Michigan Education Magazine Spring 2023

“Ultimately, we are investing in what we believe in, and that’s the U-M school of Education.”

Kathleen Marsal on the Marsal family’s transformational investment in the future of education

We have many accomplishments to celebrate, important milestones to mark, and momentous news to share with you in this issue of MichiganEducation.

In February, the family of Kathleen and Bryan Marsal and their children, Megan Marsal Kirsch and Michael Marsal, committed a historic and transformative gift of $50 million to the school. To honor this commitment, the Regents of the University of Michigan voted to recognize the Marsal family’s service and cumulative giving of over $55 million by naming the school in their honor: The Marsal Family School of Education (Marsal Education, for short).

With two generations of education alumni in the family, the Marsals have long been advocating for our mission and vision while generously creating opportunities through their giving. They are passionate about our community’s role in meeting the urgent need for highly qualified educators, designing just and equitable systems of education, and producing widely accessible research that informs policy and practice.

Over the next several years, the Marsals’ recent gift will help us recruit and prepare teachers, launch a new undergraduate degree program, and expand our partnerships with public schools, especially our Detroit P-20 Partnership at Marygrove—efforts the Marsals have championed for years. Most of their gift will be invested in the university’s endowment, which means that 98 years from now—in 2121, when the school celebrates its bicentennial—this gift will continue to be a major resource pillar supporting the students and initiatives of a school we cannot yet imagine.

We received more exciting news this year when U.S. News&WorldReport released the 2023–24 ranking of the best education schools, ranking the Marsal Family School of Education #1 in the nation. Additionally, all Marsal programs for which U.S.News&WorldReport establishes specialty area rankings are in the top 10. We are particularly honored to be recognized by our peers in the survey that contributes to the rankings. Many of the attributes that are meaningful to our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and partners—such as our engagement with public scholarship and our commitment to diversity, inclusion, justice, and equity—are not explicitly represented in the ranking process. Nevertheless, they are qualities that distinguish us and that attract dedicated students from around the world, which has an overall impact on the rankings.

This spring, we reached a joyous milestone as the first class of seniors from The School at Marygrove (TSM) graduated. The Marygrove Learning Community is vibrant as children and youth fill the Early Education Center and the elementary and high schools. As those schools have grown, so has the Michigan Education Teaching School. This past year, our first teaching resident to complete the three-year program became the Chief of Residents; in addition, seven teaching residents worked on the campus as full-time, certified teachers (including the first elementary teaching residents), and teaching interns had new opportunities for embedded teacher education. The implementation and growth of the teaching school model is a credit to the attending teachers, mentors, residents, and interns at Maygrove who are dedicated to both chil-

dren’s rich and robust learning and to shaping this new approach to teacher preparation. Also worth noting: TSM Elementary has a waiting list for every grade level (K-3) in the 2023–2024 school year!

The Marygrove community will continue to grow as U-M first-year students join the campus in 2024 as part of the Bachelor of Arts in Education program called Learning, Equity, and Problem-Solving for the Public Good, or LEAPS. By combining innovative coursework with engaged real-world and projectbased experiences, LEAPS students will gain an understanding of how people and communities learn. Students will apply this knowledge in hands-on settings to promote collaboration, develop innovative solutions, and make real-world contributions to the ongoing work of partners across Detroit. If you know a first-year student interested in education—either in teaching or in other dimensions of education—please send them to our website.

The Marsal Education community is proud to honor Alicia Cortez and Laura Rendón as DistinguishedAlumni Awardrecipients and Jessica Cañas as this year’s EmergingLeaderAlumniAwardrecipient. These three alumnae share how their professional commitment to education access grew out of personal experiences that informed how they recognized and worked to ameliorate opportunity gaps for students and communities.

In the fall, we celebrated the launch of a full-day, open educational resource curriculum for children from birth through age eight called GreatFirstEight Over the course of several years and with significant grant support, Dr. Nell Duke convened a diverse group of national experts to create this research- and standards-aligned curriculum designed specifically for use in classrooms that serve children from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. (The curriculum is in use at the Marygrove Early Education Center.)

We are beyond grateful to the donors who support our students, faculty, and initiatives across the school. We are pleased to share some of their stories in each issue of MichiganEducation. As dean, it is my privilege to speak directly with the people, families, and organizations who invest in us. I am invariably inspired by the personal motivation behind giving.

As we build on the tremendous momentum of the past year, we look forward to seeing new efforts come to fruition. With the dedication and creativity of the Marsal Education community, the brilliance of our partners, and the generous investment of our supporters, we are a highly dynamic school moving urgently and conscientiously where the greatest challenges in education take us. ■

Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje addresses the Marsal Family School of Education community during a visit from President Santa J. Ono.

Dean

Elizabeth Birr Moje

Editor

Danielle Dimcheff

Writers

Jeanne Hodesh

Chris Tiffany

Design

Savitski Design, Ann Arbor

Hammond Design, Ann Arbor

We invite you to join the conversation by submitting ideas for future issues, letters to the editor, and class notes. soe.umich.edu/magazine

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Anoteoneditorialstyle:TheMarsalSchool strivestoestablishconsistencyacross materialsanddocuments,however,we acknowledgethatterminologyandstylingare personal.Wemaketheintentionalchoiceto honorthepreferencesofthesubjectswhoare interviewed for articles and we wish to accommodatethosepreferenceswherepossible.

The Marsal Family School of Education

a transformational investment in a bold vision for the future of education

The Marsal Family School of Education Takes a New Leap into Undergraduate Education

a new major called Learning, Equity, and problem solving for the public good (LEaps) will create learning leaders equipped to tackle the largest—and most pressing—issues we face

Meet the 2022-23 Alumni Award Recipients

Emerging Leader and distinguished alumni awards recognize Marsal school alumni who exemplify the school’s mission in the work they do every day

Making the First Eight Great

nell duke and her team design the first comprehensive full-day curriculum for children ages 0-8 with attention to academic and socio-emotional development

The Michigan Education Teaching School

an innovative approach to teacher education delivers on its promise

Left and above: President Santa Ono visited Greg Dooley’s class, The History of College Athletics, to give his first guest lecture in a U-M course.

Newly inaugurated U-M President Santa J. Ono visited the Marsal School to meet faculty and staff and share his vision for the campus community.

Top Students in the Teacher Education Preferred Admit (TEPA) program took a break from preparing for finals to enjoy refreshments, games, and conversations with faculty at the annual TEPA Fall Fest.

Above At the Empowered Learning Design Jam, students worked in small, interdisciplinary teams to develop ideas in which technology and other tools could be leveraged to support teachers and students as they continue transitioning back to in-person learning. The design jam was sponsored by The James

Above Dean

and Jennifer Randall, Dunn Family Endowed Professor of Psychometrics and Test Development, shared a moment after Randall delivered the 2023 Frank B. Womer Lecture, “Let’s Talk About Race(ism): Recognizing and Disrupting White Supremacist Logics in Our Assessment Practices.”

Above Batul Abdallah chats with students over cider and doughnuts.

A. Kelly Learning Levers Prize competition.

Moje

Above At the annual Hail Yeah! event, current students wrote personal thank you notes to Marsal School alumni who donated $50 or less in the last year.

Left CREATE Center’s Youth-Engaged Research Symposium highlighted the work of youth-engaged research teams who are investigating pressing issues of education justice.

right Youth researchers from the Detroit-based education justice organization 482Forward presented at the Symposium.

Above Judah Doty, CSHPE master’s student, led a workshop for young learners at the 25th annual MLK Children and Youth Program.

The Marsal Family s c hool of Education

a transformational investment in a bold vision for the future of education

In the quest for a just and equitable society, education stands as a cornerstone, empowering individuals and bridging the gaps that divide us. However, despite the widespread recognition of education’s importance, the expertise and dedication of educators often go undervalued. Kathleen Marsal (ABEd ’72, TeachCert ’72), along with her family—Bryan (BBA ’73, MBA ’75), Michael (BBA ’10, La Salle University), and Megan Marsal Kirsch (ABEd ’14, TeachCert ’14)—believes that access to quality education is the key to success in life, and that its absence breeds conflict and perpetuates inequality.

“People say ‘Well, of course we want a quality education for all children,’” says Kathleen Marsal. “The key to having success in life is to have an education and you access quality education by having strong teachers. But too many people don’t value the expertise of educators. We hear people say ‘Why would you want to be a teacher?’ even as they focus much of their effort on attaining a great education for their own children.”

The Marsal family’s deep commitment to the transformative power of education led them to witness the profound disparities that persist in our society. Determined to effect change, they became tireless advocates for the teaching profession and the vital work carried out by educators. Recognizing the pressing need for a comprehensive and inclusive approach to education, the Marsal family recently made a momentous $50 million contribution. Their historic gift, one of the largest ever made to a school or college of education anywhere in the country, prompted the unanimous vote of the University of Michigan Regents to bestow an enduring honor, naming the school the Marsal Family School of Education.

Humble Beginnings in Homeroom

This story of generosity and impact, however, finds its roots in a humble high school homeroom, situated 40 miles away from Ann Arbor in the suburbs of Detroit during the tumultuous 1960s. Bryan Marsal’s father had been relocated from Louisiana to Michigan by Ford Motor Company, and it was there, in that alphabetical seating arrangement, that he encountered Kathleen McCarthy—a Detroit native who would later become Kathleen Marsal.

The Marsal family committed $50 million to support initiatives to prepare and support a diverse population of teachers, build robust partnerships with schools and communities, and conduct research in collaboration with education practitioners.

and Bryan receiving a bachelor’s and later a master’s degree in business administration. Kathleen was interested in using her degree to teach, but the teaching job market was deteriorating at that time, so she pursued accounting, ultimately becoming vice president and director of taxes at Citibank. In the early 1980s, Bryan co-founded Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm that delivers specialized business advisory and crisis management services to distressed and underperforming companies.

As they built their careers, they also raised their two children, Michael and Megan, in New York.

A Family Affair

Following in the footsteps of her parents, Megan Marsal enrolled at the University of Michigan in the early 2010s. Initially pursuing a path in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts with thoughts of becoming a political science major, Megan’s journey took an unexpected turn when a friend from her residence hall suggested she explore the field of teaching. Guided by her deep-seated passion for working with children, nurtured through experiences as a camp counselor and a dedicated volunteer at the Carver Center in Port Chester, New York, Megan’s interest in the realm of education was ignited.

Bryan and Kathleen attended the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, with Katheen receiving a bachelor’s degree in education and a teaching certificate in addition to completing an accounting program,

Immersing herself in the introductory education coursework, particularly EDUC 118: Schooling and a Multicultural Society— a course crafted by Professor Anne Gere— Megan discovered a transformative approach to learning. This unique educational experience embraced a reflective process that fostered thoughtfulness and

intentionality in shaping one’s own practice. It was an invigorating departure from traditional student experiences, which Megan loved. As the program unfolded, it deepened her passion for teaching.

“The school did a great job of teaching me how to think differently and approach teaching differently by becoming a part of the community I was teaching in,” she says.

After graduating, Megan taught in schools in New York City and Michigan, and earned a master’s degree in early childhood education from Oakland University. She continues to work on early education design as part of Dr. Nell Duke’s Great First Eight curriculum development team.

Sustaining Connection

The strong connection the Marsal family maintained with the University of Michigan took on new significance when the former dean, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, approached them about the School of Education’s efforts to enhance teacher education. For Kathleen, this interaction triggered a reflection on her own experience in the program more than three decades earlier—one that left her feeling ill-equipped and unsupported during her time as a 12th-grade civics student-teacher.

