College of Education and Human Services

Licensing and Accreditation 

Goals: 

To maintain state accreditation for all Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) approved initial teaching and administrative licenses, to increase and market the number of administrative licenses (e.g. superintendent, technology director), to respond appropriately and successfully to state sponsored changes in licensure and assessment of our programs, and continue to meet our region's need for qualified teachers and school administrators. 

1. Spring 2011 - Developed certificate program in the Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership and gained campus governance approval for a new certificate in the Ed Leadership master's degree program for the Wisconsin School Principal's License. The program was proposed to and approved by DPI for initiation Summer 2012. A significant number of local school district administrators wrote recommendations to DPI supporting the quality and need for the new licensure program. 
2. April 2011 - Successfully passed annual continuous review by DPI of all initial licensure PK-12 programs, including the first review of the "act!" alternative licensure and the "Add-On Licensure" programs. 
3. Finalized "Add-On License" program approval with DPI and initiated marketing and support from local school districts. 
4. Preliminary research on need and DPI requirements for Director of Pupil Services (Special Education) completed; targeting Summer 2012 for proposal for authorization for that administrative license to be submitted to DPI. 

Collaborations and Outreach Initiatives 

Goals: 

Over the last several years, the college has become one of the state's primary educational outreach institutions with a growing arc of partnerships and K-12 relations crossing much of the state. A strategic purpose of the college is to both sustain existing collaborations and develop new partnerships with CESAs and K-12 schools around professional degree and improvement programs needed by state school districts. 

Collaborations with Regional PK-12 School Districts 

• In Fall 2010, a program called the "Teacher in Residence" program was designed to support a pilot for changing the process of student teaching in partnership with the Appleton Area School District. The program, based on an idea by the AASD Superintendent, houses a number of student teachers in one of three schools – a high school, a middle school and an elementary school. Unlike our long-standing current student teaching program, which is similar to almost all of the other such programs in the state, the students would spend an entire semester at the one school. They would be mentored not only by a cooperating teacher, but department chairs and school administrators as well, including experiencing evaluations similar to a first year teacher. The program was very successful, involved 15 COEHS students, all of whom acquired teaching positions even in a difficult year. The program harkens back to the older, now mostly disappeared "Lab School" approach to training teachers, only based in a district instead of on a college campus. 
• Continued to meet twice per year with the Fox Valley K-12 Schools Advisory Council. Formed in 2007 to act as a K-12 advisory group for college programs and graduate effectiveness, the Council has 15 local school members, meets to discuss issues of relationships between schools, districts and the college, provides support and review for new college initiatives, and provides a venue for sustaining local school district feed-back on the success or not of our college's teacher education graduates. It is also used to as a forum on state educational issues that impact PK-12 and higher educational institutions.
• Initiated at the request of a number of school district administrators whose districts are located along the axis of Hwy 23 from Fond du Lac to Sheboygan, a second PK-12 Advisory Council with similar purposes to the one located in the Fox Valley and described above. The Council began with several organizational meetings in Fall 2010 and will begin to meet officially in Spring 2011.
• The college entered into a partnership based on a large grant from DPI with the Beaver Dam School District; the grant being given to the partnership to develop professional development for school teachers in the content areas of science and math.

Supporting Wisconsin Rural Schools Program 

• Continued to support the new Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance (WIRSA) comprised of forty-plus K-12 districts, eleven (of twelve) CESAs, several institutions of higher education and several related companies interested in supporting rural schools in the state. The Dean of the college serves on the WIRSA Board of Directors , the college hosts (with the assistance of UW Oshkosh's Integrated Marketing & Communications Division) the WIRSA website. The Dept. of Special Education is developing several programs to assist Wisconsin rural schools through teacher professional development. 
• In collaboration with CESA 3, 5, 6 and 7, co-sponsored the third WIRSA K-12 rural education symposium in Wausau, WI. 
• In order to assist rural districts in Wisconsin attract special education teachers, where there is a chronic and deep shortage, and with the assistance of the superintendent of the Plymouth School District and the Dean/CEO of UW-Sheboygan, in Fall 2010 we developed the early stages of a broad collaboration to house an off-campus degree and licensure program in special education in Plymouth, WI. As we moved into Spring 2011, so too did the collaboration expand to cover the area of eastern Wisconsin bordered by the now four UW Colleges involved; Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Fond du Lac and Washington County. Additionally, at least ten school districts in the region have signed on to be involved in hoisting field and clinical experiences for the students and the UW Colleges System and Extension has agreed to help support the program through online and distance education methods. The goal is to pilot this collaboration, and if successful, expand it into at least six more UW College areas across the state over the next several years. 
• Although not strictly a rural school program, the "Add-On Licensure Program" mentioned in the first section, was developed in concert with a number of school districts whose feedback underscored the need for such a program and whose outstanding support helped DPI approve its initiation in Fall 2010. The program offers a clean, job-based process for adding additional teaching licenses in Wisconsin. For rural schools particularly, this allows schools and districts significantly increased scheduling and hiring flexibility. 

