Social Foundations alumni newsletter 2015

SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS of Education SUMMER 2015

Curry Magazine Features SF Alumni Last December in an article titled “The Big Picture Perspective” the Curry Alumni Magazine explored the broad applicability of a Curry School master’s degree in social foundations and featured the following alumni:

• Bill Putnam (M.Ed. ’11) • Celia Alicata (M.Ed. ’11) • Katie Zapko (M.Ed. ’08) • Vivian Awumey (M.Ed. ’09) • Rob Goldsmith (M.Ed. ’14) • Karen E. Gardner (M.Ed. ’02; Ed.D. ’06)

• Angela Tessier (M.Ed. ’13) • Lindsey Jones (M.Ed. ’13) Read the complete article online at curry.virginia.edu/magazine/2014/12/ big-picture-perspective/

Tradition and Change

Social Foundations and the 21st-Century University

BY DERRICK ALRIDGE

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ow does the area of study Social Foundations, what we often call the “humanities in education,” navigate the 21st-century university? With a rich history dating back to its origins at Teachers College in the 1930s and 1940s, the field of Social Foundations began with the purpose of educating teachers about the history and philosophy of education. Since then, it has evolved to include a multiplicity of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, religious studies, politics, and comparative and international studies. In this way, Social Foundations is both disciplinary and interdisciplinary in nature.

When transformative changes occur in American higher education, questions arise about the importance of the humanities in the curriculum. Over the past several decades, Social Foundations has addressed these questions of relevance by arguing that teachers and educators are thinkers and intellectuals as well as practitioners who benefit from Social Foundations’ humanistic grounding in the vocation of teaching and the field of education. Social Foundations at Curry has a rich history of humanities research and training, and we have maintained our disciplinary and interdisciplinary commitment to the study of ideas and culture in education.

As higher education and academia continue to evolve, we will hold steadfast to our traditions while evolving with the 21st-century university. We are excited about our future, and several new initiatives reflect our commitment to tradition and enthusiasm to evolve.

Please allow us to share very briefly a few new initiatives: Apprenticeship Model of Doctoral Training

Across the US, the training of doctoral students has changed dramatically over the past two decades. Doctoral programs are increasingly moving toward an apprenticeship model of training that provides students with an individualized course of study and the ability to develop strong research skills to meet their academic goals and aspirations. A staple in the social sciences, the apprenticeship model prepares and socializes students for research and teaching positions by giving them one-on-one mentorship. We believe this new approach will provide our doctoral students with a more meaningful graduate experience and make them very competitive for positions in academia and educational policy arenas.

Restructure of the M.Ed. Program SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS is edited by Lynn Bell, Director of Alumni Relations, and published by the Curry School of Education, P.O. Box 400268, Charlottesville, VA 22904. Email: lynnbell@virginia.edu curry.virginia.edu/social-foundationsnewsletter

This fall, our M.Ed. program will offer more flexibility for students on and off Grounds.

Three core courses will be offered online, and students may take electives in the online M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction. This model preserves Social Foundations’ commitment to the humanities while providing practice-based electives for teachers and other educators. The restructured program will appeal to students with busy schedules and help Social Foundations extend its reach beyond Charlottesville and Falls Church to serve a larger portion of the Commonwealth.

Global Studies in Education Undergraduate Minor

Our Global Studies in Education minor enrolls 20 students. Over the next five years, we hope to double enrollment and establish the minor as a marque program for Social Foundations. We are diligently developing new courses in the minor, introducing students from the College of Arts and Sciences and other units to Social Foundations, and collaborating with the Youth and Social Innovation program in the Curry School to enhance our minor. It is our hope to build a stronger undergraduate presence in Curry and across the University. More to come soon.

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Doctoral Research

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ver the past few years, our doctoral students have been doing great things inside and outside the classroom. From various walks of life, they serve as teachers, administrators, professors, and scholars. This year, we would like to feature recent graduates and current students to provide a sense of the groundbreaking scholarship our doctoral students are doing. This feature is by no means complete. We will showcase more students in the years to come.