Excited by the advancements made in the school’s educator preparation programs (EPP), Kathleen eagerly joined the dean’s advisory

council. She was captivated by the evolution of the program, which immerses all EPP students in real classrooms right from the start, providing them with extensive supervision and feedback. As teaching interns, these aspiring educators gradually assume greater responsibilities while honing the essential skills required for effective teaching. Students benefit from the mentorship of seasoned teachers, constructive input from their peers, exposure to learning theories and evidencebased teaching practices, and unwavering support from faculty members who bring research into practical application.

Kathleen and Bryan found themselves captivated by the School of Education’s innovative approach to integrating research and practice. They witnessed firsthand the school’s dedication not only to its graduating teachers but also to the communities they served. It became evident to the Marsals that the School of Education was far from being business as usual: it was a place

Back row, from left: Michael Marsal, Bryan Marsal (holding Liam), Tyler Kirsch, and Megan Marsal Kirsch (holding Charlotte); Bottom row, from left: Max Marsal, Alison Marsal, Kathleen Marsal

“We look forward to a day when teachers’ expertise is universally valued and they are respected for their important contributions. This is key to recruiting new teachers and retaining experienced educators.”

Megan Marsal Kirsch

committed to making a lasting impact, and they were eager to contribute to its mission.

Understanding the importance of providing support for education students to thrive, the Marsals chose to invest in areas that would empower future teachers. They established scholarships to assist aspiring educators, ensuring that financial barriers would not impede their journey toward success. Additionally, Kathleen and Bryan recognized the need for comprehensive career support to help graduates navigate the unique landscape of education professions. In 2014, their generous contribution led to the establishment of the school’s dedicated career services office, which aimed to equip graduates with the tools and guidance necessary to excel in their professional lives.

to quality education and impede their opportunities to learn. United by their convictions, they embarked on a collaborative journey to effect meaningful change and create a more equitable educational landscape for all.

“The Marsals have helped us think through many aspects of teacher recruitment from connecting with students earlier in their education journeys to supporting graduates’ growth throughout their careers. They have encouraged us to be bold and ambitious,” says Moje.

In the last several years, the Marsals have been particularly strong advocates for the Detroit P-20 Partnership and its Marygrove Learning Community, together with the firstyear admission route for undergraduates who want to study multiple dimensions of education, especially in the learning sciences. Both initiatives have seen rapid progress and are connected in important ways.

Over the next several years, the Marsal family gift will drive several initiatives that the family has been instrumental in planning and advocating for, including:

Kathleen expressed their intentions: “We wanted to ensure that graduates could apply what they’ve learned and achieve success in their careers beyond the classroom.” By seeding the career services office and providing ongoing support, the Marsals demonstrated their firm belief in the potential of every education graduate, reinforcing their commitment to fostering excellence in the field and empowering educators to make a lasting difference.

When Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje became dean in 2016, Kathleen eagerly embraced the opportunity to extend her involvement as a member of the dean’s advisory council. Marsal and Moje pursued their shared commitment to addressing the pressing challenge of nationwide teacher shortages, along with other issues that undermine children’s access

In 2018, the Detroit P-20 Partnership launched, drawing together Starfish Family Services, the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the Kresge Foundation, the Marygrove Conservancy, and the U-M School of Education. “We are proud that the school works hand-in-hand with a public school to do the most innovative, promising, and exciting work being done in the field of education today,” Bryan says. “They could bring their expertise and resources to bear on curriculum development, teacher training, and program evaluation anywhere but they choose to do it where it matters most and with partners whose values align with theirs.”

The flourishing Marygrove campus is home to The Michigan Education Teaching School, which advances the school’s efforts to prepare future teachers, support earlycareer teachers, and honor the expertise of experienced teachers, while also providing the best possible education for Detroit children. Drawing on aspects of the medical training model that prepares doctors to be physicians, the Teaching School provides the support teachers deserve so that they may persist and prosper in the profession. The Marsals are excited by the early successes of this model, and are eager to see how it evolves and grows to serve many more educators. (See page 24 for an update on the Teaching School.)

■ The launch of the new undergraduate degree that will create novel paths to engage U-M students in education studies

■ The continued expansion of work with the Detroit P-20 Partnership

■ New support for future and early career educators

■ The school’s work to provide a diverse, inclusive, just, and equitable education experience for both university and preK-12 learners

“The Marsals have helped us think through many aspects of teacher recruitment from connecting with students earlier in their education journeys to supporting graduates’ growth throughout their careers. They have encouraged us to be bold and ambitious.”

Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje

In the fall of 2024, the Marygrove community will experience further expansion as incoming U-M freshmen join the campus for a one-year residency as part of an innovative Bachelor of Arts in Education program known as Learning, Equity, and Problem-Solving for the Public Good, or LEAPS (see page 11 to learn about the launch of LEAPS). This development aligns perfectly with the Marsal family’s fervent aspiration for the Marsal Family School of Education to admit first-year students. U-M has enthusiastically approved a groundbreaking proposal for a truly exceptional undergraduate degree, one that delves into the study of education through projectbased, research-enriched, and communityembedded learning experiences in both Detroit and Ann Arbor communities.

A Monumental Gift

As unwavering advocates of the School of Education’s research and teaching endeavors, the Marsal family embarked on a mission to usher in a new era at the institution, embracing a clear vision for the future. During the U-M Board of Regents meeting on February 16, 2023, President Santa J. Ono proudly announced their remarkable gift: “Each of us was a student at one point. All of us are here together thanks to an educator. Someone who saw something special in us, who taught us, who opened our eyes and who lifted our lives. An education is the greatest gift we can give. So I’m so pleased to share with all of you that, thanks to the incredible efforts of Dean Elizabeth Birr Moje, we have received a historic gift for our School of Education. The Marsal family has made a commitment of $50 million, with their total giving to the school exceeding $55 million.”

Expressing gratitude for the family’s exceptional generosity, Vice President for Development Tom Baird commended their tireless advocacy for the school and their previous contributions that supported education students, graduates, and aspiring teachers. “The proposed name [for the School of Education] intentionally represents the whole Marsal family: Kathleen, Bryan, Michael, and Megan. They have all served as tireless advocates for the school with previous gifts supporting education students, graduates, and future teachers.

Their latest $50 million commitment is incredible. It is truly transformational. Naming a school in their honor cannot be a more fitting tribute for their commitment to the School of Education, in particular.”

Kathleen, speaking on behalf of the family, emphasized their hope that society recognizes the crucial role of education in ensuring its survival and promoting equity. They firmly believe that education is a fundamental right and serves as the bedrock for fostering a more equitable society. “Our hope is that all people will recognize that education is crucial for the survival of society. Education is a right and it’s the foundation for equity,” says Kathleen. “We hope to leave an indelible mark on the School of Education, propelling it toward a future where education serves as a catalyst for positive change, equity, and societal well-being.”

unlock their full potential and shape their own destinies. The Marsal Family School of Education stands as a testament not only to their remarkable legacy, but also to our collective responsibility as a society to ensure that education becomes a beacon of opportunity for all. Michael Marsal, Founding Partner of Alvarez & Marsal Property Investments, adds: “We are honored to have this opportunity to be a part of an effort that will be so instrumental in shaping a better path forward for students and educators alike. What’s more, the ability to do so in such a way that uniquely extends beyond the confines of a single institution and its immediate constituents, only adds to the impact of this endeavor.”

As staunch advocates of the school’s research and teaching endeavors, the Marsal family finds inspiration and hope in the people and initiatives of the institution. Their monumental commitment of $50 million will support a range of initiatives aimed at preparing and empowering a diverse population of teachers, forging strong partnerships with schools and communities, and conducting collaborative research with education practitioners. Kathleen eloquently expresses their motive, stating, “Ultimately, we are investing in what we believe in, and that’s the U-M School of Education.”

Megan added that their focus is laser sharp on elevating the role of teachers in bringing about the change they envision: “We look forward to a day when teachers’ expertise is universally esteemed and their invaluable contributions are respected. Recognizing the significance of this perspective in attracting new teachers and retaining experienced educators, our family is dedicated to championing the cause of educators as key agents of transformation.”

A Transformative Future

The Marsal family will continue its transformative journey driven by their unwavering conviction that education holds the key to a unified and prosperous future. Their philanthropic support has established a groundbreaking precedent, highlighting the pressing need to ensure universal access to education, enabling individuals to

Over the next few years, this extraordinary gift will drive a multitude of initiatives that the Marsal family has played a pivotal role in planning and advocating for. These include the introduction of an innovative undergraduate degree program that will offer new pathways for U-M students to engage in the study of education, the continued expansion of initiatives in partnership with the Detroit P-20 Partnership, enhanced financial support for future and early-career educators, and a steadfast commitment to fostering a diverse, inclusive, just, and equitable educational experience for both university and preK-12 learners.

To ensure the sustained impact of their contribution, the majority of the gift will be invested in the university’s endowment, ensuring that current and future generations students will benefit from this extraordinary act of generosity. ■

“We are proud that the school works hand in hand with a public school to do the most innovative, promising, and exciting work being done in the field of education today.”

Kathleen and Bryan Marsal

The Marsal Family sc hool of Education Takes a n ew Leap into Undergraduate Education

What would it look like to reimagine the undergraduate experience from the ground up?

Professors Barry Fishman, Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl, and Associate Dean Kendra Hearn have engaged faculty, staff, and students from across the university in the development of a new undergraduate major. The result is a degree program that provides students with direct research experience and public service, focuses on developing broad and useful skills that can be applied in many different fields, strengthens connections between U-M and Detroit, and builds a living/learning community where students learn both in the classroom and from the world beyond.

This new program—LEAPS—will be offered by the Marsal Family School of Education beginning in the fall of 2024. Learning, Equity, and Problem Solving for the Public Good (LEAPS) is an interprofessional, four-year program leading to a bachelor’s degree in education that prepares graduates to be learning leaders in a world that presents challenges that defy simple solutions. Professors Fishman and Herrenkohl serve as the founding faculty co-directors of the new program.

“LEAPS is fundamentally about learning,” says Fishman. “And what better place to study and talk about learning than a school of education?”

The LEAPS major represents the first time in the school’s history that first-year students will be admitted directly into the Marsal School. Starting with a cohort of 20 and eventually growing to cohorts of 120 students each year, LEAPS learners will spend their freshman year living in dorms and taking classes on the Marygrove Conservancy campus in Detroit. This campus is home to the thriving Detroit P-20 Partnership and its Marygrove Learning Community, a

partnership between the conservancy, Detroit Public Schools Community District, Starfish Family Services, the Kresge Foundation, and the Marsal School. Jay Meeks (AB ’08), an LSA alumnus and a native Detroiter who lives in the Fitzgerald/Marygrove neighborhood, became the first LEAPS Program Manager in September 2022. Undergraduate students will take part in experiential and placebased instruction led by U-M faculty as well as Detroit community members and institutions. The learning experience will prepare students to be leaders, facilitators, and change agents who know how to make progress in the face of uncertainty, working to address persistent social and systemic inequities and knowledge gaps that thwart transformative change at all levels of society.

“For me,” says Meeks, “the excitement about LEAPS is having young people who are passionate about community, cities, and civic engagement working alongside me, my neighbors, and other organizations in the city as we do good and necessary work.”

Learning Leaders

Leaders across a range of industries have cited the need for creative problem solvers. In a world that is grappling with complex societal problems, fields like law, health care, business, education, and policy increasingly seek to recruit individuals who are able to look at problems from multiple angles. Addressing real-world challenges requires thinking across disciplinary boundaries and engaging people, communities, and organizations in a process of learning and collaboration. LEAPS aims to prepare students to do just that.

