struggling readers in improving comprehension and social studies knowledge. The integrated approach is designed to increase students’ word reading, fluency and comprehension in reading, as well as students’ content vocabulary and knowledge. Its utility will be evaluated with fourth and seventh grade students.

The Child Research and Study Center is one of several organized research centers in the School of Education. The Center was founded over 30 years ago under the joint auspices of the University and the Albany Medical College to provide diagnostic and consultation services to individuals and agencies in the community on behalf of learning disabled children and to conduct research in the study of learning disabilities and other developmental disorders. The Center is jointly affiliated with the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology and the Department of Reading, both in the School of Education. It has three major missions: (1) to conduct research in the study of various aspects of normal and abnormal development, especially as related to school learning; (2) to provide training and field experience in research for graduate students in the School of Education; and (3) to provide diagnostic assessment and consultation services on behalf of impaired learners, in support of student training and research.

The Ph.D. program in Educational Administration has been recognized as one of the Top 10 programs in the nation, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. A new index for ranking doctoral programs, conducted by Academic Analytics, has ranked the top programs in 104 fields and the top 10 programs in 24 disciplines. The School of Education’s Educational Administration program ranked seventh in its discipline.

“We’re gratified to be recognized once again for our outstanding academic programs and the quality and productivity of our faculty,” said UAlbany Provost and Officer in Charge Susan Herbst.

The Department of Educational Administration & Policy Studies seeks to enhance the understanding and practice of educational leadership and policy at all levels of schooling. The faculty are regionally, nationally and internationally recognized experts in educational policy as well as elementary, secondary, and postsecondary school management and leadership. Through studies leading to a master’s degree, advanced graduate certificate, certificate of advanced studies or a doctorate, students are prepared to be successful educational leaders as school and district level administrators, college and university faculty and administrators, and researchers and policymakers at domestic and international agencies and foundations around the world.

The 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index ranks 7,294 individual doctoral programs in 104 disciplines at 354 institutions. It also ranks institutions in broader categories, including humanities and biological sciences, as well as institutions as a whole. Index findings were released in the Jan. 12 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Although there is no one way to measure excellence in graduate education, Academic Analytics has chosen to focus on the single variable most highly correlated with program quality, namely, the scholarly productivity of its faculty. The FSP Index provides one objective measure of quality,” said Marjorie Pryse, UAlbany’s Dean of Graduate Studies.

Institutions are categorized as large research universities (those with 15 or more doctorate programs) and small research universities. For a program to be included in the 2005 index, it must have 10 or more faculty members or one-half the median number of faculty members for a program in that discipline.

The productivity of each faculty member is based on the number of books and journal articles published; citations of journal articles; federal-grant dollars awarded; and honors and awards.

The Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies received a $250,000 award from the Ford Foundation to support its Comparative and International Education Policy Program (CIEPP).

The program — which undertakes scholarship and advanced level training around emerging global issues in education policy — conducts research, participates in major public policy debates and trains researchers and practitioners at the doctorate and masters levels.

The funding will help CIEPP strengthen links and partnerships with other programs, centers and sites, and create new ties with academic and policy centers with national and international higher education policy interests. It will also assist CIEPP’s work in attracting and developing early to mid-career scholars in the field, as well as expand dissemination, visibility and use of the scholarship and information base.

The Capital District Writing Project (CDWP) housed in the School of Education invites teachers to apply for their 2007 Summer Institute that runs from June 25 through July 19. Along with a Pre-Institute Retreat in May, the Summer Institute provides teachers with the opportunity to renew and refresh their teaching and writing skills with study, reflection, discussion, and plenty of writing. CDWP does offer a stipend of $1,000 to the selected teachers who participate. Applications are due April 1. To learn more and to apply: http://www.albany.edu/cdwp/.

John Searle

John R. Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, will be on campus to deliver a lecture entitled, What is Language?, on Monday, March 26 at 4:00 pm in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center on the UAlbany Uptown Campus. Following the lecture there will be a reception in the Futterer Lounge where Dr. Searle will sign books.

