School of Education | EdLine | Spring 2021

EdLine SPRING 2021

Toward a more equitable future

A career focused on virtual learning

Support for first-generation students

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Navigating a challenging year

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credits Mark Mone, Chancellor Johannes Britz, Provost Tina Freiburger, Interim Dean Hope Longwell-Grice, senior associate dean Jeremy Page, assistant dean of student services Jessica Russell, assistant dean

Kathy Quirk, editor, writer

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Nicole Schanen, marketing communications account executive Contributors

Genaro Armas Shavonn Montgomery Brown Photographers

Pete Amland Troye Fox Elora Hennessey Graphic Design

Lesley Kelling

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ON THE COVER Students, teachers, administrators and aspiring teachers all had to adjust their teaching and learning because of the pandemic. Many students ended up spending part or all of the year learning online.

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table of contents 1 Letter from the interim dean 2 Pandemic challenges 6 Equity and justice 8 Learning virtually 10 Faculty books & research 15 Love Kindness award 16 Students 18 Alumni 24 In Memoriam 25 Transitions 26 News & Notes 28 Donors

Letter from the Interim Dean This issue of the EdLine magazine focuses on stories about how the year of 2020 has shaped and changed the School of Education.

One of those changes is in the leadership of the School of Education. I became the interim dean when former Dean Alan Shoho made the decision to devote time to his role as professor of administrative leadership. Hope Longwell-Grice, who had been the associate dean of the school for a number of years, became the senior associate dean and took a more active role in the day-to-day decision-making.

In addition to working with the School of Education, I am the dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Since January of this year, Hope and I have been working closely together to move the School of Education forward toward its mission.

While this past year has presented unprecedented challenges, this issue highlights the resilience of our faculty, staff and students and celebrates their accomplishments in the face of all of these challenges.

In March 2020, our faculty and teaching staff were forced to pivot from in-person learning to mostly virtual instruction. One of the stories in this issue shows how they met that challenge with the help of our technical support team.

In addition to switching our own classes, the faculty and staffed assisted our student teachers in managing their preparation with schools that were mostly virtual.

Our faculty and students also contributed research and experience to help schools and the public better understand how to overcome difficulties and do remote learning successfully.

Professor Simone Conceição, whose story is featured in this issue and in the university’s annual research magazine, contributed her expertise to schools and to the media on issues surrounding online education. Three of our graduate researchers examined how teachers coped in early childhood and elementary classes and presented their findings at the national American Educational Research Association conference.

In other stories in this issue, we focus on how the university has joined with other local institutions in the M3 and Moon Shot for Equity efforts to overcome the impact of decades of disparities on the field of education.

School of Education faculty, staff and students are involved in a number of projects to raise awareness, recruit and support students of color, and change and improve the ways aspiring teachers are prepared for increasingly diverse classrooms.

As this issue goes to press – in print and online – we are seeing a surge of hope for an end to the pandemic, and progress in our efforts to achieve racial justice. Faculty, staff and students have done incredible work this year. I know those efforts will continue as the School of Education will keep working to fulfill its vision of becoming a premier urban school of education recognized for its work in culturally relevant practices, research, teaching and community engagement.

Tina Freiburger Interim Dean, School of Education

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FEATURE Students from Sheboygan South High School visited UWM to learn more about the Grow Your Own program.

Students worked hard at home, but sometimes it was tiring.

For educators, a year of challenge and learning COVID-19 dominated education from March 2020 through much of the early part of the 2021 school year. While universities, colleges and K-12 schools are beginning a slow pivot back to almost normal teaching and learning as this issue goes to press, here are some of the ways faculty, staff, alumni and students at the School of Education adapted and carried on.

MOVING ONLINE In March 2020, the School of Education faced one of the most difficult challenges in its 125-year-plus history.

Suddenly, because of the exploding COVID-19 pandemic, faculty and teaching academic staff were faced with the need to move classes online in just a few weeks.

“Approximately 70 percent of our classes are online,” Kristin Gaura, education technology consultant for the School of Education, said in the summer of 2020. Even those classes that are face-to-face sometimes had a blended format, meaning instructors are teaching part of the classes online.

The transition has sometimes been bumpy. Students indicated in surveys that many found the online format challenging, and 2 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

enrollment declined as the fall semester started.

