Feature Article

Administration & Supervision
By Pam Tucker

Building upon the guidance of multiple school-wide committees, the Administration and Supervision Program is undertaking the redesign of its EdD degree program as a major initiative this year with the goal of improving the preparation of future school leaders. This work has been shaped both by national trends and the Curry School’s efforts to more clearly delineate its doctoral programs. Preliminary decisions about program features include an executive education delivery format (weekends, summer residencies, hybrid courses), theory to practice connections and evidence-based inquiry, and teaching strategies such as the systematic use of case studies, collaborative work groups, self-assessment and reflection, and field-based projects.

Guiding principles of this practitioner-focused degree were set in place by Curry School’s Ed.D. Committee: Applicants are to possess significant professional experience, a master’s degree, and a portfolio that demonstrates prior success in responding to real-world problems. The program’s pedagogy will emphasize knowing and doing to ensure that our graduates are sophisticated practitioners who know how to link practice and scholarship to effectively enhance the educational context in which they work. In keeping with the practitioner focus, a major capstone project, involving extensive field-based inquiry, will be designed to meet the dissertation requirement. The purpose of the capstone project will be to afford prospective Practitioner-Scholars with a supervised opportunity to identify a problem of importance to practitioners, understand the challenges to resolving the problem presented by a particular context, and apply what they have learned in order to address the problem.

The Administration and Supervision program area faculty are beginning conversations with other interested program areas within Curry and across grounds with other units concerned with leadership preparation to help us achieve our vision for the Ed.D. This will include building upon our on-going collaboration with the Darden Graduate School of Business in the Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE) and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, as well as new linkages with McIntire and the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. We aspire to reinvent our EdD program as an advanced program of study for practicing educators who wish to develop more sophisticated skills in leadership, disciplined inquiry and specific content areas.

Faculty Highlights:
1. Sara Dexter and Pamela Tucker are beginning the fourth and final year of a USDOE grant to design, implement and disseminate an online set of ETIPS leadership cases which support and develop administrative decision making. Together they will be presenting the ETIPS instructional tool to the governing body of the University Council of Educational Administration, premier organization in the field, at their annual conference in November. Sara has received a distinguished early career award from this organization, in part for her work on the ETIPS platform over the last decade.

2. Dan Duke has two books in press: Differentiating School Leadership: Facing the Challenges of Practice (Corwin) and The Challenges of School District Leadership (Routledge). In conjunction with the Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE), Dan has worked with school leaders in numerous states, including Texas and Louisiana, to support school turnaround efforts. Building on those experiences, his next venture will be a book with Eleanor Smalley, member of the PLE staff and former superintendent, on instructional cases based on work with the Wallace Foundation and low-performing school districts and state departments of education.

3. In addition to serving as the dissertation advisor for dozens of students, Jim Esposito continues to coordinate the administration and supervision program in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, Lynchburg, Roanoke, and southwest Virginia. We currently have 262 students in various degree and endorsement programs across the state, with a large concentration in the Northern Virginia center.

4. Virginia Association of School Superintendents’ Executive Director, Alfred R. Butler, has worked directly with members of the Virginia General Assembly and their staff to minimize the Governor's proposed budget cuts to public education and to ensure that the reductions don't become permanent. In addition, he worked with state policymakers to develop cost-saving strategies for local school districts which could save local districts tens of millions of dollars statewide.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, September 22 @ 11:30 am: SEEDS4Change Curry Conversation. Ruffner Hall 200

Tuesday, September 22 @ 3:00 pm: 15-Minute Drop in Clinic: Resume, CV or Cover Letter Critiques in the CLIC

Wednesday, September 23 @ 12 noon: Brown Bag Lunch Series: Technology--Joe Garofalo and Randy Bell will share about the FIPSE-sponsored investigation into the ways students use SmartBoards