Carmen Foster completed

her education doctorate in spring 2014.

Her research investigated events and perspectives leading to school desegregation in Richmond from the viewpoints of black parents, educators and children who pioneered the effort. She leaned heavily on Richmond’s black weekly newspaper, the Richmond Afro American, as well as oral history interviews and records from the Library of Virginia and the Richmond School Board to guide her investigation.

“The cultural and historical value of black segregated schools is often ignored or dismissed in the quest for educational equity,” she says. Yet, these schools formed a nurturing web between schools, communities, churches, neighborhoods, and families to promote racial uplift, achievement, and self-determination.”

She found that in Richmond several black schools had faculties with more graduate degrees than their counterpart white schools.

As well, desegregation was as much of a complicated challenge for blacks as for whites, but for different reasons.

Richmond’s story, she says, has particular nuances and circumstances that are quite different from Prince Edward County in Virginia, yet both stories are significant to understanding school desegregation and how the impact of that past still affects school dilemmas today.

This research provides a cultural and historical framework for present day educators who serve populations like Richmond, which are overwhelmingly black and in economically distressed, urban environments. It has been an impetus for bridge building, she says.

“I’m eager to spawn fresh insights from Richmond’s past to spark courageous conversations and new possibilities for Richmond’s future,” Foster adds.

She serves as an adjunct faculty/facilitator at the Federal Executive Institute for leadership development training for federal executives and is involved in a variety of other local initiatives.

Chrissie

Monaghan

completed her Ph.D. this past spring and graduated in May. Her research reconstructed and comparatively analyzed the contemporary histories of education in Kenya’s Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in the post-Cold War era.

“I sought to understand and explain continuity and change in education policies and programming for refugees to help consider differently a question that has been asked again and again without answer: What constitutes relevant and appropriate education for refugees—especially those who spend the majority of their lives in camps?”

Monaghan found that despite shifts and changes to policies and programs for refugee education in the last twenty years the challenges of refugee education have not fundamentally changed. More than 50% of primary-schoolaged and 90% of secondary-school-aged refugees remain out of school.

Those who complete secondary school and the few who pursue higher education are limited to employment in the camp with UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, working for about $100 per month. This salary is a fraction of what national staff members earn, despite refugees having the same qualifications.

More broadly, the persistent challenges of refugee education indicate that in a supposedly global era, the nation-state is still very determinative in all aspects of life, ranging from what people study to where people travel and how people pursue employment opportunities.

Monaghan is a lecturer in International Education at New York University and is working on a consultancy with UNICEF on peacebuilding education programs for youth in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp and in Ethiopia, drawing implications from her research for current education policies and programs.

Chenyu Wang is a student

conducting fieldwork in Dazeng Village, Henan Province, China, this summer.

“As an educational anthropologist, I am always interested in different interpretations of a phenomenon informed by distinct cultural logics,” she says. “Currently, ‘global citizenship’ and ‘global citizenship education’ have become catch phrases not only in the US but also in China. Therefore, I am eager to learn about ways in which Chinese students interpret and express their own global citizenship, if any, through doing development projects.”

She believes her project has the potential to construct a model of global citizenship sensitive to cultural differences. This model would support global educators in designing programs that make use of the diverse perspectives of a wide range of students rather than limiting themselves to American students.

Joshua Brown is a student in the data analysis and writing stage of his research on eight private religious colleges in the US and their market-based practices from 2000-2014.

His study asks two questions: “How and why did particular religious organizations give greater attention to a market-based strategy of higher education?” and “What effects or consequences did changes in attention to market pressures have on individuals within the organizations and how did they navigate the organizational change?”

Brown examines colleges that have one dominant source of revenue: student enrollments. In addition to contributing to the research on the market-based practices in higher education, this project shifts the focus of the study of religious colleges from belief to behavior and highlights how the institutional logic of religion interacts with other organizational logics, such as the market, state, or professions.