However, Gaura says, instructors have stepped up their abilities as they adapted to the new environment. “In the spring when we went online remote, it was an emergency, but over the summer the teachers really blossomed into it,” she says.

Gaura herself had only been in her position a few weeks when the pandemic hit and ended up working from home while helping her own three children continue their education virtually. Her children returned to their classrooms in the spring of 2021.

“Once people knew this was going to be here for a while, they put themselves front and center in learning how to do it successfully,” she says. “I’m just more surprised day by day at their willingness to put in the work,” she says. “It’s been a wild, crazy ride for sure, but I really think that people have stepped up.”

Some programs, like American Sign Language faced specific challenges.

“Because ASL is a visual language, we require human contact and interaction with our students,” says Marika Kovacs-Houlihan, clinical associate professor in the American Sign Language

program. “It’s a 3-D language, not a linear language like a spoken language. So trying to interact with students in a 3-D environment, but having to do this in a 2-D platform, that made it challenging.”

Marika One key effort was trying to Kovacs-Houlihan Kovacs-Houlihan make an immediate connection with students as classes started.

One of the first efforts, involving the whole ASL team, was creating a “percussion song,” using the Panther Fight Song.

In another example, Barb Kilp, an associate lecturer in teaching and learning, also found that a consistent approach helped her students adapt to the online environment. When she moved from a hybrid course to all online, she condensed 15 weeks into six modules.

“I started from nothing, developing outcome goals for the course, then each module and started looking for the most interesting articles, research and videos. Active engagement with the material was my primary goal, with class community building as my secondary goal,” she says.

The preparation was time consuming – one of the biggest challenges of moving online, Kilp says, but she adds, “the time I spent finding engaging content and making PowerPoints seems to have paid off. Student writing reflected not only knowledge of the content, but deep insight, enthusiasm and passion for the subject matter.”

Feedback from students was important in continuously improving courses, according to those teaching online. The Early Childhood Education program, for example, started

ASL instructors engaged virtual students with a video signing the Panthers Fight Song. (as at left)

the fall with a survey on how students felt they have been supported, according to Leanne Evans, associate professor and program chair. “As an outcome of the survey, we are increasing opportunities to connect with faculty/instructors and we are developing ways to communicate university resources that focus on students’ well-being.”

And the challenges of 2020 may have some benefits for teachers and students when classrooms return to whatever “normal” is, says Gaura. As classrooms incorporate more technology in the future, being comfortable with it will become increasingly important for teachers at all levels, she adds.

“It is changing our programs most definitely, but it’s something we’re picking up and putting into our skill set to use again.”

Candance Doerr-Stephens, associate professor of Teaching & Learning, was one of many faculty, instructors and staff who worked primarily from home, often while helping teach their own children who were also learning from home.

Classroom teachers faced a range of challenges and opportunities with virtual learning. Here are some of their thoughts from interviews this fall after completing UWM’s micro-credential in online learning.

“How do you build a sense of community in a class where everyone is a little black box on a screen?

They’re middle school kids and they feel selfconscious, uncomfortable sharing their faces online.”

— Sarah Kopplin, Shorewood social studies teacher “I have one student who never came to class or participated last year. This year, he’s attending all his classes, he’s participating.” — Samantha Prystawik, Shorewood special education teacher SPRING 2021 EDLINE 3

FEATURE

STUDENT TEACHERS IN THE FIELD Student teaching, a vital part of preparing aspiring teachers, had to adapt to changes in the classrooms they were working in through the late spring and fall of 2020 and early spring of 2021.

Ashley Thielbar, who did her student teaching at Lane Intermediate School in West Allis during the spring 2020

“I miss being there in the classroom, seeing a hand raised and being able to quickly go to help them” semester, said it was a reminder that teachers have to be adaptable during challenging times.

“Teaching is on the fly sometimes,” said Thielbar. “You have to do what you’ve got to do for your learners and go with the flow. This is just another test of how good a teacher you are.”

Ebenezer (Ben) Keane Rudolph, who student-taught eighth-grade science and sixth grade social science at Golda Meir School in Milwaukee during the spring semester of 2020, worked closely with his cooperating teacher, Michelle Young, to stay in touch with students.

While learning new technology and working closely, though virtually, with their cooperating teachers, the student teachers knew they’d missed some experiences.