Philosopher John Searle is the lead figure nationally and internationally in the development of speech act theory, which merges the study of language with the study of social action. He is also widely known for his critique of computer modeling of mind and language. In advocating the essential part that consciousness and intentionality play in the creation of socially meaningful language, he has been outspokenly critical of the claims of many cognitive and computer scientists that a computer program should be able duplicate the complexities of language use. Searle is the author of 17 books including Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (1979), Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983), The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), Rationality in Action (2001), Consciousness and Language (2002), and most recently Mind, a Brief Introduction (2004).

This special event is sponsored by the journal Intercultural Pragmatics, the Departments of Anthropology, Communication, Educational Theory and Practice, Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and Philosophy, the School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Provost.

Peter Shea

Assistant Professor Peter Shea, in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice, has been awarded a $260,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant to study ways to increase access to instruction and enhance student learning. Shea will focus on the uses of “blended learning” combining a traditional classroom setting with the online classroom. Blended learning is used to reduce barriers in higher learning classrooms and to introduce students to new collaborative work environments prevalent in today’s knowledge economy.

Shea is currently involved in two additional studies about online teaching and learning that are also funded by the Sloan Foundation. In collaboration with the New Jersey Institute of Technology , What I Like About On-Line Teaching - Understanding Faculty Motivation to Adopt or Reject Instruction via Asynchronous Learning Networks will identify the reasons why faculty accept — or shun — online teaching. For Student Involvement in On-line Learning, Shea is working with the University of Central Florida to develop collaborative research protocols to investigate what leads students to participate in online education, or not, and to also position the investigators to carry out a national study of these issues.

The nonprofit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was established in 1934 by president and CEO of the General Motors Corporation, Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., to provide support for research in science and technology, science and technology education, world economy, social or economic issues of national concern, and issues of concern to New York

Choice Words

The School of Education Book Club is reading Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning by Professor Peter Johnston in the Department of Reading. The club will meet to discuss the book on Monday, March 19 at 6:30 pm in the Standish Room in the Science Library on UAlbany’s Uptown campus. A light supper will be served and Professor Johnston will lead the book discussion.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP by Monday, March 12.

Mary Ellsworth
442-4985
mellsworth@uamail.albany.edu

Choice Words is available from most booksellers and at the University at Albany Bookstore.

Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning

By Peter Johnston
(Stenhouse Publishers, 120 pages)

In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach children skills: they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings. Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom, and demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people.

Peter Johnston, Professor, UAlbany Dept. of Reading

Peter Johnston earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He has worked as an elementary classroom teacher and as a reading teacher, and he currently serves on the editorial boards of: Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Elementary School Journal, and Literacy, Teaching and Learning. He has published eight books and numerous articles in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Elementary School Journal, Reading Teacher, and Harvard Educational Review. His most recent books are Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning, Critical Literacy/Critical Teaching: Tools for Preparing Responsive Teachers (with UAlbany’s Cheryl Dozier & Rebecca Rogers), Reading to Learn (with Richard Allington), Running Records: A Self-tutoring Guide, and Knowing Literacy. He chaired the International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English Joint Task Force on Assessment that produced the position monograph Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing. The International Reading Association awarded him the Outstanding Dissertation award in 1981, the Albert J. Harris Award in 1987 for his contribution to the understanding of reading disability, and in 2006, inducted him into the Reading Hall of Fame.

We are pleased to invite all students to submit applications for the School of Education scholarships to be awarded on Wednesday, May 16, 2007. Attached is the brief application form. Students may apply for as many scholarships for which they qualify. Students must submit the following with their applications:

Complete applications are due in ED 239, by 5 p.m. on Friday, February 16. The selection process will be completed by April 15. If you have any questions, please contact Susan Palmer, spalmer@uamail.albany.edu, or 442-3911.

Class of 1955 Award : awarded to a student who is enrolled in the School of Education and plans to pursue a career in teaching and demonstrates financial need. The Office of Financial Aid will verify the financial need requirement of this award.

Class of 1956 Scholarship : awarded to an undergraduate senior or graduate student accepted to or enrolled in a School of Education program who intends to pursue a career in teaching and demonstrates financial need. The Office of Financial Aid will verify the financial need requirement of this award.

Beta Zeta Scholarship : awarded to a student accepted to or enrolled in a School of Education program and plans to pursue a career in teaching. Preference is given to female students.

Delta Omega Scholarship : awarded to an outstanding female student in a School of Education program that leads to initial, permanent, or professional certification in teaching.

Malcolm Blum Endowment : awarded to a student enrolled in full-time study in a School of Education program that leads to initial, permanent, or professional certification in teaching.

Anna Maria Bonaventura Memorial Scholarship Fund : awarded to a student enrolled a School of Education program related to the teaching English as a second language .

Mary M. Briggs Scholarship : awarded to a UAlbany undergraduate senior or graduate who is accepted to and enrolled in the School of Education initial teacher certification program and demonstrates financial need. The Office of Financial Aid will verify the financial need requirement of this award.

Arvid J. Burke Scholarship : awarded to a graduate student who has demonstrated outstanding academic potential and talent in any of the advanced degree programs in the School of Education . Preference will be given to students in Educational Administration & Policy Studies but students in other programs will be considered.

NEW! Richard M. Clark Scholarship : awarded to a School of Education doctoral student who is either sole or first author of a paper which has been accepted for presentation at a professional meeting.

Kenneth & Kathleen Doran Scholarship : awarded to a student accepted to or in the early stages of a School of Education program that leads to initial certification in teaching.

Dr. Kimberly E. Esterman Memorial Award : awarded to a student working in the Middle Earth Peer Assistance Program and enrolled in a graduate program in the School of Education . Preferred recipients will have a demonstrated interest in working in alcohol, drug, and/or suicide prevention programs at the collegiate level and be enrolled in a counseling psychology program.

The Cathy Bertolino Hoey Scholarship: awarded to a School of Education student who has demonstrated steady academic performance as well as financial need. The Office of Financial Aid will verify the financial need requirement of this award.

NEW! Jack’s Fund: awarded to a School of Education student who has demonstrated exceptional academic achievement and who has expressed an interest in working with disadvantaged individuals as part of their career goals.

The Dr. Ralph B. Kenney Endowment: awarded to a graduate student in the Dept. of Educational and Counseling Psychology who is enrolled in the school guidance program .

Gertrude Hunter Parlin Teacher’s Scholarship : awarded to a student accepted to or enrolled in a School of Education program that leads to initial, permanent, or professional certification in secondary teaching.

Stella R. Pietrzyk Scholarship : awarded to a student in the Reading Department who recognizes the importance of children’s literature. The award will support the student’s attendance at a national conference on reading.

Bette Knowlton Roe Scholarship: awarded to a student accepted to or enrolled in a School of Education program that leads to an initial, permanent, or professional certification in teaching.

James Ryan Northeast Career Planning Scholarship : awarded to a 2 nd year master’s student in the Rehabilitation Counseling program.

NEW! The Paul Saimond Memorial Scholarship : awarded to a School of Education student pursuing a career in secondary teaching or in school leadership and who shows exceptional academic achievement and demonstrates financial need. The Office of Financial Aid will verify the financial need requirement of this award.

NEW! Gladys G. Sawyer ’37 & J. William Sawyer ’31 Scholarship : awarded to a full-time undergraduate student pursuing a career in education and who has a declared a minor in Educational Studies.

NEW! The Secondary Education Scholarship : awarded to a student enrolled in a School of Education program that leads to an initial, permanent, or professional certification in secondary teaching who demonstrates an intent and ability to teach high school.

NEW! The Gene M. Winter Scholarship : awarded to a doctoral student whose dissertation project on issues in Higher Education, preferably (but not exclusively) with regard to two-year college administration.

Bob Yagelski and Alicia Wein

This past academic year saw Associate Professor Bob Yagelski, Department of Educational Theory and Practice, and Guilderland High School English teacher Alicia Wein pioneer a new form of multi-level collaboration in their co-teaching of both Dr. Yagelski’s graduate class Perspectives on Teaching Writing in the Secondary School and Ms. Wein’s 12th grade FOCUS English class.

Having met through the Capital District Writing Project, which Yagelski co-directs, both educators realized the benefits they could reap from experience in the other’s educational venue. For Yagelski, it was a return to the high school classroom where he had last taught in 1988. For Wein it was an opportunity to teach in a graduate-level class, while sharing her high school practices with the Secondary Education graduate students who are hungry for classroom experience. As Dr. Yagelski says, “The idea was, we were going to collaborate as a high school teacher and a college teacher to help one another understand each other’s teaching better to bring about a respective expertise to one another’s classroom’s situations and to do it in a way that wouldn’t cost either school a cent.”

Alicia Wein’s English class is a part of the FOCUS program that has been running for twenty-seven years within the Guilderland school system. This program takes students who are at high risk for not graduating within the standard classroom environment. Although there are no ‘standard’ students in FOCUS, these students are not in need of an Individualized Education Program or similar measures that exist to insure an appropriate level of mastery for all students, and instead benefit from the close-knit community formed around their smaller classes, and a program specific tutoring/mentoring model.

One thing that Wein noted in her teaching was the trend for most students to disregard their related skills in writing that do not fit the typical profile of academic writing. As she says, “I’m actually surprised by how many of them love to write, but they think that school writing is different.” One of the central assignments that Wein and Yagelski utilized with their FOCUS students was the creation of a ‘real-life war story’. Inspired by texts such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the students examined their lives for challenges and trials by fire. As teachers often experience, their students were brutally honest and both Wein and Yagelski were impressed by the scope of emotions and experiences that the students related with bravery and a distinct voice. In terms of their actual techniques, both teachers decided to split some responsibilities and team up on others. For instance, in reviewing student writing, both teachers would provide separate feedback. Yagelski said, “Students were getting two voices…which we found out later the students really appreciated.”

Wein and Yagelski with Wein’s FOCUS students

By incorporating their experiences with the FOCUS students into the instruction of Yagelski’s graduate class, Perspectives on Teaching Writing in the Secondary School, both teachers were able to bridge the perceived gap between theory and practice for a room full of eager graduate students. Many of the techniques that Wein uses in her FOCUS classroom directly involve the application of theories about which the graduate students are just learning. Wein felt that she increasingly sees “the value of this kind of professional collaboration—more and more I run into teachers in the secondary setting who are very distanced from academia, who make a lot of decisions based on what works in the classroom, but they wouldn’t be able to support it with theory, for example.”

In essence, both Yagelski and Wein used their time in both classes to hone their skills in merging and balancing theory and practice, to which end Wein feels, “One foot in both worlds seems to enhance all of our teaching.” For Yagelski, the time in a high school writing class allowed some further reflection on his understanding of writing pedagogy and the methodology he espouses in his classes in the School of Education. “The fundamental philosophy in writing and my beliefs in what constitutes good writing instruction haven’t changed—I think what happened …my sense of how this instruction fits into the larger context of education really shaped the way that I wrestled with problems that all teachers faced.”

For example, both teachers struggled with a central issue facing high school students: motivation and the understanding of process and revision as a tool to increase mastery. Yagelski says that they tried, “somehow or another to convey to them that this isn’t busy work,” but instead wanted to highlight the “ability to produce writing to serve your own needs…to learn about writing as a rhetorical act and as an interaction and engagement with the world.” These ideas were incorporated into Yagelski’s graduate class through a process of modeling and practice that both emulated some of the central tenets of writing at the secondary level and inspired a more complete form of reflection on the graduate students’ experiences that helped them begin to shape their personal pedagogies and ideologies.

Yagelski and Wein will be presenting their experiences and insights from this unique and successful collaboration at the Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English in Nashville this November. Their topic is The Nature of Professional Collaboration as a Way to Deepen Our Understanding of Writing Instruction.

Both Wein and Yagelski can foresee several other projects sprouting up from last year’s experience, including the exploration of a future program where groups of students and teachers could be paired up for similar collaborations.