Read more about each of these four research projects at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter 2

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Education and Influence Faculty Research Spotlight: Rachel Wahl

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achel Wahl joined the Social Foundations faculty as an assistant professor in fall 2014, coming to the Curry School from New York University, where she received her Ph.D in 2013 and worked as a research scientist. She was also a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University.

Wahl is interested in how ideas and ideals spread through education and advocacy, particularly in regard to state and civil society efforts to influence each other.

“My focus has been on how learners’ implicit philosophical beliefs about morality, justice, and human nature inform their responses to educators’ efforts to change their views and behavior,” she says.

Her dissertation research, which was published last November in Law and Society Review, examined how state actors who are accused of violating human rights understand their actions and how their perceptions inform their responses to educational interventions and activism. It was based on twelve months of fieldwork with police, paramilitary, and military officers who were participating in human rights education in India.

“I examined officers’ beliefs about why they use torture, the values and perceptions that inform their beliefs, and the meaning of these views for how they respond to human rights education and activism,” Wahl explains. “I argue that without understanding violence from the moral perspective of the perpetrators, educational interventions are unlikely to succeed.”

She is currently writing a book that expands on the findings of this research, while she also conducts two new studies in US contexts.

She recently completed data collection on a study that examines change taking place in New York state teacher preparation programs, where reforms driven by federal Race to the Top funding affect the ways teacher candidates are assessed (specifically, via an assessment called “edTPA”).

Wahl’s analysis seeks to discover how faculty members respond when state requirements prompt them to change their curriculum and what factors incentivize change even when reforms conflict with professors’ long-held philosophies about teaching.

“Initial results indicate that many faculty disagree with the substance of Race to the Top reforms and are concerned about their effect on teacher preparation,” Wahl says. “But these principled beliefs are trumped by another: their belief that they have a responsibility to help candidates succeed.”

Since the first of this year, she has also been examining an initiative of an American police department to foster positive relationships with African American residents through community forums. She is observing the forums and interviewing both community members and police officers about their reactions to the events and perspectives about what factors enable and inhibit success.

Read more about Wahl’s research in India at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter

Thank You! The Curry School Foundation recognizes the generosity of the following alumni from the Social Foundations program who have made donations so far in fiscal year 2015: Nancy Berg Carolyn Bertke Judith Bowns Claire Bradshaw Maureen Brain Patricia Brennan Carolyn Curtis Dan Driscoll Lucy Neale Duke Cathy Eberly Richard Ewing Julie Futch Kathleen Gray Pat Griffin Alison Houser Wendy Huber Lucy Johnson James Kim Ann Klunder James La Prad Tamara La Prad

Kristen Lochrie William McDermott James Ngundi Ellen Ramsey Christine Reed Marian A. Robinson Susan Robinson Diane Runnels Sharon Shaffer James Shannon Karen Siple Patrick Slebonick Kenena Spalding Beatrice Sparling Mike Terry Everett Vaughn Nancy Vogt Bill Wendle

These gifts directly benefit Curry students and the quality of their educational experiences. Your support is very much appreciated!

2015 Curry Foundation Award Congratulations to doctoral student Chenyu Wang, recipient of the Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. Scholarship, which was established by donors to the Curry School Foundation in honor of a beloved Curry professor.

Wang also received funding this year from U.Va.’s Center for Global Innovation and Inquiry and a Clay Endowment from U.Va.’s Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures for her dissertation field research.

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Social Foundations Alumni Newsletter P.O. Box 400268 417 Emmet Street South Charlottesville, VA 22904-4268

CLASS NOTES Barbara Conner (M.Ed. ’05) is Director of

College Counseling at Foxcroft School, a collegepreparatory girls’ boarding school in Middleburg, Va. ... “My article, ‘Five First-Choice Colleges’ appeared in the spring 2015 edition of the The National Association for College Admission Counseling’s Journal of College Admission.”

Todd Gambill (M.Ed. ’99 Soc Fdns; Ed.D. ’03 Higher Ed) serves Indiana University Kokomo as the

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management.