“A lot of programs focus on knowledge and skills, which are important,” says Herrenkohl, “but we believe that LEAPS will

a new major called Learning, Equity, and problem solving for the public good (LEaps) will create learning leaders equipped to tackle the largest—and most pressing— issues we face

Addressing real-world challenges requires thinking across disciplinary boundaries and engaging people, communities, and organizations in a process of learning and collaboration. LEAps aims to prepare students to do just that.

become known for focusing on wisdom, or how and when to put knowledge and skills to good use in contexts that matter. I think more than ever, at this moment in history, we need people who are able to be human in places where technical skills are absolutely necessary, but not enough.”

Fishman hopes that LEAPS will serve as a lighthouse to inspire other innovative approaches to undergraduate education.

“We look forward to joining forces with colleagues around U-M to help bring transformative change to higher education. We also plan to make the LEAPS program a focus for our own scholarship on teaching and learning in college so we can share what we learn with others who wish to improve undergraduate education.”

What are the features that make LEAPS unique? program & Curriculum Design

The design of LEAPS builds upon decades of evidence from learning sciences scholarship about how people learn. The program was designed from the ground up with participation from U-M undergraduate students including Nando Felten, Darrell Tubbs, and Kingsley Enechukwu, who hail from the greater Detroit area. Felten and Tubbs also participated in several of the semester-long design seminars that included U-M undergraduate and graduate students working together to contribute to key aspects of the LEAPS program including curriculum, assessment, student life, and admissions. “I am excited that LEAPS can help push and shape the landscape of education, to help young students become problem solvers and culturally aware advocates—not just for their own community, but in any field or human endeavor they commit to,” says Felten.

LEAPS will engage students in apprenticeship-based learning through community-based research projects and collaborations from the moment they enter the university, through the completion of a culminating capstone project. Throughout all four years of the program, students will engage in research- and practice-based apprenticeships. Most students will move to the UM-Ann Arbor campus in their second year, while continuing to have experiences in—and build relationships with—the Detroit community throughout their course of study. “An important dimension of the program is community engagement,” says Tubbs. “By involving community members in the program, students will have opportunities to broaden their knowledge of the Detroit community and support the implementation of community-led responses to problems that the system ignores.”

The curriculum consists of courses focusing on how people learn and how to address different kinds of societal questions with a range of research methods. “The focus is on how we answer questions,” says Fishman, “At its core this is what a research university is built to do. But it’s also something that we very rarely teach undergraduates directly. In LEAPS, students engage with problem solving right away. We want students to be able to help organizations answer their questions and make progress on the problems and challenges that they face. That will be a core part of being prepared to participate in the research mission of the university.”

Meeks, who serves on the board of directors of the Marygrove Community Association and helped the organization incorporate as a 501(c)(3), is designing a course to help students understand the history of cities and how they contribute to identity.

“It will provide an introduction to the role of race in the history of U.S. education and policies with respect to community and civic development. Students will also consider how race and social justice shape contemporary issues related to human learning across contexts,” Meeks says. He anticipates having students attend civic gatherings such as city council and community organization meetings to deepen their understanding of civic life in Detroit.

Through their experiences, LEAPS learners will develop skills in a range of key areas, including narrative thinking and interpretation, historical thinking, scientific and computational thinking, and infor-

Residence hall and classroom renderings courtesy of SmithGroup.

mation literacy. LEAPS students will also build skills that contribute to personal good (e.g. self-knowledge and well-being), group good (e.g. communication, leadership, collaboration) and public good (e.g. civic purpose and engagement, intercultural and intergroup engagement, and ethics).

Herrenkohl, who will teach a core course on learning for first-year students, says she hopes the course will be “an invitation for how students will approach the rest of their work in the program.” She anticipates students “developing self-awareness and self-reflection as they watch, listen, and learn from other people across lines of difference such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender to recognize and value critical ways of learning that maybe they haven’t seen before.”

research and reciprocity

LEAPS is designed to enable students to be active participants in the broader scholarly mission of U-M, and at the same time enhance the institution’s capacity to pursue engaged scholarship that advances knowledge and practice. This is especially important in a world where solutions to problems are often ambiguous, and progress requires knowledge and skills from multiple domains. It is also important at a time when the people and communities traditionally served by a public research university increasingly question the value of the institution for their everyday life and future prosperity. Through partnership research, LEAPS aims to help deepen the relationship between U-M and the communities the university serves.

LEAPS’s core principles center diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in ways that are consistent with the mission and vision of U-M’s recent DEI initiatives. The project-based curriculum is designed to engage a range of community members and organizations, including historically marginalized constituencies in Detroit and the surrounding area. LEAPS partnerships will center community members as full participants in knowledge building and in shaping program experiences as key stakeholders through roles such as community educators, scholars, and artists. Community members are and will continue to be invited to learn more about and actively shape the kinds of engaged scholarship pursued by U-M, opening up new pathways for future engagement, including through undergraduate and graduate study with U-M.

“LEAPS creates an opportunity for students to interact with the public not after they’ve graduated, but while they are learning,” says Meeks. “And they’re able to make connections to what philosopher and educator John Dewey calls learning by doing. They’re in a place, and able to apply their learning and ask questions as well. They’re also able to learn alongside the public. I learn something everyday just driving the roads here [in Detroit]. I think the reciprocity of learning and the relevancy of that is the real power of LEAPS.”

Forum

Throughout their time as LEAPS undergraduates, students will participate in Forum, a multigenerational “super homeroom,” as Fishman describes it, that will continue to unify the cohort and provide support among lower- and upper-division students as well as advising support from faculty.

“Forum will be a space where learners are guided to make connections across the variety of experiences they are having inside and outside the classroom” says Fishman.

Herrenkohl discovered how essential intergenerational space was in her former role as faculty lead for a university-community partnership at the University of Washington. “It really allowed students to come into their sense of servant leadership. It also amplified students’ sense of agency and responsibility to one another and the communities where they worked and learned.” Similarly, in Forum, the mix of lowerand upperclassmen will surface different strengths and perspectives.

is designed to enable students to be active participants in the broader scholarly mission of U-M, and at the same time enhance the institution’s capacity to pursue engaged scholarship that advances knowledge and practice.

Learning pathways

In their junior year, LEAPS majors will choose a specialization or preprofessional interest known as a pathway. Pathways are designed to prepare students for particular career paths and/or postgraduate study. Students may choose a pathway from among preset options, or define their own pathway (which other students may follow in the future) with faculty approval. LEAPS faculty will guide students toward professional learning opportunities and courses designed to prepare them for further study or work in their respective areas of interest.

“We will work with students to build the set of experiences they should have in their junior or senior year,” says Fishman. “What are the electives they should take? What internships or volunteer experiences will prepare them for what they want to do after they graduate?”

Pathways are intended to provide the kind of meaningful, deep, real-world preparation that employers and graduate schools value. These kinds of tailored experiences will help LEAPS graduates emerge as transformational leaders who know how to learn, teach others to be learners, and can serve in civic and professional roles.

By

LEAps and Bounds

With the launch of LEAPS, U-M students will learn to think flexibly and broadly to understand issues from multiple perspectives and through multiple lenses. They will be savvy and sensitive about race, culture, community, ethics, policy, and politics. Above all, they will be lifelong learners and learning leaders, skillful in “learning how to learn” and guiding others along pathways to greater understanding as they work collaboratively and constructively on problems of today and tomorrow.

“LEAPS will give undergraduate students a unique understanding of the importance of learning with and from Detroit community members to solve real problems,” says Associate Dean Hearn. “The skills that they will build in so doing will transform them into learning leaders who are able to work effectively across myriad sectors and professions.”

LEAPS is a leap forward for undergraduate education. ■

LEAps

2022-23 Alumni Award re cipients

Jessica cañas, alicia Baturoni cortez, and Laura i. rendón

In 2022, the Office of Development and Alumni Relations established two annual alumni awards: The Emerging Leader Alumni Award and the Distinguished Alumni Award. Each award recognizes the incredible accomplishments of alumni, whether they are newer to their careers, or seasoned professionals.

As a graduate student in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE), Cañas says she was often asked what someone who was passionate about environmental conservation was doing in a program focused on higher education. To many, the connection wasn’t obvious; to Cañas, it made perfect sense.

The Peace Corps program Cañas had embarked on included in-country service as well as graduate studies at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Although her time in Honduras was cut short due to increased violence in the country, she went on to Cornell to complete her coursework. By that point in her academic career, she was used to being the only woman or the only Person of Color in STEM settings, but until then she had always had her family nearby to support her.

“I was working with primarily Students of Color from the southeast side of Chicago, looking at environmental issues in their communities and creating projects to address them. I was also trying to encourage them to go into the sciences. I saw myself in them and I was concerned with what they were going to experience in higher education.”

For Jessica Cañas (AM ’14), her first love will always be nature. Cañas grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, frequenting the museums, botanical gardens, and forest preserves that first awakened her interest in the outdoor world. Her curiosity was further stoked on summer vacations to Michoacán, the region in Mexico where her extended family lives, and where monarch butterflies famously migrate. Her reverence for nature led to a high school internship at Chicago’s Field Museum and eventually to the Peace Corps, where she learned about sustainable agriculture practices in Honduras. Yet what brought her to the University of Michigan wasn’t the sciences: it was pursuit of a degree in higher education.

“I think being away from home really added to those feelings that are very typical for first-generation Students of Color. Feeling unwelcome or unseen, not supported in the way that you need to be. It was a hard time for me, and it was what got me thinking about higher education—how it supports Students of Color, first-generation students, low-income students like myself—specifically in STEM fields. STEM was my passion, and it still is to this day. It was really disheartening to see that I didn’t feel I had the support that I needed in order to finish my degree.”

Cañas left the program at Cornell and moved back to Chicago. She returned to the Field Museum to lead the internship program she had participated in as a high school student.

in 2017, Cañas published the “Little Village College Enrollment report: Where Data Calls for social Change,” a qualitative and quantitative data analysis that shed light on the nuances surrounding the complexity of the transition from high school to college for the community’s Latine students.

One day at work, Cañas found herself seated around a table in a meeting. “We were talking about engaging communities in conservation in Chicago. I was the only Person of Color at the table. I was the only person that was from Chicago. I asked myself what made it possible for me to be part of that table. And the only thing I saw that we all had in common was a college degree. I knew that in order to diversify those tables, we needed to get more Students of Color through higher ed with degrees in STEM so that they could be at the table to represent their communities and their needs.”

Jessica Cañas

The experience galvanized her to apply to graduate school once more—this time to pursue a degree focused on access and equity in higher education.

As a master’s student in CSHPE, Cañas joined a research team where she was introduced to methods of collecting and analyzing data. She learned about critical race theory and student development theory, and was particularly interested in Dr. Tara J. Yosso’s theory of Community Cultural Wealth—the skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and used by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression. She also learned about minority-serving institutions, and wondered if, had she known about such schools when she was applying to college, she might still be in the sciences.

After graduating, Cañas carried her knowledge and experience with her when she took a position as the college pipeline specialist at Enlace Chicago, an organization that serves the primarily Mexican immigrant Little Village community on the southwest side of the city. She focused her work in three areas: partnership building, parental education, and research.

When Cañas’s supervisor Astrid Suarez observed the lack of communication between middle and high school counselors,

the two worked together to build interschool relationships to help ease students’ transitions between grades.