Collaborations with Other Educational Agencies 

• The college continues to work closely with CESA 6 to develop programs to improve teacher effectiveness, training and advanced licensure. This effort has engendered additional collaborations and exploratory meetings with other CESA offices; specifically CESA 3, 5, 7 and 9. 
• As in the past four years, the Dean and the Special K-12 Projects Director hit the road to conduct the COEHS K-12 Summer Tour, visiting 30-plus school districts in the northeast Wisconsin region, multiple CESA offices and a number of UW College campuses. The purposes of the tours remains to create and sustain educational relationships, support programs, determine licensure and other issues and determine status and future of joint projects. 
• Continuing to assist CESA offices in the development of new programs to benefit teachers and schools; creating opportunities for projects with individual schools ranging from workshops, courses, degree to certificate programs, assistance in cultural and curricular changes around issues, such as adaptation to ELL demographics, RtI, inclusion, increasing reading and literacy, STEM issues and working together to better understand current shifts in teaching and teacher education from a PK-16 perspective. 

Diversity Initiatives 

Goals: 

In keeping with the college's strategic operational plan, programs need to be developed to involve our students in more diverse settings, increased emphasis being placed on preparing our graduates in multiple issues of diversity through courses and field experience on ESL, RtI and Special Education, and more initiative to occur in working collaboratively with school districts and other educational agencies to enhance our regional impact concerning these issues. 

1. The Reading Department, at the request of the College of Menominee Nation, developed an advanced DPI reading license program (316) for tribal and local teachers and is teaching through a combination of blended and local access classes. 
2. In the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the Early Childhood program with assistance from the college has continued its annual spring program of taking students interested in that licensure and major to inner city areas of Milwaukee Public Schools so our students can experience the issues of teaching and working in an urban environment, expose our students to issues of ethnicity and poverty as they play out in a classroom setting. This program continues to be of significant interest and value to our students. 
3. The Office of Field Experience continues to offer our student teachers several options for placement sites that enhance their experience, specifically around diversity and culture. These are the Tribal Schools teaching experience and the Urban Institute sponsored by a partnership with UW System and Milwaukee Public Schools. The college has been encouraging and assisting students in these two program sfor many years. 
4. Throughout the 2010 – 2011 academic year, several of the faculty in the Educational Leadership Program (Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership) have been working with the Ashwaubenon School District, at their request, to assist teachers in increasing their understanding of cultural shifts and its impact on student learning and how the use of culturally relevant pedagogy can assist a district in adaption to cultural change. 
5. Project Estrella, a five year federal (DOE/OELA) grant held by two faculty from the college, has continued to prepare teachers in the region for working through ESL and Bilingual licensure, assisting teachers and students in local schools manage linguistic/cultural differences in learning, and sponsoring the 8th Annual ELL conference on language and culture. 

Other Program Initiatives 

Goals: 

To further the college's ability to assist local, regional and state school districts through enhancing student learning with better prepared new teachers and working with districts and CESAs expanding teacher effectiveness through collaborative programs of professional development. Additionally, to expand the impact on our region of the college's human services leadership program through increased and more effective collaboration with regional non-profit agencies. 

1. Received approval from UW System to plan for the development of a new graduate degree; the Transnational Human Services Leadership Master's. The program would be entirely online, targeting potential students nationally and internationally. The Human Services Leadership program has been investigating such a program for a number of years and is hopeful of beginning to market the program by Fall 2012. 
2. In order to enhance agency relations locally and in the college's region, the Human Services Leadership faculty (Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership) worked closely this year with local nonprofit agency administrators and site internship supervisors to completely redesign their field experience assessment process to gain the insights of students and site administrators as well as college supervisors in a more comprehensive system. This quickly provided baseline data to support the need for the MS program currently being considered by UW System (see above). Additionally, they developed new advising and explanatory materials for both students and site personnel. Lastly, they began a more aggressive marketing campaign to bolster student enrollment and increase their brand in preparation for the MS degree. 
3. The Human Services Program has had a five year collaboration with the LLCE (CNL) Division on the UW Oshkosh campus that developed and has been offering a four year completely online bachelor's degree program in Human Services. The program continues to grow its enrollment each year and has been very successful drawing students from Wisconsin and other nearby states. 

Read last year's report.