Dean - College of Education & Human Services

Dr. Frederick Yeo

Dr. Yeo completed his undergraduate degree in 1970 in biology at the University of California in Riverside, worked in banks in the Los Angeles area for several years, acquired a law degree and practiced in Southern California. In 1986, he became a science teacher in an inner city South Los Angeles middle school and acquired his teaching credential through Chapman University in Orange, California. In 1991, Dr. Yeo was accepted into the doctoral program in Cultural and Social Foundations of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, graduating in 1993. In July 2005, after teaching in upstate New York, and at Southeast Missouri State University, where he also served as a Department Chair for five years, he came to Oshkosh as the Dean of the College of Education & Human Services.

Most of Dr. Yeo’s teaching, as well as his scholarship, before moving into higher education administration was in foundations of education, particularly social, historical and multicultural aspects of American education. Additionally, he taught graduate courses in Curriculum Theory, Higher Education Administration, and School Law. Dr. Yeo’s research and writing has been grounded in examining the social milieu and purposes of American education through the lens of a critical theorist centered on issues of sociocultural and educational change in both inner city and rural school settings. His focus has been the role of schools, in both settings, in perpetuating the margins of American culture. That background and his increasing concern for and interest in the role and future of American public higher education, specifically teacher education, in that focus has led to his current position here at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

As an administrator, Dr. Yeo has chaired a 20+ member department, including through NCATE and Missouri state continuing accreditation, and created and administered one of the largest alternative education programs in the Midwest with over 400 active students at its largest. In July 2005, Dr. Yeo was appointed Dean of the College of Education & Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the largest of the comprehensive universities in the University of Wisconsin System. The College has six departments plus four service or resource centers including a large Head Start office (10 centers and 4 counties). Along with normal administrative functions, his primary areas have been the deep redesign of curriculum and programs, the systematic development of outreach and virtual programs and development and maintaining of broad-based linkages between the department or college and local area K-12 systems.