“We know that in order for a student to have a smooth transition from high school to college, they first need to have a strong transition from middle to high school. There’s a lack of communication between those two systems even though they’re part of a bigger public school system. We know that transitions are pivotal for students. Not only is it transitioning from one level of education to another, there are a lot of social and emotional transitions happening. A lot of physical transitions are happening, biological transitions. It’s very easy to lose a student in that.”

Drawing from her CSHPE coursework, Cañas joined Suarez in co-developing a curriculum for Little Village parents called Parent Leaders for College, an eight-month course taught in Spanish covering topics that help parents support their kids as they get into and go through college. In the future, Cañas hopes to convert the course into a community college certificate program so that participants can become certified as parent advisors to help peers navigate the higher education process with their own children.

In 2017, Cañas published the “Little Village College Enrollment Report: Where Data Calls for Social Change,” a qualitative and quantitative data analysis that shed light on the nuances surrounding the complexity of the transition from high school to college for the community’s Latine students. As a community-based organization, Enlace could not access Chicago Public Schools data, so Cañas partnered with a third-party academic institution—the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project—to obtain a quantitative data source. Her partners at

the University of Chicago were “amazed” by how she and her colleagues used the data to look at an entire community. As a result of the report, the To&Through team developed a new digital tool specifically for communities to navigate high school and college enrollment data by Chicago neighborhood.

“The reason why I feel so strongly about community-based organizations doing their own research is because knowledge can be created outside of academia,” says Cañas. “I see doing research as a form of resistance for Communities of Color, so that they can see for themselves the data on their own community.”

“Jessica is a staunch advocate for the inclusion of community voices,” write the CSHPE cohort peers who nominated her for the Emerging Leader Alumni Award. “Her work consistently promotes and embodies diversity, inclusion, justice, and equity.”

After seven years working in the Little Village community, Cañas recently moved into a new position with a citywide agency, Kids First Chicago, to broaden the impact of her work. As a senior manager of community engagement, she looks forward to engaging parents in advocacy so that the policies of the city’s school board reflect their voices. From providing students exposure to the natural world to navigating the world of higher education, Cañas’s thruline remains the same: she pushes for transparency and inclusion every step of the way. ■

“i see doing research as a form of resistance for Communities of Color, so that they can see for themselves the data on their own community.” Jessica Cañas

Top photo: Opatoro, La Paz Girls Soccer Team Cañas organized as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras.

Bottom photo: Opatoro, La Paz International Women’s Day; Planting a tree with women in Opatoro, La Paz, Honduras. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Cañas organized the municipality’s first celebration of International Women’s Day.

2022-23 Alumni Award re cipients

preparing science educators. It was the foundation for everything I’ve done since.”

Along with her cohort, Cortez took specialized classes taught by biology and physics faculty. The program was rigorous. She was introduced to project-based learning, new technology, and innovative software. Sometimes the intensity of it all was tear-inducing. But rather than highlight their own research, or make the courses as hard as they could, the professors “were focused on, and passionate about, education. They wanted us to leave their classes really understanding and loving the material,” says Cortez. The program gave her the confidence to follow her dream of pursuing a career in STEM.

“My job was to build bridges between the technical and the educational sides of NASA to create opportunities, materials, resources, and experiences for students, institutions, and educators,” she says.

Alicia Baturoni Cortez (AB ’95) opens doors. Working on behalf of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, she gives students of all ages a peek into the agency in charge of space exploration. However, she knows from personal experience how important it is not just to hold the door, but to show learners ways forward once they step inside.

Cortez grew up in Livonia, Michigan, the daughter of a father who emigrated from Mexico, and a mother who came from a working-class family in Detroit. Throughout her childhood, her parents emphasized the importance of earning a four-year college degree. “But I didn’t have anyone’s footsteps to follow in,” says Cortez. “I didn’t really get what that meant.”

As a first-generation college student at U-M, she found herself overwhelmed by the magnitude and prestige of the university, and was unsure how to pursue her passion for science. She knew she had to get a job after graduation, but she didn’t know how to direct her interest.

Then she found a program at what was then the School of Education that was recruiting students who specifically wanted to become science teachers.

“Even that long ago—over 20 years—there was a shortage of qualified science teachers. The program was funded by the National Science Foundation to address the need, and to really take a different approach to

Several years into teaching science in the Walled Lake Consolidated School District, Cortez attended a summer professional development workshop hosted by Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. For two weeks, she learned about the technical applications of math and science used by employees who worked there. She was given teaching materials—educator guides, posters, and models—to help explain to her students that the concepts they were learning in class were the same ones NASA used to develop the technology needed for space exploration.

As she toured the center’s labs in awe, filming it all on her camcorder, Cortez thought to herself, This is where I should be.

“U-M set me up for being on the cutting edge, doing the thing that no one else is doing—and here was this whole federal agency that was doing cutting-edge exploration. It was an environment of people who were super passionate about science, but who also cared very much about education and really wanted to do right by educators,” says Cortez. “That led me to seek out more opportunities with NASA.”

Within a few years, she was working as a contractor for NASA, conducting workshops for teachers across the country to help them make connections between what their students were learning and NASA initiatives. Eventually, Cortez transitioned into a civil service role, joining NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement (NASA’s education division), to engage students—from preschoolers through postdocs—in the organization’s mission.

For instance, Cortez partnered with the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate to develop a K-12 curriculum that tells the story of Artemis I, the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the Moon and Mars. As a former classroom teacher, Cortez was well aware of how daunting and time-consuming reading a 60-page educator guide can be. In developing the Artemis I STEM Learning Pathway, her goal was to make the materials as accessible as possible. To disseminate those resources, Cortez deployed a weekly newsletter that reached subscribers located in every U.S. state and over 144 countries around the world.

in developing the Artemis i sTEM Learning pathway, her goal was to make the materials as accessible as possible. To disseminate those resources, Cortez deployed a weekly newsletter that reached subscribers located in every U.s. state and over 144 countries around the world.

“The intention that I started with was meeting teachers where they were at. We really tried to dig through everything that

Alicia Baturoni Cortez

NASA has and find the best resources, so if you got the email on a Tuesday, it would have, say, a four-minute video and a 10-minute activity that you could weave into your lesson plan. We tried to build themes, so that each week, if a teacher had just a few minutes, they could inject Artemis into what they were teaching.”

Cortez was also charged with scaling up an initiative at the Johnson Space Center for community college students from Texas. Although she had plenty of experience providing professional development for K-12 instructors, higher education was a new frontier. She went into research mode, learning everything she could about community colleges and the students they serve.

“I learned that a lot of the students were like myself. They knew they needed to go to college, but they weren’t quite sure what to do once they got there. A lot of them were really interested in STEM, but they weren’t sure how to pursue it. How would it translate into a career?”

Cortez redesigned an experience that would not only open the door to community college students by giving them a positive “behind the scenes” view of what happens at NASA, but also give them a pathway to follow once they stepped across the threshold.

“I wanted to help students see that even though NASA is the gold standard, it doesn’t mean it’s not for you. Anyone who’s interested and passionate not just about STEM, but honestly any field you can think of, there’s somebody at NASA doing that,” she says.

Cortez expanded the initiative to an agencywide program at all 10 NASA centers, now called NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS). After spearheading a new recruitment strategy, NCAS saw a 30 percent increase in the number of students who attended from minority serving institutions. As well, the number of women participants increased by 29 percent, creating a 38.8 percent female to male ratio in the program—exceeding the national average for women in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. In 2021, the program’s success was recognized with a NASA Honor Award Achievement Medal.

In addition to providing access to NASA’s many offerings and opportunities for stu-

cutting edge, doing the thing that no one else is doing—and here was this whole federal agency that was doing cuttingedge exploration. it was an environment of people who were super passionate about science, but who also cared very much about education and really wanted to do right by educators. That led me to seek out more opportunities with nAsA.”

dents, Cortez is just as dedicated to creating an environment of inclusion and equity within the organization. In 2021, as a member of Johnson Space Center’s external relations DEI team, Cortez designed and facilitated the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Learning Challenge for her colleagues. The 10-week challenge grew out of a desire to have concrete, measurable outcomes to accompany the organization’s social justice and inclusion efforts. Thirty percent of the organization registered for the challenge, resulting in over 170 hours of completed coursework. Cortez’s creative design and delivery of DEI activities were recognized with the 2022 Johnson Space Center Director’s Innovation Team Award.

Cortez currently serves as the integration manager for the Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP), which works with students from minority serving institutions. The project’s goal is to remove barriers and create opportunities for learners from communities that have been historically underrepresented in STEM.

For Cortez, encountering NASA for the first time meant she could connect with other “space nerds” who were as excited about teaching as she was. Now, when she meets students who say “This is where I want to be,” she’s eager to show them what’s next.

“For students who traditionally have not seen themselves as people who could be successful in STEM, we’re showing and giving them opportunities to find their space. It’s not just opening the door, but ‘Come in, here’s what I have to show you.’” ■

“U-M set me up for being on the

Alicia Baturoni Cortez

“i wanted to help students see that even though nAsA is the gold standard, it doesn’t mean it’s not for you. Anyone who’s interested and passionate not just about sTEM, but honestly any field you can think of, there’s somebody at nAsA doing that.”

Alicia Baturoni Cortez

2022-23 Alumni Award re cipients

named an outstanding alumna—where she earned an Associate of Arts degree. She transferred once again—this time to the University of Houston, where a friend was attending college. Her mother took the long Greyhound bus ride with Rendón to campus, terrified that something would happen to her. This was the first time any of her daughters had traveled that far away from home.

SiugnitSid

Growing up in Laredo, Texas, a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, Laura I. Rendón looked up to teachers. Along with priests and law enforcement officers, teachers, she says, were some of the few respected professionals visible in the low-income, isolated area where she was raised. But in high school, as a member of Future Teachers of America, she was told by the sponsor of the program to forget her dream of becoming an educator because Rendón had failed chemistry. The sponsor didn’t ask why she had failed. (Rendón had gotten caught in a rainstorm and badly sprained her knee. She couldn’t walk to school for two weeks. When she returned, she was unprepared to take a test.)

“She just assumed that I had failed, and that was it,” says Rendón. “I remember feeling rather sad about that, but something told me just to keep going. And so I did.”

Rendón recently recounted the beginning of her educational career in her autobiography, “A First-Generation Scholar’s Camino de Conocimiento,” published in 2020 in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Immediately after graduating from high school, she enrolled at Laredo Junior College (LJC), the only institution of higher education in her hometown. When she ran out of courses to take at LJC, she transferred to San Antonio College—where she was recently

“In the Latino community, they hold their children very, very close. Sometimes, when you’re the first to go to college, they want to keep you as close as possible. So going to Houston was a struggle,” says Rendón.

It was the height of the Vietnam War. Protests raged throughout the country, she recalls. But when she set foot on the university campus, she was elated.

The friend who encouraged her to join him at school was Raúl Garza. Like Rendón, Garza was a low-income student from Laredo. He loved to collect catalogs from universities across the country.

Rendón was popular with the eighth graders she taught back in her hometown. (As soon as she graduated, her family insisted she return home.) She used music by the Beatles to turn her students on to poetry. She connected literature to contemporary issues. She had her students write and perform their own plays. During those early years in the classroom, she began to gain more confidence, and noticed that people regarded her in the same way she had admired teachers herself when she was a child. In her autobiography, Rendón writes that she could have easily spent her entire working life at that school, but her intuition told her there was something else in store for her professionally.