Julia Habel Thompson (M.Ed. ’87) retired from teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School two years ago, where she was honored on two occasions as a Highly Effective teacher at the Kennedy Center.

“Since then, I have moved on to teach AP English, Honors 10 English, and ESL at Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, a lovely ‘retirement’ job. ...I hope to return to Siberia to teach once I ‘fully retire’ and once the 14+ hours a day it takes to teach six classes becomes too much.”

Anne C. Hayes (Ph.D. ’12) is Dean of Institutional Effectiveness and Special Projects and the Coordinator of Campus Within Walls at Southside Virginia Community College in Keysville, Va. “Our Campus Within Walls program is an important facet of Southside Virginia Community College’s mission.

We believe that all citizens should have educational opportunities, and that includes incarcerated people in our service region...”

Sue Ellen Henry (Ph.D. ’96) was recently promoted to full professor and just finished her first of a three-year term as the director of the Teaching and Learning Center at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn. She wrote Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class (Palgrave Press, 2014).

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Submit your class note at curry.virginia.edu/classnotes/submit Whit Mayberry (M.Ed. ’14) was one of four stu-

dent-athletes from the Virginia baseball team earning spots on the 2014 All-ACC Academic Baseball Team.

He worked in 87 games in his U.Va. career, which is sixth most in program history. Mayberry was one of 30 baseball nominees for 2014 Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award. He was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the 21st round of the 2014 MLB Draft.

William McDermott (B.S.Ed, ’72 , M.Ed. ’76)

and mate-for-life Janet Maupin recently celebrated their fifth anniversary. “All is well (just a bit behind schedule) at our Madison County farmette, where Janet is a bee keeper — keeping all our family members supplied with natural raw honey.”

Meghan O’Leary (M.Ed. ’08) never joined the rowing team while she was a student-athlete at the University of Virginia from 2003 to 2008. She traded softballs for oars on a whim a couple of years after graduating. Now she’s a winner on the water and a 2016 Olympic hopeful in the women’s double sculls.

O’Leary was honored for National Girls and Women in Sports Day at the Cavalier women’s basketball game on Jan. 25, 2015.

Ellen Ramsey (M.Ed. 2000) works as the Institutional Repository/Libra Librarian at the U.Va. Library.

Douglas David Ready (M.Ed. ’97) was named among 200 university-based education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. He appeared for the first time in the prestigious 2015 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, coming in at 195th. Ready is an associate professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Scott Richardson (M.Ed. ’92) is an Education Specialist for the Bureau of Land Management, US

Department of the Interior, where he develops middle school teaching guides about public lands and BLM resource topics such as wilderness, habitat, and renewable energy.

Larry Rowley (M.Ed. ’95 Soc Fnds; Ph.D. ’99 Higher Ed) is a faculty member in the Department of

Afroamerican and African Studies and Academic and Research Program Office for Diversity and Mentoring in the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. He received the 2015 Faculty Cornerstone Award at the university’s Black Celebratory event during commencement. The award is given to faculty who have demonstrated exemplary commitment to the success of African American students at the University of Michigan.

George W. Seals, Jr. (M.Ed. ’00) and his wife, Laura, welcomed a son, Tyler McClelland Seals, in June 2014. He joins big brother George W. Seals III, 2.

Cherish S. Skinker (M.Ed. ’10, Soc Fdns; Ed.S. ’12 Admin & Supv) works for the Virginia

Department of Education as a School Improvement Coordinator. “I am faculty at James Madison University, as the University is the agent for the program. I am over-the-moon! I could never have done this without all of the support and knowledge that I gained through Curry Social Foundations program.”

Vera Woodson (M.Ed. ’03) educator, business woman, now novelist, has authored a young adult novel to chronicle the greatest contemporary love story never told: Scattered Shells: Hello Homecoming (Mascot Books). Prior books include Lady Bug, Beetle Boy, and Friends: Bullies Be Gone!

Read more. Some class notes were abbreviated due to space limitations. You can read the full versions, including photos and fond memories, at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter