College of Education and Human Services

The College of Education and Human Services (COEHS) is distinctive in its commitment to preparing “Educators/Professionals as Caring Intellectuals.” This conceptual framework drives all decisions made by college faculty and staff. This framework focuses on the preparation of the following broad outcomes for educators, human services professionals and counselors: knowledge of content, culture and learning; understanding of pedagogy, diversity and curriculum; and the skills and dispositions of reflective professionals, skillful practitioners, change agents and lifelong learners.

Community

The college, through the dean and special projects director, as part of our new COEHS K–12 summer tour program (www.uwosh.edu/coehs/collaborations/blog ), visited most of the CESA 6 region school superintendents during 2009-2010 to discuss issues of college-school relations, new COEHS programs, district needs and potential for future collaborations. Additional visits were made to several CESAs to discuss contract partnerships and the new rural schools initiative.

The Education Leadership Program in the Department of Human Services and Professional Leadership initiated a second master’s degree cohort with Ripon School District. The program seeks to enhance teachers’ professional development and abilities to become instructional leaders on their campus and in their district.

The Reading Education Department collaborated with other institutions to hold the 28th-annual University of Wisconsin Reading Research Symposium in Milwaukee. This included offering a graduate course in reading taught by department faculty on site.

The Human Services Program, along with the Division of Lifelong Learning and Community Engagement, continues to offer and expand the Human Services Baccalaureate Degree Program in an online mode throughout Wisconsin.

The Project Estrella federal grant of $1.45 million from the Office of English Language Acquisition (Department of Education) continues to support a number of college programs spread throughout the Fox Valley region.The project assists school districts with improving teacher skills in working with language minority students; brings those students to campus; sponsors the highly successful UW Oshkosh Language, Culture and Education Institute; and provides a means for new teachers to become licensed in Wisconsin for teaching ESL and bilingual classes in K-12 schools.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction continued to admit students to its ESL/bilingual Alternative Licensure Program in conjunction with Project Estrella, a $1.45-million, five-year federal grant. Approximately 300 students have earned ESL/bilingual teaching licenses since this program began in 2003.

The Human Services Leadership program, a division of the Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership, has restructured its undergraduate degree program, upgraded its supervision of student clinical experiences to the Human Services Office of Student Placement and hired its first director.

The departments of Reading, Special Education and Instruction and Curriculum collaborated in spring 2009 to offer a dual conference, which attracted almost 200 teachers from the Fox Valley region and pre-service teachers from UW Oshkosh. The conference expanded in 2009-2010 under the banner of the Seeds of Inclusion Conference, brought in national level speakers and hosted more than 500 teachers and students.

The college continues to receive and host the National Writing Project grant through which it underwrites the Fox Valley Writing Project. The project, a consortium between local school districts and UW Oshkosh, provides scholarships for students to attend workshops during the summer, the Young Writers’ Camp and trains teachers to write to enhance student learning.

The Human Kinetics and Health Education Department has partnered with Trinity Lutheran School to offer certified physical education instruction and appropriate physical education curriculum for PK-8th grade classes and students.

ELSAC (the Enhancing Learning in Subject Area Classrooms) is a partnership between the Appleton Area School District and the Fox Valley Writing Project, which aims to develop professional learning communities related to issues of increased literacy in schools and communities.

Judy Hankes continued her work in elementary math for ELL students using two major grants: one from the NSF and the other a Wisconsin ESEA Improving Teacher Quality grant titled, “Closing the Math Achievement Gap for Native Americans.” This is a three-year grant in partnership with the Ho-Chunk Nation and other rural area schools with significant Native children populations.

The COEHS K–12 Advisory Council is a partnership between the college, regional K–12 school districts and several CESA offices and provides a forum for discussing educational issues that impact K–12 schools and higher education throughout the area and the state.

The Reading Department has completed one off-campus school-district advanced reading licensure program with the Crivitz Area School District, is continuing another with the Lac du Flambeau District, and starting up a third program with the Sheboygan Area School District. The programs form part of the college’s overall strategic plan to enhance Wisconsin rural schools.

The EXCEL Center received approval from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for an add-on licensure program under the aegis of innovative pilot programs. The first of its kind in the state, the program uses a partnership structure between the center, the teacher and the district within an alternative licensure process to allow teachers to add supplemental teaching licenses and the school to increase the number of highly qualified teachers within their present workforce.

The Human Kinetics and Health Education Department’s Adapted Physical Education program operates the only student-run chapter of “Fishing Has No Boundaries,” which provides individuals with disabilities the experience of boating and fishing.

Teaching

The Special Education Department has continued to offer its19-credit undergraduate/graduate certificate program in autism spectrum disorders, which began in fall 2007. The program has continued to be in high demand by teachers and principals in school districts throughout the Fox Valley region during 2009 - 2010.
The college offers training in student-teacher supervision, including an online workshop, to teachers in a number of local school districts, preparing them to supervise new student teachers in their classrooms. This program is offered free to school districts by the college as a service to its regional schools and includes a virtual web-based program for older teachers who need refresher training under PI 34. The college offers these mentoring/supervision courses to teachers without cost and includes a single graduate credit for completion. This program has increased in importance due to DPI’s increased insistence that cooperating teachers must be trained.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction continued its Earth and Space Science emphasis area in its master’s program. Most of the courses required by the program are instructed in hybrid or online format. The program already has garnered 18 new graduate students for the department.