Interested in psychology, Rendón began taking night classes at Texas A&I University (known today as Texas A&M University-Kingsville), with the aim of becoming a school counselor. But when she graduated with her master’s degree, there were no counseling positions available in the Laredo Independent School District. Instead, Rendón took her first job in higher education at her alma mater, LJC, working as a counselor and teaching psychology. She taught in a Title III program, a learning community of low-income Mexican American students, with an interdisciplinary approach to writing, reading, history, Spanish, psychology, and counseling—all designed to prepare students to transfer. Within a year, she had been promoted to director of the program. At 26 years old, she held the status of department chair.

“Raúl was an inspiration because he totally believed in higher education. He is the reason I went to the University of Houston—because I had a friend there,” says Rendón. “We would talk about our times in Laredo, and what we wanted to be. We also talked about getting doctoral degrees.”

In 1970, Rendón earned her bachelor’s degree, becoming the first in her family to graduate from a four-year college.

“I had successfully crossed the academic border which before had seemed so inaccessible,” writes Rendón in her autobiography.

Each year, faculty from the University of Texas who oversaw a community college leadership program came to LJC to evaluate Rendón’s program. She was proud of her program’s success, which boasted a high retention rate, and always received high marks.

It was through visits with these faculty that Rendón learned about higher education doctoral programs. As soon as she did, she knew that would be her next step. She applied to two programs in Texas, but once again, a test nearly stood in her way. One program accepted her conditionally on account of her low GRE score. However, the University of Michigan offered her a generous financial package and accepted her without condition.

inspired by her personal experience, and the students she met along the way, rendón devoted her scholarship to advocating for students like herself—those who came from low-income backgrounds, first-generation students who she felt had hopes and dreams but often did not know how to realize them.

Laura i . re ndón

“When I opened the acceptance letter [from the University of Michigan], I jumped for joy. I knew my life was about to change,” writes Rendón.

Back at the University of Houston, when she had felt overwhelmed by the challenges of school, and of being a first-generation student, Rendón went to the student union to take solace in listening to music. Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto’s Brazilian bossa nova album featuring “The Girl from Ipanema” and Armando Manzanero’s album of romantic Mexican songs, including “Esta Tarde Vi Lover,” calmed her. Friends like Garza, and later the small but tight-knit community of Latinx students she met at U-M, were instrumental in her student experience.

“Without that support I would not have had a sense of family, and it would have been much more challenging to complete a doctorate,” writes Rendón. Concerned about the lack of Hispanic representation on campus, the community formed an organization, Coalition of Hispanics for Higher Education. Rendón served as president. The coalition lobbied U-M’s president, deans, and director of affirmative action to recruit more Latinx students and faculty.

Inspired by her personal experience, and the students she met along the way, Rendón devoted her scholarship to advocating for students like herself—those who came from lowincome backgrounds, first-generation students who she felt had hopes and dreams but often did not know how to realize them.

In 1994, Rendón wrote the article, “Validating Culturally Diverse Students: Toward a New Model of Learning and Student Development,” in which she established the groundbreaking validation theory. This theory, consisting of six elements, is defined as “an enabling, confirming, and supportive process initiated by in- and

out-of-class agents that fosters academic and interpersonal development.” Validation theory has been used extensively to theoretically frame college and university programs such as the Puente Project (California) and Catch the Next (Texas). The theory has also been employed in student affairs programming, student success programs, research capturing the experience of low-income and first-generation students, and dissertation studies.

Today, Rendón holds professor emerita status at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Her development of validation theory, as well as her book, Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation, represent two scholarly contributions that transformed higher education scholarship on student development as well as contemplative teaching and learning rooted in social justice. Currently, Rendón is Director of Education for the International Society for Contemplative Education. She has given hundreds of keynote addresses, and led workshops and research presentations for national and international colleges and universities, educational organizations, and nonprofit entities. She has held faculty and administrative appointments at a wide range of institutions including the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University, Arizona State University, California State University-Long Beach, Iowa State University, and University of Texas-San Antonio. Along with Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy, she has co-edited nine books and monographs and has an extensive list of scholarly publications focusing on success for underserved student populations. In 2021, Rendón was recognized by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) with the prestigious ASHE Bowen Distinguished Career Award. Her personal archives are a part of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas-Austin, one of the premier libraries in the world focused on Latin American and Latinx Studies.

In 2016, Rendón stepped down from her faculty position at the University of TexasSan Antonio. In part, she says, her choice to retire was driven by a desire to make room for those who will pick up where she left off. Rendón is excited to see the work

of younger colleagues who continue to advance scholarship in her field. In support of their efforts, she established The Laura I. Rendón Dissertation Finishing Grant for Equity and Justice in 2022. The grant provides funding to Marsal School doctoral students in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education who are researching topics related to justice and inequity in American society.

As she likes to tell her friends, “I’ve retired from the university, but I haven’t retired from the work.” Rendón is part of a network of public speakers affiliated with SpeakOut-The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture. She is regularly invited to speak at colleges and universities across the country, as well as conferences and organizational meetings.

rendón is excited to see the work of younger colleagues who continue to advance scholarship in her field. in support of their efforts, she established The Laura i. rendón Dissertation Finishing grant for Equity and Justice in 2022. The grant provides funding to Marsal school doctoral students in the Center for the study of Higher and postsecondary Education who are researching topics related to justice and inequity in American society.

“People are very interested now in how to foster the success of low-income, first-generation students. The research that I initiated such a long time ago is still very, very relevant today. It makes me proud that I’m able to make an impact at this stage of my life, and that people are still open to listening to the messages that I have.” ■

Making the First Eight Great

Nell Duke and her team design the first comprehensive full-day curriculum for children ages 0-8 with attention to academic and socio-emotional development

Professor Nell K. Duke is a Marsal School faculty member and Executive Director of the Center for Early Literacy Success at Stand for Children. She serves as a consultant for a number of education and policy organizations, and as one of the world’s foremost experts in early literacy education, speaks widely on that topic. Her work focuses particularly on children living in poverty, examining issues of equity in literacy education, and bridging gaps between research, policy, and practice in early literacy education. In 2018, Duke was awarded the International Literacy Association’s highest honor, the William S. Gray Citation of Merit, for outstanding contributions to literacy research, theory, policy, and practice. She has been named one of the most influential education scholars in the U.S. by EdWeek, and has been involved in a wide range of initiatives designed to reshape literacy education.

Early in her career, Duke interwove teaching with pursuing her academic degrees—and for the past 24 years has served as a professor of

education and psychology, first at Michigan State University and then at the University of Michigan.

During her more than two decades in the field, Duke, along with her fellow researchers, regularly witnessed a multitude of issues with existing early childhood curricula. “We had seen so many problems in the curricular landscape,” Duke explains, “such as curricula insufficiently informed by research—or not being updated based on new research.

“We’ve seen teachers who are juggling up to eight different curricula over the course of a day,” Duke continues, “curricula that are often not well coordinated. There’s not enough time to do them all justice, so you end up with key content being neglected. We believed that these and other problems could be addressed by an ambitious and well-designed full-day curriculum.”

It was this impulse that led Duke to undertake the mammoth task of creating a comprehensive, full-day curriculum for children from birth to age eight. Beginning with a planning grant from the George Lucas Educational Foundation in 2016, Duke and collaborators, including Dr. Anne-Lise

Halvorsen (AM ’02, PhD ’06)—a University of Michigan alum now at Michigan State University, and Dr. Eve Manz of Boston University, outlined a full-day, project-based curriculum for first grade. “The thinking we did around how to integrate first-grade standards across disciplines helped to inform and accelerate the development of what would eventually become the Great First Eight,” Duke says.

With the groundwork laid and additional philanthropic support from an anonymous donor, Duke teamed up with two of the nation’s leading scholars in social and emotional learning to co-direct Great First Eight (GF8): Dr. Marisha Humphries, a widely published scholar and licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in African American children’s emotional and social competence and the ways schools can support their development in this area, and Dr. Claire Vallotton, whose research, teaching, and service focus on the development and well-being of babies from birth through three years in the context of relationships with their families, educators, and communities. Having a leadership team that focuses on both academic and social and emotional development was intentional and is reflected throughout the curriculum.

In order to develop GF8, Duke, Humphries, and Vallotton assembled a core team of diverse and highly accomplished researchers, practitioners, and advisory board members from around the country, including Halvorsen and Manz, Clinical Professor Debi Khanabis (AB ’98, AM ’99, TeachCert ’99, AM ’06, PhD ’09), and many others. They carefully developed a leadership distribution model that allows for a continuous and seamless transition across the developmental phases as the curriculum for each age group builds upon the last. Within each grade band there are domainspecific leaders who specialize in a particular content area intersecting with a developmental period. The domain-specific leaders oversee the writing of lessons that involve their domain. This model produces developmentally appropriate curricula created by a team of content-expert writers, which has produced a highly efficient curriculum development process. To date, at least 200 individuals have been involved in the GF8 development process.

“There is such great value in developing a curriculum with large and diverse teams of researchers, educators, families, community members, and children,” Duke says. “The curriculum is so much better because of the contributions of people from each of these groups; the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.”

Unlike the vast majority of curricula, which are formulated to be used anywhere with any child, Duke and her team imagined a curriculum designed specifically to build on the enormous potential of children in metropolitan areas—many of whom are affected by structural inequalities. “Because most curricula in the U.S. are intended to be used in classrooms with children of any cultural background, that has meant—in practice—curricula often center whiteness. In contrast,” Duke explains, “Great First Eight is being designed specifically for use in classrooms that serve a number of children from historically underrep resented racial and ethnic groups.”

As one starting point, the Great First Eight team held focus groups with family and community mem bers in communities where they were planning on piloting the program in order to learn what they would like to see in curricula

for their children. “We also incorporate input from the children themselves,” Duke says. “For example, we interviewed kindergartners about things they are most interested in and have used some of the topics they suggested.”

GF8’s four advisory boards, as well as other experts who have been recruited to review specific units, have provided input and feedback throughout the curriculum development process. The team also collects and addresses extensive input and feedback from teachers, coaches, and

“We’ve seen teachers who are juggling up to eight different curricula over the course of a day, curricula that are often not well coordinated. There’s not enough time to do them all justice, so you end up with key content being neglected.” Nell K. Duke

administrators. The feedback from teachers has so far been positive. Seymonnia Cutkelvin, a kindergarten teacher with New York City Schools, noted that “one of the benefits has been seeing kids really grow into an understanding of their own identities and the world and the environment around them,” while her colleague, Cynthia Crespo, enthused that “it got me into my passion again!”

GF8 is being designed to address what Duke and her team have identified as the many limitations of existing curricula, including that:

1. Children often experience radically different curricular approaches each academic year. Children’s kindergarten experiences, especially, may bear little resemblance to their pre-K lives, making an important transition more difficult. Because GF8 is continuous from birth through age eight, it creates a seamless experience in which children’s learning builds on itself year after year.

2. Schools often use different programs for English Language Arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and social and emotional learning (if they use any programs at all for the latter three domains). This creates a school day that is choppy and disconnected, in which transferring learning from one discipline to another is challenging for teachers and students alike. GF8 is being designed with these learning

transfers in mind, and because it is structured to encompass the entire school day, it allows for an integrated experience that is synergistic for children and usable for teachers.

3. Science and social studies are often ignored in grades K-2, especially in metropolitan areas that demand progress on high-stakes tests of ELA and math. GF8’s interdisciplinary nature allows for unprecedented attention to science and social studies. By integrating disciplines across the day instead of maintaining siloed “blocks” of time, the GF8 curriculum is able to maximize instructional minutes and ensure children enter third grade meeting not just the Common Core State Standards for ELA and math, but also Next Generation Science Standards; the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies; and a set of social and emotional learning standards.