“I miss being there in the classroom, seeing a hand raised and being able to quickly go to help them,” said Thielbar.

ALUMNI USE WHAT THEY LEARNED Students who graduated from the School of Education’s Adult, Continuing, and Higher Education Administration (ACHEA) program in May put what they’d learned about online learning, leading and advising to work immediately.

Those who had earned the Support Services for online students certificate offered through ACHEA found their skills vital as they began working with students virtually.

Sarah Kocken, an application/ evaluation specialist at UWEau Claire, had responsibility for admissions for first-year Sarah Kocken and transfer students, and for evaluating their residency status.

“This last semester, I took a class with Simone (Conceição, professor and coordinator of the program) that talked about the practical applications using a lot of the different programs like Zoom and BlueJeans and Webex and Blackboard Collaborate,” said Kocken.

Carly Weckwerth works for Milwaukee Public Schools as a planning assistant with the College and Career Center.

She already had a Facebook page to connect with her students after they graduated, but when the pandemic hit, she opened it to all the students she was working with. One of her students helped her set up a chat room to help everyone keep in touch.

Being able to work with alternative technologies is vital for anyone working with teens, she added. “If it’s not on Facebook or an Instagram group, they might miss it. They’re mostly not turning on [TV for news] and seeing what’s going on.

“I know that I’m absolutely more prepared with the skills and knowledge I got out of the ACHEA program,” she added.

Mallory Cramer, an advisor in the TRIO/Precollege programs office who works with Veterans Upward Bound, found the online transition challenging for the students she works with because most are first generation and/or low income. They have to overcome the digital divide – a lack of computers, iPads, software and internet access.

“We’re working to overcome that gap,” she said.

HELPING OUT AT THE K-12 SCHOOLS Over the summer of 2020, the School of Education offered a micro-credential course to help elementary and high school teachers overcome challenges of virtual learning.

Instructors for the courses included Conceição, who has written a number of books about online learning; Candance Doerr-Stevens, associate professor of teaching and learning, who teaches digital literacy; and Gaura, information technology consultant for the School of Education.

“I think a huge part of the benefit of the summer class was being there with colleagues from the district so we all have the same kind of background and common understanding of expectations, said Amy Miller, fifth and sixth grade multiage teacher at Lake Bluff Elementary

Ebenezer Keane-Rudolph started out student teaching in person in the spring of 2020 but had to pivot to online when MPS closed.

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School. “But we also learned from other districts who have different approaches or who have used different technologies.”

That class was amazing because it was very interactive, said Sarah Kopplin, a teacher in Shorewood.

‘Basically the instructors were teaching you the tools by showing them to you and getting you to interact with them within the classroom environment so you become comfortable with them.

You got to play around, and see how you could use these tools for just a variety of purposes.’

STUDENT TEACHERS ADAPTED TO IN-PERSON, VIRTUAL, HYBRID Student teachers faced a variety of teaching situations during the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021.

— BY THE NUMBER S —

FALL 2020 STUDENT TEACHERS Hybrid: Fully in person:

155 15 5 135

Virtual: ___________________________

SPRING 2021 (as of mid-March*)

STUDENT TEACHERS Hybrid: Fully in person: Virtual:

200 80 5 115

* At this point some schools were both in person and hybrid.

(These are the MPS placements. All numbers are approximate.)

UWM Commits to Moon Shot for Equity GOAL IS TO ELIMINATE EQUITY GAPS BY 2030 The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Carthage College, Milwaukee Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside are joining a national

initiative led by education firm EAB aimed at ending equity gaps in higher education by 2030.

These institutions comprise the first regional consortium of higher education institutions to sign on to the “Moon Shot for Equity.” UWM, Carthage, MATC and UW-Parkside will work together and with EAB to help more underrepresented students of color and other historically underserved populations graduate from college.

“UW-Milwaukee and our regional higher ed counterparts are completely committed to this initiative and continuing our work to eliminate equity gaps in our region. This is one of the most important things we can do to advance the future of our state,” UWM Chancellor Mark Mone said.

According to data compiled by the Higher Education Regional Alliance as of April 2021, 57% of white students in the seven-county Milwaukee region earned a degree or certificate within six years in 2020. Only 32% of Hispanic students and 20% of Black students completed degrees or certificates in that time frame.