The college also was able to add a new division to its structure: the Economic Education Center, managed by Deirdre Watts. The center specializes in scholarships for K–12 teachers to help them attend workshops and programs to increase their financial and economic literacy, which they can apply to their own curricula.

Scholarship

Area K–12 teachers continue to successfully develop science activities for their classes and get students involved in community environmental science projects in a two-year program at UW Oshkosh. Originally, UW Oshkosh was awarded $61,050 by the Wisconsin Improving Teacher Quality Program for this professional development program. Developed by Michael Beeth of the College of Education and Human Services and Michael Lizotte, Aquatic Research Laboratory director, the project is designed for fifth- through eighth-grade teachers.
Department of Counselor Education faculty are engaged in scholarship and research. Kelli Saginak, Thomas Scofield and recent graduate Amanda Foege are working on perceptions of critical thinking and the best instructional practices to enhance it in students. Saginak also is studying group leadership development stages and, with colleagues from Marquette University and UW–River Falls, studying comprehensive school counseling in Wisconsin school districts.
All of the college’s faculty are engaged in the scholarship of education, including the production of manuscripts, national and regional conference presentations, and a growing interest in international conference presentations.

Partnership

In 2007, the campus received enough funds from UW System to hire two new science and math educators as part of a state-wide effort to increase the number of math and science K-12 teachers in Wisconsin. With the assistance of the Chancellor’s and Provost’s offices, the college initiated its first off-campus center, the Excel Center. Responding to the growing national concern about science and math in our schools, the center is the first STEM Education site among the comprehensive colleges in UW System, perhaps the state. The center is responsible for recruiting, retaining and graduating increased numbers of students to become science and math teachers in Wisconsin. In addition, it uses faculty and others to work in local elementary, middle and high schools to attract young people into college and teaching, specifically science and math. This work has continued throughout the 2009-10 year, increasing its student and course base as well as investigating other ways to assist in teacher licensure and current teacher professional development. Increasing, recruitment of these students has occurred through the work of program friends in CESA offices and in school districts.

• The Department of Special Education entered into a new articulation agreement with Fox Valley Technical College whereby their Instructional Assistant associate’s degree grads can enter seamlessly into the college’s Special Education degree and licensure program.

• The Accelerated Early Childhood Degree and Licensure Program, part of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, established with Fox Valley Technical College in 2005, initiated its third cohort, working with more than 40 successful teachers.

• The Alternative Careers in Teaching (act!) licensure program for initial science and math teachers is in its third year, has more than 200 students and is in the process of extending the current collaboration (comprised of UW-Fox Valley, UW-Fond du Lac, UW-Sheboygan and UW-Manitowoc) to four other UW campuses with the assistance of UW-Extension. The primary collaboration is between UW-Fox Valley and COEHS with Tammy Ladwig at the UW-Fox Valley and Michael Beeth at UW Oshkosh.

• The Reading Department extended its partnership with the Fox Valley Reading Recovery Program, which prepares teachers to help students improve basic literacy, by adding several new courses and other partnership benefits to encourage more schools in the region to take part.

• The college is in a collaboration with several CESA offices and rural school districts to help create a rural schools emphasis in Wisconsin, one of the few states to lack a rural education support organization. The first conference sponsored by education agencies on rural school issues occurred in March 2009 and the second in February in 2010. The COEHS Dean was the keynote speaker at the latest conference. The college has adopted a strategic effort to increase its involvement in rural school improvement in collaboration with the CESA agencies. This has helped the development of the first Wisconsin rural schools organization, the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance.

Stewardship

The College of Education and Human Services’ Alumni Newsletter, a digital newsletter intended to inform constituency groups and alumni, has started its fourth year as the college’s communications instrument to faculty, staff and alumni.The project is headed by Jim Hoffman and Tim Holdsworth. Departments, divisions and student groups within the college have participated with stories and pictures of events, students and exciting information about faculty work.
The Department of Curriculum and Instruction continued its professional development school relationship with Merrill Middle School in Oshkosh. The students spend one semester taking classes on the Merrill campus, interacting with middle school teachers and instructors. In part, the program was sponsored due to the Oshkosh Chamber’s PALS Program between the college and Merrill Middle School.

Lenore Wineberg, in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, took early childhood students to Milwaukee for the seventh-annual Urban Experience, in which students spent a week investigating teaching in urban schools as well as engaging in cultural experiences in the area. More than 80 students have participated in this experience; many have gone on to teach in Milwaukee or other urban school districts.
The Special Education Department created a department-based advisory council comprised of local K–12 special education directors and teachers to advise it on issues involving special education, school district needs and changes in the environment of teaching that might impact college graduates.

Charles Lindsey, Counseling Education Department, served as president of the Wisconsin Counseling Association for 2008-2009; Tom Scofield served as president of the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (a 13-state regional association) during the 2006-2007 academic year and was elected president of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) for 2009-2010.

Kelli Saginak, in the Professional Counseling Department, serves on the Oshkosh Area School District’s Comprehensive School Counseling Advisory Council.

Click here to read last year's report.