4. Many of the curricula currently used are insufficiently informed by research—sometimes considering broad findings, but rarely those of individual studies. GF8 is being purposefully designed to reflect findings from a large number of specific, peer-reviewed studies. The eventual goal is to continually update GF8 so this remains true even as scholarship advances our communal knowledge.

5. Curricula are often not designed to respond to children from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and other marginalized backgrounds. Although no curriculum can guarantee a culturally relevant and sustaining education, GF8 provides teachers with support to leverage the rich cultural practices of children in metropolitan areas. This support includes quality professional learning, educative features in lesson materials, and thoughtful wording that helps teachers guard against potential inequities.

6. Because many curricula don’t do enough to support children’s engagement and agency, GF8 is, first and foremost, respectful of children, ensuring sufficient time for play and nutrition, as well as choices in learning about topics of interest. The project-based nature of GF8 provides authentic, real-world purposes and audiences for children’s work.

losing the ability to respond to specific places, children, cultures, and contexts.” Nell K. Duke

In addition to addressing these limitations, GF8 intentionally promotes diversity, inclusion, and equity. Historical figures, characters, authors, illustrators, musicians, members of the local community, and others featured in the curriculum include a high proportion of people from underrepresented and historically disenfranchised social groups. The curriculum promotes children’s pride in themselves and their families and appreciation for diversity within the classroom.

One of GF8’s key principles is that it is designed to be spreadable and implementable at scale. GF8 core materials, including all unit and lesson plans, are being made available free of charge through greatfirsteight.org . XanEdu, Inc., a provider of education content and curriculum services for K-12 and higher education, is pulling together the physical materials—such as materials for science investigations, books specified for read alouds, and math manipulatives—that the schools need to implement Great First Eight, making them available quickly and efficiently to educators.

“Curriculum must be built to scale,” Duke argues, “without losing the ability to respond to specific places, children, cultures, and contexts.” From the beginning, GF8 has been focused on this task. For example, instead of building professional learning that must be provided by the GF8 team, GF8 features online professional learning modules that can be facilitated locally by central office staff or center staff, instructional coaches, or teacher leaders. Each module has a facilitator’s guide to support local personnel in leading the professional learning. The GF8 website not only houses the curriculum and links to professional learning materials, unit and lesson plans for teachers, assessment resources, and child-facing materials (e.g., visual schedule materials), it also includes hip-hop style phonics songs, family engagement materials, and many other curricular resources.

After more than four years of work, the infant, toddler, and kindergarten components of the curriculum are now complete, including high-quality professional learning modules. The piloting

process for the infant and toddler components included work with the Marygrove Early Education Center. “We are currently piloting the first grade curriculum in classrooms in Taylor and Ypsilanti, Michigan, and through support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the first grade component will be released in 2023,” Duke says. “With support from Stand for Children, we are in the process of writing the preschool and second grade portions, and next year we expect to be piloting them in classrooms in Michigan and California. Initial development of the entire curriculum will be complete in 2025.”

Increasingly, Duke is focusing on implementing the curriculum at scale. The GF8 team is currently selecting a group of schools nationally to be part of what they are calling the “Vanguard Group of implementers.” These schools will be implementing the kindergarten curriculum in ’23–’24, first grade in ’24–’25, and second grade in ’25–’26.

“We hope to raise funds to recruit infant, toddler, and preschool settings in those same communities to implement Great First Eight, so that there are then children who experience the curriculum from infancy through second grade,” Duke says. “Over time, we plan to expand where Great First Eight is used and continue to update the curriculum based on new research and on feedback from sites that are implementing the curriculum. In 10 years, our goal is for the Great First Eight Curriculum to be in wide use in U.S. metropolitan areas for children birth through age eight.” ■

One of GF8’s key principles is that it is designed to be spreadable and implementable at scale. GF8 core materials, including all unit and lesson plans, are being made available free of charge through greatfirsteight.org

The Michigan Education Teaching School

an innovative approach to teacher education delivers on its promise

In the fall of 2019, when the School at Marygrove (TSM) opened the doors to its first class of ninth graders, the Michigan Education Teaching School launched alongside it—with three interns, one resident, and plenty of big ideas for long-term growth.

TSM is in the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), located in northwest Detroit, and the site of the nation’s first Teaching School. The Teaching School, with its similarities to the medical education model of teaching hospitals, is designed to improve the retention of early career teachers by providing additional training and support in their first years in the classroom. The model also honors the complexity of the teaching profession, drawing on the wisdom of experienced educators and the benefits of the collaborative exploration of teaching practice.

“There are a lot of teachers who quit during their first year, or right after their first year, because it’s so hard,” says P-20 Curriculum and Teacher Education Coor-

they become teaching residents. Residents are state of Michigan standard certified, full-time paid employees of DPSCD who benefit from an additional three years of onsite mentorship and support provided by attending teachers and U-M faculty and staff.

Four years into piloting this innovative teacher education model, there are many milestones to celebrate. Sneha Rathi (BS ’19, TeachCert ’19), the first teacher to complete the residency, is now Chief of Residents and serves as a mentor to seven current residents who are following in her footsteps. As the elementary school welcomed its inaugural classes of kindergarten, first, and second graders, the first elementary interns, student teacher, and four residents came on board. And the Teaching School continues to grow to serve interns in new ways, such as through a new model for embedded teacher education.

With an eye toward ensuring a strong classroom experience for future interns and residents, Bomphray says DPSCD and

dinator Dr. Alistair Bomphray (AB ’00, PhD ’18). By building a mutually supportive, intergenerational community of educators, the Teaching School aims to change that trend.

In the Teaching School, students who are completing their degree programs and simultaneous classroom training are known as interns. They are overseen by attending teachers—professional educators in whose classrooms they practice teaching. Once interns graduate with their degrees and teaching certification from the Marsal School, they have preferred hiring status to apply for open positions at TSM, wherein

U-M work together to intentionally hire attending teachers who want to be part of the intergenerational community of educators.

“We are looking for folks who want to mentor new teachers,” says Bomphray. “We have faculty who came here knowing that the job is to bring new teachers into the profession.”

When Michael Chrzan (BS ’16) interviewed with TSM to become its founding math teacher, the Teaching School was a major draw. Beyond teaching the 30 students in his classroom, Chrzan knew that the impact he could make by training future teachers was exponential. Already,

“Many people who go into teaching have a tendency to want to recreate teaching that was good for them, but might not necessarily be good teaching.” Michael Chrzan

Students in first-year elementary resident Cheyann Kanka’s class identify patterns and practice teamwork.

he’d set a personal goal to have a student teacher in his classroom by the time he was in his fifth year teaching. He joined TSM in his fourth year, and had an intern that first semester. This past fall, he had six.

“The idea of having a hand in developing the next generation of teachers was really important for me,” says Chrzan. “I think that of all the content areas math is the one that is most misunderstood in the K-12 environment. Many people who go into teaching have a tendency to want to recreate teaching that was good for them, but might not necessarily be good teaching. For me, a big part of coming to Marygrove was wanting to help create really fantastic math teachers.”

The math interns rotate through different math courses at TSM, but practice teaching in Chrzan’s classroom, under his supervision. He also serves as their field instructor, an innovation on the typical practice of field instructors coming from the university and traveling to multiple school sites to observe their interns. One of many benefits inherent in embedded field instruction is that Chrzan understands the school context in which the interns are learning and teaching. It is also training for those who know they would like to teach full time in an urban setting.

As an attending teacher, Chrzan is passionate about modeling the benefits of project-based learning and restorative justice practices for his interns. Math teachers, he tells his interns, always have to be prepared for a student to ask “When are we ever going

to use this?” “In a project-based learning environment,” he says, “you never get that question.”

Bomphray’s goal is to foster a community of teachers and mentors that works together to support interns and residents as well as serve students. He has built close relationships with the school’s attending teachers, making sure to have personal touchpoints with them multiple times each semester. He and his team also lead a quarterly seminar for attending teachers to develop their practice as mentors and discuss challenges that come up along the way with their interns and residents. The hope is that interns who do their student teaching at TSM will be inspired to apply for the three-year residency.

When it came to choosing her field placement, Faith Crosby (ABEd ’22, TeachCert ’22) says she specifically wanted to observe Black teachers. Crosby, who is a Detroit native and who hails from a lineage of teachers, was placed in Lisa Brooks’s 11th grade English class at TSM.

“She did a great job of getting me into the groove of taking over full-time classes. I got great advice, ideas, guidance, and just a great model of another Black female teacher,” says Crosby. When Crosby’s internship was complete, and she was ready to look for jobs, Brooks encouraged her to look at all her options. The commitment to the three-year residency inherent in a position at TSM was daunting, but ultimately, she decided to go for it.

“I loved and connected with the kids. And I really appreciated the bonds that I had made here. I just wanted to continue them. I felt like that was a good foundation to start my teaching career on. I was working with 11th graders last year, and they’re my 12th grade students now. That’s just a great leg up for being a first-year teacher. Instead of having to go through building relationships, I could already start with that. It made my flow into being a professional teacher much easier.” Not only are her students familiar, so are the other teachers in the school. Brooks is now a colleague. If Crosby has a question, or is seeking advice, Brooks is close at hand, together with multiple TSM team members, including Bomphray, all of whom are experienced teachers and experts in education.

As a first-year resident in the Teaching

School, Crosby is supported by Bomphray, who serves as her U-M staff mentor.

“He visits one of my English classes at least once a week to see what’s going on, but also to be a support. If I need help in the classroom, he’s there. Alistair can give me immediate feedback on what he’s observing.” Because he visits regularly, says Crosby, he’s able to see both her and her students’ development week over week. When it’s helpful, Bomphray comes up with additional teaching materials that might support the student’s learning goals—for example, poems and readings related to the coursework. Crosby also teaches a psychology class. Although Bomphray’s area of expertise is English, he introduced her to colleagues who could lend support in that subject if she needed it.

Lindsay Helfman (AB ’06, AM ’21, TeachCert ’21), a second-year resident who teaches 12th grade world history, says the residency position at TSM was the only job she applied for after completing her student teaching there.

“I had a fantastic attending teacher, and she’s why I applied for the job. Her name is Jane Jordan. She’s the ninth grade U.S. history teacher. She was everything that I wanted to be as a teacher, so I knew I wanted to be here, too.”

Helfman’s residency mentor is Dr. Darin Stockdill (AB ’91, PhD ’11), Instructional and Program Design Coordinator for the Center

First-year elementary resident Paige Wint works with one of her students.

12th grade world history teacher Lindsay Helfman is in the second year of her residency.

for Education Design, Evaluation, and Research at the Marsal School, and a former social studies teacher. The two describe each other as thought partners.

“A lot of the work I do with Lindsay is helping to develop the teaching materials that she’s going to use and then helping her think through how things went in class,”

are working on literacy development in the context of social studies instruction.

“It’s very, very difficult to teach and you constantly feel like a failure, but Darin is a practical person. His whole outlook is always, ‘Let’s find a way forward.’ Having someone like that is just invaluable,” says Helfman. “That support should be provided for teachers everywhere.”

“This model enables us to build longitudinal relationships, which is pretty unique,” says Stockdill. “I certainly wish I had experienced it when I went through my teacher education program. To have somebody to talk to and think about pedagogical issues within those first couple years is so important. A lot of what I do is say, ‘What you did was fantastic, do it again.’ Just having that validation is helpful.”