“Wisconsin is dead last in the country in the high school equity gap for Black students, and in the bottom seven of all 50 states for Hispanic students,” Mone said during the initiative’s launch event in October.

“These gaps continue into higher education, and we find this unacceptable.

We need to provide fair and equitable access to college and successful graduation for all our students.”

Campus leaders, faculty and staff from across the four institutions met virtually in March to discuss upcoming efforts and

share ideas on four areas of initial focus for the partnership, including retention grants and registration holds. It was the first major regional gathering of the institutions since the launch.

As part of the Moon Shot, the institutions will receive equitymindedness training from outside experts and implement 15 researchbased best practices proven to remove systemic barriers to success.

Participating schools will receive expert guidance from national Moon Shot mentors Houston GPS and Georgia State University.

EAB will provide schools with technology and advisory services, as well as research that will help to enhance the work ongoing at each institution. Organizers hope that the Moon Shot collaboration in southeastern Wisconsin will inspire two- and-fouryear institutions in other regions of the country to band together to take part in the initiative.

Moon Shot also was featured as the cover story in the Spring 2021 issue of University Business magazine.

Visit eab.com/moonshot to learn more about the project.

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FEATURE

School of Education steps up efforts to support racial and social justice UWM students allied with others in the summer of 2020 in racial justice protests as the school itself moved ahead on its own overall efforts.

After facing the challenges of the pandemic in the early spring

of 2020, the School of Education and the university grappled with the implications of a national reckoning and resistance to systematic racism stemming from police violence and injustice.

UWM’s Chancellor Mark Mone and the campus leadership pledged to create a campus that values and supports racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. Two key university-wide efforts, M3 and Moon Shot, have a strong focus on education’s role in making change happen. (See stories on pages 5 and 7).

Individually and in small groups, many of our faculty, staff and students are taking action to support these goals, joining peaceful protests and taking part in other efforts to increase understanding and promote racial equity and justice.

Students contributed to the ongoing discussions. Nearly 120 students shared raw and honest insights through a survey in August.

Inspired by students, colleagues and our communities, faculty, staff and administration began to discuss ways they engaged in service, research and teaching.

Many faculty and staff met regularly in small racial equity dialogue groups to co-learn and discuss issues related to diversity, racism and inclusion, and share how they were responding to them both personally and professionally.

Kristine Lize, director, English Education, organized and facilitated Racial Equity Dialogue groups beginning in June 2020 and continuing throughout the 2020-2021 academic year. When the need for additional discussion opportunities surfaced in fall, Visiting Assistant Professor Katherine Sage offered to facilitate a second Racial Equity Dialogue group.

Staff and faculty took part in dialogue groups over the summer 6 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

and throughout the fall semester, reading and discussing books that offered insight related to diversity, racism and inclusion.

Through the fall, more than two dozen got together twice monthly for racial equity dialogues centered on Ijeoma Oluo's book “So You Want to Talk About Race.”

This text, as well as copies of Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” and Bettina Love’s “We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom” were provided by the ACCESS grant for any School of Education faculty or staff member interested in participating in the dialogues. Over two dozen members received copies of the three books.

When UWM committed to university-wide racial justice and equity training in the first half of 2021, members of the School of Education’s Racial Equity Dialogue groups again joined colleagues for honest, open discussions about what they were learning, sharing candidly how they thought it could impact their teaching, personal lives and scholarship.

“I am so hopeful for our future because of the community we have built and grateful for the opportunity to continue learning together.”

“The Racial Equity Dialogue group conversations have deeply impacted me personally and professionally as I grapple with my own anti-racist journey and consider how to support students in this work,” said Lize. “I am so hopeful for our future because of the community we have built and grateful for the opportunity to continue learning together.”

Existing efforts like the culturally responsive teaching projects funded through the federal SEED grant shared resources such as recommended book lists to interested faculty and staff.

These discussions about what the School of Education could do better led to three funded mini-grants offered through the Division of Global Inclusion & Engagement and the Office of Research. These mini-grants support small pilot projects to address issues of racial equity and inclusion at UWM. “Through our scholarship, our classroom work and our

community engagement we will continue to listen, learn and make a difference as we work to end social and racial injustices, said Hope Longwell-Grice, senior associate dean of the School of Education.

“We commit to identifying inequities, to identifying what is not happening in our school and to identifying who is being left out or left behind,” she added in a statement on the school’s website.

“We commit to hearing and understanding the Hope Longwell-Grice lived experiences of our students, staff and faculty, especially those who have been historically marginalized. We commit to addressing our challenges and to celebrating our successes. We commit to partners who will engage with us in these efforts. We Kristine Lize commit to change.”

ACTIONS NEEDED AND PLANS FOR REACHING KEY GOALS: • Improve staff/faculty awareness of racial equity and inclusion in their own classrooms/teaching practice • Provide direct support and empowerment for students of color and historically marginalized students • Provide stronger and more explicit integration of racial equity and anti-racism content in all courses/ curriculum • Offer better preparation to be an anti-racist practitioner • Organize bias training for students in the SOE • Develop or strengthen partnerships with community organizations and partners to better address/support community calls for action on anti-racism/racial equity • Create better support for first-generation students • Offer more informal opportunities to engage in conversations around topics of inclusion, racial equity, diversity and anti-racism The School of Education has restated its commitment to action on racial equity on its website at uwm.edu/ education/about/statement-racial-equity-action-plan.

UWM Chancellor Mark Mone (clockwise from upper left) joined Eve Hall, president and CEO of the Milwaukee Urban League; MATC President Vicki Martin and MPS Superintendent Keith Posley in a virtual seminar to discuss closing equity gaps in education.

M3 panel discussion lays out plans Equity gaps stand in the way of success for students. M3

(pronounced M-cubed) — which brings together Milwaukee Public Schools, Milwaukee Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to transform the future through education — is focused on eliminating these gaps.

The leaders of M3 say the economic crisis caused by the pandemic has added urgency to the initiative’s mission. UWM Chancellor Mark Mone, MATC President Vicki Martin and MPS Superintendent Keith P. Posley spoke during the latest session of the M3 Education Transformed virtual discussion series on Jan. 27.

The M3 collaboration already has helped to increase MPS high school graduation rates, helped get more students prepared for college by completing federal financial aid forms, and started a dual enrollment program to help MPS students get a taste of college classes.

The collective work has carried over through the pandemic with classes moving online. The institutions have responded to emergency needs, such as those students who might need a computer or a steady internet connection.

“The issue of the achievement gap and inequities … is simply holding too many people back because we know that education is the pathway to employment, income, social mobility and so many other things in our community,” Mone said.

To learn more, go to uwm.edu/m-cubed.

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FACULTY/STAFF

Simone Conceição: A career focused on virtual learning Simone C.O. Conceição has devoted nearly three decades of her

career to researching and advancing online education and virtual learning. It’s work that became more relevant than ever when the pandemic transformed schooling routines in 2020.

“Online education is the thing right now,” says Conceição, a professor of adult and continuing education. In the summer of 2020, she and School of Education colleagues held workshops for K-12 teachers, sharing methods and tools she helped devise that could keep students engaged in the online environment.

Her latest book, “Designing the Online Learning Experience: Evidence-Based Principles and Strategies,” was published in 2021.

Conceição’s research examines aspects of online learning that are particularly critical right now, such as methods and tools for creating a sense of presence online. It’s important because when students have a sense of being there, as well as of being with others, it enhances their relationships with teachers and leads to a fuller learning experience. When students feel isolated and disconnected, it can lead to problems with retention and persistence.

Conceição has also looked at how teachers can manage their online workload. She’s collaborated with researchers and teachers in Chile, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Turkey and China, which reflects her preferred approach to research and development.

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“I’m a collaborator. I don’t like to do things alone,” Conceição says. “The final product is much more creative and unique when several minds work together.”

Her path at UWM has combined research, teaching and continued learning.

The Brazil native initially came to UWM for a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and then earned her master’s degree in adult and continuing education leadership.

While earning her master’s degree at UWM, she worked in Social Welfare, then moved to the School of Education. At the same time, she pursued her doctorate in adult learning and distance education at UW-Madison.

Her career took an unexpected turn to virtual and online learning when she was working on her master’s degree in adult education in UWM’s School of Education.

“I took a course about technology with Dave Edyburn (now retired from UWM). I loved it. It was a natural for me.”