Thursday, September 24 @ 12 noon: Tea & Technology: Film, Narration, and Cognitive Neuroscience--In the era of YouTube, video is ubiquitous in society. Teachers are increasingly incorporating video into almost every subject area. Jeff Zacks, director of the Dynamic Cognition Laboratory at Washington University, will discuss current research on perception and processing of video. Sensory inputs are dynamic, complex, and continuous, but subjective experience often seems to consist of discrete events that follow one upon the next. In this talk Jeff Zacks will describe a theory of why and how this happens. He argues that the segmentation of ongoing activity into discrete events is a fundamental mechanism of cognitive control and memory updating. He has tested this account by looking at how people understand and remember digital video and narrative texts. His methods include functional neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and adult development. He will describe recent research that tests the theoretical account and applies it to training and cognitive remediation. He will also discuss the potential implications of these findings for the use of digital video in education at the K-12 level and higher education. A lightweight tool for easy creation and editing of digital video will also be demonstrated. Come learn about theory and practice. Tea and refreshments will be provided.

Friday, September 25 @ 9 am: Faculty Council Meeting

Friday, September 25 @ 11:00 am: Curry Education Research Lectureship Series presents Laurence Steinberg

Tuesday, September 29 @ 3:00 pm: 15-Minute Drop in Clinic: Resume, CV or Cover Letter Critiques in the CLIC

Wednesday, September 30 @ 12 noon: Brown Bag Lunch Series:"Internationalizing Education: Field Notes from Africa" Come learn how we integrated community engagement projects, study abroad and school-based research in South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon and Uganda. The projects carried out by Curry faculty and students include: developing library and literacy programs in rural schools, teaching water safety and sanitation lessons for AIDS orphans, running youth leadership and mentoring programs, studying civic engagement and global identity in study abroad, and discussions with teachers on classroom management and discipline.

Thursday, October 1 @ 8:30 am: Curry Cup Information in the lobby of Ruffner Hall

Thursday, October 1 @ 12 noon: Tea & Technology

Friday, October 2 @ 9:30 am: Curry Cup Workshop in the CLIC

Friday, October 3 @ 12 noon: Faculty Diversity Committee Meeting

The Curry Calendar is up-to-date. Bookmark it and visit it often!

News at Curry

Sandra Oh, a Curry doctoral student in Gifted Education was awarded a Korean Honor Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to 135 students including Korean-American and Korean, undergraduate and graduate students studying in the US and Canada this year. The students study in various fields including medical science, arts, law, business, and US president scholarship students.

McTigue is Outstanding New Faculty at Texas A&M
Erin M. McTigue (M.Ed. '03 C&I; Ph.D. '06 Reading Ed) was recently named 2009 Outstanding New Faculty in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. McTigue is an assistant professor in literacy and is in her third year with the Department of Teaching Learning and Culture. Read more about McTigue's work at TAMU.

Curry Web Tool Being Used on Smithsonian Site by Teachers and Students to Create Short Movies
September 1, 2009 — How are an elementary school student, the Dust Bowl era, the University of Virginia and the Smithsonian Institute's American Art Museum connected? All play a role in "Picturing the 1930s," a new educational Web site created by the museum in collaboration with U.Va. and launched publicly today. Users of the site, many of whom are teachers and secondary school students, explore the 1930s through paintings, artist memorabilia, historical documents, newsreels, period photographs, music and video in a virtual movie theater. More.

Curry Has A Team For the Alzheimer's Walk!
Members of Curry's Communication Disorders Program walked last year at the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk. This year we have expanded our team to be Curry wide! The Communication Disorders Program is actively involved in a community service and research project through the Jefferson Public Citizens inaugural class and in Dr. Braddock's Academic Community Engagement Project in partnership with the Alzheimer's Association Central and Western Virginia Chapter.Alzheimer's affects everyone in America either directly or indirectly! Every 70 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer's resulting in as many as 5.3 million people in the United States living with Alzheimer's. The direct and indirect costs of Alzheimer's and related dementias amount to more than $148 billion each year. We invite all interested persons to walk with us to end Alzheimer's on Saturday, September 26th. If interested, please contact Hilary Koch at hmk4e@virginia.edu.

Did you know?

The United States Air Force has confirmed a partnership with the My Teaching Partner program created by CASTL.

Dan Berch recently participated in an invited panel discussion on the topic “Exploring Approaches to Education Research: Experimental, Engineering, Ecological, and Implications for Research and Researcher Preparation,” at the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) annual meeting of the Organization of Institutional Affiliates. The panel was chaired by Michael Feuer, Executive Director of the National Research Council’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and included Dan, Carol Lee, President of AERA, and Adam Gamoran, Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Dewey Cornell, Xiato Fan, and Anne Gregory received an additional $100,000 from the US Department of Justice to continue the Virginia High School Safety Study. Since 2006, this study has examined safety conditions and discipline practices in nearly 300 Virginia high schools. The study has identified features of the school climate that are associated with safer school conditions, less bullying, lower dropout rates, and higher academic achievement, with special emphaasis on positive outcomes for disadvantaged minority students.

Nancy Deutch gave the feature interview in the Fall 2009 AERA newsletter. Please find the newsletter attached.

Announcements

Compete in the Curry Cup
The Curry Cup is a team entrepreneurial concept competition. To compete you must: 1) Form a team of students, staff, faculty, and/or Curry alums (N = 1-5; see me for details). 2) Write an entrepreneurial concept paper no longer than two pages. 3) If invited to do so, present your paper publicly for a maximum of ten minutes and answer questions for ten minutes. The winner(s) of the upcoming entrepreneurial concept competition sponsored by your Ed Council will walk away with the Curry Cup, $3,000 in cash, and the right to make the rest of us squirm with envy.

The Curry winning team will then test their ideas against winners of similar competitions held in eight other schools across the University. If the Curry team prevails, it will capture the even bigger and better UVa Cup lined with another $3,000 in winnings! Second-place finishers at Curry and in the University at-large will capture $1,500. Third place teams will receive $500.

Put these important dates on your calendar:
• Tues, 9/15, 8:30-4:30. We will have an information table in the Curry lobby to address questions about the competition.
• Thurs, 10/1, 8:30-12:30. We will have another information table in the Curry lobby
• Fri, 10/2, 9:30 - 12:30. There will be a Curry Cup workshop in the CLIC to assist people with their proposals. Curry and Darden people will offer insights into writing proposals.
• Mon, 10/26. Deadline for submission of proposals.
• Fri, 11/6, 9:00. Public presentations by finalists for the Curry Cup.
• Sometime in mid-November. University-wide competition for UVa Cup.

The CLIC Announces its Innovation Collaboration Grants
Visit this page for more information on the CLIC Innovation Collaboration Grants.  Thanks to generous support from the Vice President and Chief Information Officer (VPCIO), the Curry School has secured funding to support innovation in three areas: Digital Scholarship, Online & Distance Learning, and Community-Building.

All That Is In Store For the CLIC
The brainstorming for how to use the CLIC space continues! An advisory group has formed and meets every other Thursday morning at 10 am. (These meetings are open--so join us on October 1.) This advisory group is made up of Curry faculty, students, staff, and other partners from across Grounds. Specifically, their work includes creating a mission for the space while meeting the needs of Curry students and faculty. These objectives are also focusing around three goals: 1) How can we enhance digital scholarship? 2) How can we create and enhance electronic collaboration? 3) How can we build communities both interally and externally? Do YOU have ideas of how to innovatively use this space? Join us for the next Tea & Technology on Thursday at noon.

Paid Position for Graduate Student
The Curry Library Innovation Commons (CLIC) seeks a graduate coordinator for 20 hours per week. The CLIC Coordinator will work with the Librarian in Residence, Student Council, and Curry faculty to facilitate transition of the Education Library from a physical to a digital library. Throughout the year, the coordinator will help develop of a seed grants program that has been provided for UVA faculty and students. The program was funded to integrate learning technologies into collaborative learning spaces at Curry. The person selected must be able to work independently and graciously with a faculty, students, and administrators. The ability to deal with change is valued and necessary. The opportunity to undertake research and extend the impact of the research through publication, conferences, and presentations is inherent. For infomration, contact Kay Buchanan at kac7f@virginia.edu. Please encourage a graduate student you know to apply!