Above all, Crosby and Helfman agree that being part of a cohort of new teachers is their most valued aspect of the residency. This year, the Teaching School was home to four residents in the high school.

“The most useful thing is getting to meet and work with other early career teachers that are in the same residency program,”

Sneha Rathi, who started as the Teaching School’s first resident in 2019, has now completed her residency. This fall she was promoted to Chief of Residents, a role funded by the Marsal School, which will be filled by alternating resident faculty as more teachers engage in the residency. Rathi convenes a monthly meeting for current residents—a dedicated space where, in the company of fellow new teachers, they can let down their guard, and talk openly with each other about how the school year is going.

says Stockdill of his mentorship role. “It’s collegial, just another brain in the room to help think through everyday problems of practice.”

Last year, the pair worked together to build a world history curriculum.

Helfman says, “We wanted to come up with something that was project-based and relevant to the lives of our students.” In their first year working together, Stockdill helped her plan lessons and get the curriculum off the ground. In year two, they are refining it. Now they can look at data from students to see where they need to build in additional lessons to target students’ progress and skill sets. A goal this year was wanting to improve student reading practices. Together, they

says Helfman. “You have people that you vent with and talk to, but also they understand and care more about the problems in your classroom because they affect the problems in their classroom, and we all care about the same group of students.”

“Having the other U-M residents here at TSM has been very special,” says Crosby. “We all go through the same problems and we all have the same questions, so it’s nice to be able to lean on people that are in the same space with the same students or had the same students in the past. They also know the structure of the school, and know what’s going on when I might not. That’s probably the biggest thing that I appreciate about the residency—the community.”

“What are the yeas and nays?” Rathi asked residents as they gathered around a box of doughnut holes at a recent meeting. On the whiteboard, Rathi had posed two questions to focus the afternoon’s discussion: “How has your organization been?” and “How do we build strong, healthy relationships with students?”

Residents joked with each other about the day’s events. They debated whether the afternoon tornado drill had been for a tornado watch or a tornado warning—each has its own protocol. The group discussed the difference. As they got comfortable, and settled into the space, Rathi led them deeper into discussion.

“What’s going on? What are the fires?” One resident was in the midst of navigating the process of having a student transfer out of their class. “What support do you need for that?” asked Rathi. ■

“You have people that you vent with and talk to, but also they understand and care more about the problems in your classroom because they affect the problems in their classroom, and we all care about the same group of students.” Lindsay Helfman

First-year elementary resident Anamaria Lopez leads a reading lesson for her first grade class.

Faith Crosby, a first-year resident, responds to students in her 12th grade literature class.

In the fall of 2023, Selyna Perez Beverly (PhD ’22) will begin a tenuretrack faculty position at Eastern Michigan University in the College of Education’s Department of Leadership and Counseling.

Peter Cipparone (PhD ’19) is in his third year as the Head of School of The Croft School, an innovative independent school in Boston serving an intentionally diverse community of preschool–second grade students and families. He looks back fondly on his classes and relationships at the Marsal School, and gives special thanks to his advisor Chauncey Monte-Sano, his committee members and professors, and his classmates in the TTE program. He and his wife Liz recently had their first child, a boy, in January.

teachers in attending to how students think during problem-based instruction. Her research encompasses three interrelated topics: 1) understanding teaching actions that use students’ prior knowledge; 2) designing teacher professional development that attends to student thinking; and 3) establishing contexts for mathematical problemsolving.

IN MEMORY

Gloriana González (PhD ’09) was named a University of Illinois Scholar. The University Scholars Program recognizes outstanding members of the faculty and provides each with a funding allocation to enhance their scholarly activities. González teaches in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the Urbana campus. She conducts research on mathematics education with a focus on supporting

Tamarie Macon (PhD ’15) is an assistant professor in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is based in Asheville, North Carolina, and teaches in the PlaceBased Health concentration. Macon recently published the article, “Why We Need to Stop Talking about Eliminating Health Inequities,” on the Health Affairs Forefront blog. She was also featured on The Pivot, a publication of the Gillings School, in a piece titled “For Dr. Tamarie Macon, Public Health is Another Word for Justice.”

Rebecca (Becky) Sue Horvath (BMus ’56, TeachCert ’56, AM ’62, PhD ’80) passed away on October 17, 2022. A lifelong Ann Arbor resident, Becky earned her bachelor’s degree in Music Education from the University of Michigan in 1956. She married William Horvath in 1963 and had two children, Susan and John. In 1980 she graduated from the University of Michigan School of Education with a PhD in Child Psychology and went on to teach psychology at Henry Ford Community College for 18 years.

Dorothy

Alexis Verhil (ABEd ’20, TeachCert ’20) is a fifth grade teacher in Rockford, Michigan. She also coaches three varsity sports: boys soccer, sideline cheer, and competitive cheer.

Music filled Becky’s life. She sang in—and occasionally directed—the Dixboro United Methodist Church Choir, and played oboe with the Washtenaw Community Band for several years. She was also a staunch supporter of the Ann Arbor Symphony and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. In addition, Becky loved to travel (visiting five of the seven continents) and cook. She looked forward to hosting annual gatherings such as the ‘Soup Supper’ with the International Cooking Group, and a New Year’s Eve party for her neighbors. From sharing songs and recipes to the many scholarships and charities she supported, Becky will be remembered above all for her bountiful generosity.

(AM

passed away on October 6, 2022, at the age of 68.

She met her husband of 49 years, Tom Fraker, when they were undergraduates at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. In 1977, she joined Tom in Ann Arbor, where he was pursuing a PhD in economics at the University of Michigan. After several years, she enrolled as a graduate student in the School of Education, where she earned a master’s degree as a reading specialist in 1980. Dotsy, like her mother, was a public school teacher. She was passionate about her profession and made books come alive for children. For 19 years she taught 7th grade English at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, Virginia, where she was known for her poetry coffee houses and units on Langston Hughes. Because Kenmore was her neighborhood middle school, she was delighted by frequent encounters with current or former students while walking her dog or visiting shops in Arlington.

A devoted mother, a lifelong skier, and an avid reader, Dotsy always had a book at hand. In retirement she and Tom traveled the world together, hiked in the Monongahela National Forest, and enjoyed skiing on Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia and visiting their grandchildren.

To submit class notes, update your contact information, communicate with the editor, or connect with the Marsal Family School of Education, please visit soe.umich.edu/magazine.

(Dotsy) Schneider Fraker

’80)

New g ifts, Endowments, and Bequests

integrate graduate student participation into the core work of the EdHub at a moment when it is poised to accelerate the development of community engagement opportunities, open access courses, and professional development workshops.

The Baldwin Family Foundation makes grants that principally focus on the greater Grand Rapids, Michigan area and that generally have active involvement by family members. The foundation has regularly supported the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and more recently, Grand Valley State University, as well as specific arts, educational, and humanitarian projects.

Joseph B. Cejka (MS ’40) was a first generation American, born to parents who came to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia. When he began school, he spoke only Czech. He made his way through the Detroit public school system, then received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Wayne State University and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

“He was very outspoken about his gratitude to this country for allowing him to get an education, run a business, and then to have some financial success,” says his daughter, Barbara Littleton (BS ’68, MS ’69). “Giving back was extremely important to him.”

As soon as they learned about the Marsal School’s involvement in the P–20 Partnership on the Marygrove campus in Detroit, Leslie and Alex Arker were eager to commit their support. The couple has recently established The Leslie and Alex Arker Fund for LEAPS, which will provide flexible support for the Marsal School’s new undergraduate major, Learning, Equity, and Problem Solving for the Public Good (LEAPS). Inspired by Dean Moje’s passion for the teaching profession— and specifically by her focus on literacy—they are also thrilled to make possible The Leslie and Alex Arker Scholarship, which will benefit students in the Marsal School. The Arkers hope that the scholarship’s financial assistance will be helpful to students who intend to enter the rewarding profession of teaching.

Launched in 2022, the EdHub is rapidly emerging as a vibrant center of intellectual engagement, online development, and community building at the Marsal School. From its inception, the EdHub has engaged master’s and doctoral students in developing its vision and identity, building its web presence and communication strategies, designing and facilitating online learning opportunities, and recruiting external collaborators to support design efforts. The Baldwin Foundation EdHub Design internship will provide the resources needed to

The foundation focuses on investing in projects in their early stages. For example, it was the first foundation to seed a number of projects that were then able to expand because other foundations and donors saw the value to the community of the initial project.

Dana Baldwin, president of the foundation, says, “Supporting the EdHub at the Marsal Family School of Education is typical of the grants we often make. As this project gets off the ground, other foundations and donors are likely to join in supporting the growth and expansion of the EdHub concept within the Marsal Family School of Education.”

As the steward of the Joseph B. Cejka and Florence V. Cejka Foundation, Inc. she is grateful for the opportunity to extend her parents’ generosity.

When Littleton and her husband David Littleton (MBA ’66) decided to make the foundation’s most recent gift to the Marsal School, they were intentional about its name. Instead of naming it for her parents, they chose to call it The SoE Detroit Transportation Fund.

“Part of that is to encourage other people to make gifts to the fund,” says Littleton. Down the road, she hopes potential donors—perhaps recent graduates— will see the name and understand that a little can go a long way. The fund will be used to cover commuting costs for Marsal School students doing fieldwork at The School at Marygrove (TSM) in Detroit. Students who do their internships and residencies at TSM have to pay transportation costs between Ann Arbor and Detroit out of pocket, which can add up to thousands of dollars each year.

“It’s really important to me that my gift makes a difference,” says Barbara. “So when the Marsal School came to me with this need of transportation, it was a good example of where a more modest gift could make a significant difference to individual students.

“Projects that are going to help facilitate outstanding teaching in underserved communities are something we’re happy to support. If helping a student get to a teacher training experience a little distance from Ann Arbor is part of that picture, then that’s just really fun to be able to do.”

Professor and EdHub founder Donald Peurach with MaryNell Baldwin of the Baldwin Family Foundation

Leslie and Alex Arker

C HAMP ion S for E D u CAT ion

Dime más. Tell me more. Paige Pomerance remembers her Spanish-speaking nanny asking this question each day when she came home from school. At the time, Pomerance’s mother was in and out of the hospital, battling a chronic illness. Prompted by her nanny’s inquiry, Pomerance had a lot to say—she loved school, especially her fourth grade teacher. Now a first-year in U-M’s Teacher Education Preferred Admit (TEPA) program, Pomerance, who is double majoring in Spanish, plans to use her linguistic skills to teach Spanish-speaking students English.

“We are incredibly proud that Paige has taken this path,” says her father, Brad. “We wanted to honor her and other future teachers.” Along with his wife, Tina, the couple have established The Pomerance Family Scholarship to support undergraduate students who have demonstrated an interest in pursuing a degree in elementary teacher education at the Marsal School. The family believes that teachers encourage, inspire, and have the power to change the course of their students’ lives.

“Teachers are changing the world,” says Tina. “We need to value them more in this country.”

Currently, Paige is taking EDUC 118 Introduction to Education: Schooling and Multicultural Society. She’s riveted. “I’m actually learning about learning—how different students approach learning and problem solving.”

Like the teacher who inspired her to become a teacher, Paige plans to teach fourth grade.

“At that age, students are questioning everything. They’re taking everything in. I want to honor their curiosity and encourage them to keep asking questions.” She looks forward to the day she can ask her own students to tell her more. Dime más. She will be ready to listen.

Graham Putnam (AB ’69, MBA ’71) comes from a long line of educators. His grandfather was a superintendent of schools in the 1930s and ’40s. His mother was a classroom teacher and teacher’s aide her entire career. So it came as no surprise when his sister Evonne (ABEd ’63, TeachCert ’63) chose to carry on the family tradition. “She had grown up in that environment, surrounded by teachers,” recalls Putnam, who was six years her junior.

Evonne Putnam took her first teaching job at age 21, and remained with the Lansing School District until her untimely death in 1990 at age 48. By then, she had held numerous positions within the district, ultimately becoming the assistant superintendent in charge of instruction.

Recently, Putnam and his wife Kathryn (MBA ’76) established the Evonne M. Putnam Future Educators Endowed Scholarship Fund to honor his sister’s memory and professional contributions. The endowed fund provides scholarship support to Marsal School students who are pursuing the profession of teaching, particularly those with financial need.

The Putnams, who first met as participants on their high school debate team, reconnected a decade later at a U-M football game. For 40 years, they ran a manufacturing and distribution business in Chicago that specialized in magic tricks, novelty items, and products for the toy industry. They worked hard, but they also enjoyed themselves—after all, the company was called Fun Inc.

Today, the Putnams are retired and live in Dexter, Michigan. They are proud that their daughter, a professor in Bloomington, Indiana, is carrying on the family legacy of teaching.

“People are leaving the field of education all the time,” says Putnam. “We need more good people, trained people, in the classroom. Hopefully we can encourage people to join the profession, and make it easier for them to go back to school to get credentials to become teachers.”

Evonne M. Putnam

Brad, Paige, and Tina Pomerance

School always came easy to Michael Speigl (AB ’03), who grew up in a rural farming community in western Michigan. But when he got to U-M as a freshman, he quickly saw that he had not been prepared for the academic challenge that lay ahead. “The workload was different than what I’d seen in the past,” recalls Speigl. “The expectations were much higher than what I was used to. I realized I was going to have to adapt and change to come at this in a different way than I had come at education previously.”

Speigl later settled in Florida, where he founded PrepandMe, a nonprofit that helps hard-working students from Title I schools advance their educational careers. Speigl recognized the limitations local students faced—financially, culturally, and otherwise—were the same as those that he and the kids he’d grown up with had encountered.

A proud U-M alum, Speigl sought advice from Dean Moje as his organization grew.

“She gave us a lot of best practices on what kids need and how to support them, as well as mistakes to avoid. She’s been super giving and helpful to PrepandMe, so we’ve tried to support the Marsal School as well.”

Along with his wife Ashley (who is a former schoolteacher) Speigl has given to the Prechter Detroit Education Fund, which supports the Marsal School’s work in the Detroit P-20 Partnership, and to the Dean’s Discretionary Fund.

“I love the university, and I feel very appreciative of what it did for me as a young man, and making me the man I am today. I am looking for as many ways as possible to give back and to help young students who are about to enter the world.” ■

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cshpE professor Emerita Establishes the patricia M. King Early career professional Development Fund for Master’s students

When she retired from the Marsal School in 2021, Professor Emerita Pat King knew she wanted to continue to give back to the community that had given her so much.

“I was always so appreciative of the variety of perspectives that students brought and their passion for contributing to help make other students’ lives better in one way or another,” says King. The Early Career Professional Development Fund she recently established will support master’s students’ involvement in professional development

activities designed to help them better understand and promote college students’ learning and development.

With a background in student affairs, King has long been aware that learning environments extend well beyond the classroom. As an undergraduate at Macalester College, King herself gained valuable experience through being a resident assistant in housing, a research assistant for an English professor, and a tutor for children from under-resourced communities in Minneapolis.

Tutoring provided “a firsthand experience with programs designed to address the inequities

in learning environments,” King recalls, and motivated her to earn her teaching certificate. Later on, she coordinated the St. Paul Public Schools’ “Poets in the Schools” Program, a series of school residencies funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Seeing how the students responded to the visiting poets and some of the other classroom experiences helped inform her decision to pursue a doctoral degree to further understand how students learned, the role of development in learning, and ways instructors could better link learning and development in their teaching. “Once I got into classes on

Patricia M. King

these topics, I was completely hooked.”

King completed her doctoral studies in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota and went on to serve in research, administrative, and teaching positions at several universities before joining the Marsal School in 2000. Over the course of her tenure working with graduate students at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE), King’s teaching and research focused on the learning and development of college students and on learning environments that promote cognitive, identity, and sociomoral development. As a faculty member, she was especially interested in approaches to student learning that explore the interactions between student characteristics and features of their learning environments, whether in curricular, co-curricular, or personal contexts.

Because most CSHPE master’s students typically complete their degree in less than two years, King wanted to find a way to enhance their time in the program.

“A lot gets packed into that time,” she says, “including time to let the big ideas sink in and to get a variety of experiences. I was aware that many students had financial constraints that kept them from being able to take full advantage of the opportunities available.”

In establishing this professional development fund, King hopes the financial assistance will allow CSHPE master’s students to choose practice-based activities that will add meaningfully to their professional preparation. She notes that attending conferences and joining national and international professional associations is particularly important for graduate students to gain perspective on their own university experiences.

“Being active in professional organizations allows you to meet people from all over who have different kinds of interests,” says King. “One might encounter colleagues who want to work in admissions, housing, sports management, or with students who have been minoritized and marginalized. You put all of these people with different areas of focus and interest together—people from different institutions or from different parts of the country or the world—and the opportunities to learn just explode. This kind of learning also encourages students to reflect on their own experiences and choices, as well as their career goals.”

Natalie Drobny (AM ’23), a CSHPE master’s student focused on student access and success, is the inaugural beneficiary of the Patricia M. King Early Career Professional Development Fund.

In February 2023, she attended the Research for Undergraduate Math Education Conference, where she gave a poster presentation on research she has been conducting with Associate Professor Maisie Gholson. By examining which students are encouraged or discouraged to pursue math, their work aims to find ways to ensure that math learning spaces are equitable and inviting.

“The most helpful part of going to the conference was hearing people share their reactions to our research,” says Drobny. She absorbed the suggestions of fellow attendees who offered points to look at next, and aspects of the research the team might analyze further. “The opportunity to present was really important because it allowed me to reflect on my own advising practice.

I think it could also benefit the community of advisors at large once we continue to analyze and publish our results.”

Drobny is well positioned to contribute to that community: prior to her spring graduation, she had already begun an academic advising position in the College of Literature, Science, & the Arts.

King emphasizes that the fund—which she has endowed so that it will provide assistance in perpetuity—was designed for master’s students who aim to hold studentfacing roles in higher education when they graduate. In that way, she hopes it will make a lasting impact—not just for the graduate students who benefit directly, but for the many students they will serve through the course of their careers.

“Professional development opportunities are such a great way to meet other people and explore our academic interests outside the classroom,” says Drobny. “They can also be a really powerful way to reflect on what path we’d like to forge moving forward. I am super excited that CSHPE is able to support students in this way.” ■

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Natalie Drobny (AM ’23) (right) presenting along with Emma Thomas (AM ’22) at the 2023 Research for Undergraduate Math Education Conference.

Years after graduation, Why s ome parents continue to g ive

For a period of time, Eric Waxman tried to talk his daughter out of pursuing a career in education.

“She was a terrific athlete,” recalls Waxman, an attorney and partner in the Private Equity group at Ares Management. “She read the sports section every day. I said, ‘Go into sports broadcasting!’ But she said, ‘Dad, I’m going to be a teacher.’ That’s when I knew—teaching is a calling, and it’s Leah’s.”

Since she was 12 years old, Leah Waxman has known she wanted to be a teacher. When she finished sixth grade, her elementary school invited her to come back and “lend a hand” with a summer program that helped young children transition into kindergarten.

“That first summer I fell in love. I did it for nine years,” she says. So when it came time for her to apply to colleges, there was no question about her plan: she would only apply to institutions that had an undergraduate school of education. At the same time, sports were still important to her. The University of Michigan’s unique combination of a pathway to teacher certification and its robust athletic program was a perfect match.

Although Waxman and his wife, Thelma, had both attained their degrees in California, they were thrilled to see their daughter head off to the midwest. They were eager for her to expand her horizons beyond southern California, where she had been raised. They also looked forward to exploring Ann Arbor and the U-M campus themselves. Soon the family was making visits to Ann Arbor to take in football, basketball, and hockey games.

During Leah’s time at U-M, she evolved and matured, and the Waxmans were impressed by their daughter’s transformation. She pledged a sorority, made lasting friendships, and did her student teaching at King Elementary. Most notably, Leah graduated with real-life experience, and the preparation she needed to begin her career in the classroom. “She did what she wanted to do, which was leave with a credential so she could start teaching. Michigan brought out the best in her,” says Thelma Waxman.

After graduating, Leah moved back to California, where she began teaching at Sierra Canyon School. Today, nine years later, the first students she taught are now seniors. She currently teaches sixth grade history and English. And although her own athletic career is behind her, she loves watching her students—both former and current—play sports. “Seeing them in an environment outside the classroom, in a non-academic setting, is really important because it allows you to see a different side of a kid that you might not see in the classroom every day. ”

“I love hearing her stories,” says Thelma. Like the time Leah helped a struggling student prepare

The Waxman family at Leah’s graduation

for a math test. The student’s parents were in the midst of a divorce, and he had fallen behind in class. Leah worked with him one-on-one, promising that he wouldn’t have to take the unit test until he felt fully prepared. At the end of the week, not only did he ace the test, the pride he felt in the work he had put in was palpable. When Leah relayed his accomplishment to her parents—and her approach to helping him—her student’s pride became their own. “I just thought to myself, she really is a champion,” says Eric.

Another time, when her students were preparing to enact a trial in class, Leah invited her father to come in as a guest speaker and discuss his experience in litigation. When two boys acted up, he watched in awe as Leah swiftly got them back on track. Her ability to manage the classroom amazed him.

“They say success is when preparation meets opportunity, and that’s Leah,” says Thelma. “She has the passion, and she probably would have been a good teacher no matter what, but I think she’s an exceptional teacher because of her experience at Michigan.”

Since Leah was an undergraduate, the Waxmans have enthusiastically supported the Marsal School’s Fund for Excellence. They recently made a gift to the Student Mileage Reimbursement Fund, which helps cover students’ cost of transportation to student teaching placements around southeast Michigan.

earn a graduate degree. If you really want to make a difference in the world, it has to start with teachers and education.”

“Education is still the path to success in this country and it should be available to everyone, so we try to support it in a number of different ways,” says Eric.

Through witnessing their daughter’s experience as a student and in the classroom as a teacher, the Waxmans have come to value the Marsal School as an agent of change.

“I think if you want to have a profound impact on anyone’s life, it starts with education,” says Thelma. “We’re both the products of immigrants who came to this country not speaking the language, having nothing. My dad went on to

“We’re so proud of her and her accomplishments,” says Eric. “She truly is an extraordinary teacher. She makes a difference in those kids’ lives—she’s actually making a difference where it matters. And you can see it from the kids who are coming back to visit her. There was always that teacher, all of us can remember a primary school teacher who had a significant effect on us. Leah is going to be that teacher for so many of those students and it just makes my day when I think about that.” ■

“Education is still the path to success in this country and it should be available to everyone, so we try to support it in a number of different ways.” Eric Waxman

Leah Waxman with her students

university of Michigan Regents

Jordan B. Acker, Huntington Woods

Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc

Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor

Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor

Sarah Hubbard, Okemos

Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms

Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor

Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor

Santa J. Ono (ex officio)

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/ Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

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