In the School of Education, she quickly became involved in designing courses on the use of technology, teaching online and virtual learning as an ad hoc faculty member. With the encouragement of colleagues like Larry Martin, Barb Daley and Ann Hains, she continued to develop her skills and interest in virtual and online learning. She headed the school’s technology efforts before becoming a full-time faculty member.

“I started discovering and doing more and more. I had some excellent mentors here.”

With a colleague, Rosemary Lehman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, she wrote a series of books focusing on how to do online learning well.

In addition to her books, she’s written 30 peer-reviewed articles and 23 book chapters on the topics of online and virtual learning and is the editor-in-chief of eLearn magazine. She does presentations and articles in English, Spanish and Portguese, and continues to research the use of technology in education, distance and virtual learning, and the use of online support services to help students.

“The umbrella topic of my research is the impact of technology on teaching and learning. That includes mobile apps.”

“The umbrella topic of my research is the impact of technology on teaching and learning. That includes mobile apps.” A mobile app Conceição developed with colleagues at Children’s Hospital (now Children's Wisconsin) and tech experts in Brazil that just became available is designed to help parents of children with chronic medical conditions better manage their child’s health.

Her ties to Brazil and interest in international education and culture are an important part of her life. Active in the Brazilian culture club and the university’s International Committee, she’s been involved in bringing Brazilian students to UWM and sharing that country’s culture through dance and music events.

She’s written for academic journals about the experiences of international students in American universities.

Beyond her research, writing and teaching, Conceição has made time to serve the university and the broader community.

She is currently serving as co-chair of the School of Education’s 2026 planning group with Marie Sandy, associate professor of administrative leadership. In 2007, the UWM Alumni Association honored her with the Graduate of the Last Decade (Gold) award. In 2014, UWM students honored her as a “Remarkable Community Member” – the person who has helped them most in their college success.

She has served on numerous doctoral committees and mentored hundreds of graduate students.

“As a professor, she has the ability to connect both virtually and in person with her students to inspire them as future educators,” said James MacGillis, who earned his master’s in 2017. “She is a subject matter expert in areas of adult learning and virtual learning methods both in research and in practice.”

After 30 years, Conceição has become an international authority in her field, and serves as the chair of the Department of Administrative Leadership in the School of Education.

“It’s the American dream. I started here as a secretary and rose up through the ranks to become a professor.”

TIPS FOR ONLINE SUCCESS In the summer of 2020, UWM School of Education Professor Simone Conceição created a YouTube video to share helpful tips for finding success in online courses.

The video, at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ARVGngh7Yp0, included time management strategies and self-care suggestions.

Here are some of her tips: • Create a space in your home dedicated to your online courses • Create a timeline of deadlines • Use a calendar to schedule your coursework • Stay a week ahead • Make a weekly checklist • Allow days off • Give yourself a break

FACULTY/STAFF

SUPPORT FOR FIRST-GENERATION STUDENTS A one-size -fits-all approach doesn’t work

when it comes to supporting firstgeneration college students.

“Two books came out about 10 years ago and treated first-generation students as this monolithic group … ‘all first generation students do this, and all first generation students do that,’” says Robert Longwell-Grice. “I knew from being in the field that wasn’t true.”

Longwell-Grice, the recruitment and scholarship coordinator for the School of Education, joined with Hope Longwell-Grice, senior associate dean, to write a book. “At the Intersection: Understanding and Supporting FirstGeneration Students,” to be published this spring, looks at the multiple experiences and backgrounds of first-generation students and offers recommendations for supporting their efforts.

The book builds on both of their experiences and expertise. A first-gen student himself, Robert began researching and writing in this area with his dissertation on the experiences of white males from low-income backgrounds who were first-generation students.

Since then, his work has included over fifty articles, chapters and presentations.

Robert is co-editor of the New Journal of First Generation College Success, which debuted this spring. In collaboration with Robert, Hope has written a number of journal articles on the topic.

The book, organized around four areas, is designed for the academic professional and for use in college classrooms. The

first part lays the groundwork for the reader, including a look at the data on first-generation students in both two- and four-year colleges. Chapters in part two reveal the intersections of the individual and overlapping identities of LGBT, low-income, white, female, male, undocumented, Latinx and Native American students and their first-generation status. Part three describes the various programs and practices across the country that are designed to support firstgeneration students. The final part makes recommendations for how colleges and universities can meet the needs of these diverse and overlapping groups of first-generation students.

Students and graduates who’ve lived the experience of being the first in their family to go to college contributed short reflections throughout the book. Among those writers are two School of Education alums, Nathaniel Deans, who works in the Department of Black and Latino Male Achievement in MPS, and Dr. Pablo Muirhead, chair of teacher education at MATC. “Intersectionality (of students’ identities) matters for the success of students, for interactions with faculty, and for programming on campus,” says Hope. “Being not only knowledgeable of but sensitive to the lived experiences will matter in student engagement, success and satisfaction,” she adds.

“First-generation students do tend to have some common concerns,” explains Robert Longwell-Grice. One concern may be developing a sense of belonging on campus, especially if they’re commuting. “Their friends and families may not understand what they are going through because the college experience is unknown to them.

“The colleges and universities that have been most successful in supporting firstgeneration students use some form of mentorship,” Robert explains. “Research suggests that students benefit when they have a champion — one individual advisor or faculty member who takes them under their wing and helps them through the college going process.”

“More often than not, advisors and faculty come in and out of students’ lives,” adds Hope. “To really improve the success of first-gens, they need somebody who says, ‘You have what it takes. Let me go the extra mile with you.’”

RAISING BLACK CHILDREN WITH AUTISM Elizabeth Drame, a UWM School of Education professor, co-wrote this

book with three co-authors/investigators who are parents of children on the autism spectrum. It integrates firsthand parent perspectives with academic literature and insights. Through these methods, the book explores the challenges Black parents face in getting an autism diagnosis, securing resources and information, identifying quality schools, interacting in communities and collaborating with professionals. “The literature is very clear that there are a lot of barriers for caregivers in general,” Drame says, “but for Black families and caregivers in particular, the racial bias and systemic racism makes it even more challenging.”

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RESEARCH

Graduate students present research on pandemic’s impact Three School of Education students in the Urban Education Doctoral Program were selected to present their research at the annual American Education Research Association Conference in April.

Johanna Groene, Crystasany Turner, a recent graduate, and Telashay Swope-Farr presented their research virtually in the Division B Graduate Student Session.

The three were part of a session titled “Leading, Teaching and Learning During COVID-19.”

Groene, who is also a member of the Institute for Urban Education staff, was the chair of the discussion with Domonique Cobb.

Turner’s research explored the role of Black women who are family child care providers as “community mothers.” Many low-income communities of color bore the brunt of the pandemic yet were also most likely to be part of the essential workforce. Black women who ran family and community child care programs risked their own health and well-being to keep their facilities open so others could work.

For the six care providers in her study, she discovered, the decision to stay open was rooted in their commitment to serve parents who were essential workers. Many of them worked in the medical field, maintenance or construction and did not have the option to stay home with their children.

Despite the uncertain conditions of serving children and families within the Black community during the pandemic, the family child care providers remained essential sources of stability and connection.

Groene’s work looked at the barriers facing the parents of elementary school children with reading delays in assisting their children with online reading instruction. The focus of the study was on how

to avoid learning loss and increase knowledge about how to continue to support these parents.

“We know that if we don’t get students reading well by third grade, they are forever behind or it’s incredibly difficult to catch them up,” she said.

She studied students from all over the state. “We do know anecdotally that the pandemic is bringing out all the things that we knew were there, but it’s just glaring, highlighted, neon lighted that we have equity issues in funding, support and instruction. We have children who are in danger of being left out, not being served. ” Groene will be continuing her research and hopes, she said, that her findings on virtual learning will be helpful in showing what works and what doesn’t, even after the pandemic subsides. At the same time, as a parent, she said, “personally, I think we should be more patient with ourselves, give ourselves more time. Right now in the fog of war it’s hard to figure out. We just have to do the best we can.”

Swope-Farr’s research studied mathematics anxiety, math teaching self-efficacy and mathematics instructional practices, and how this critical teaching and learning has been impacted by the

transition to mostly virtual instruction. The knowledge gained can be useful in helping improve future teacher preparation and professional development for inservice teachers, she said.

Her dissertation research topic grew out of her own experiences as a high school and college-level mathematics teacher. “I had students coming in at the ninth grade level, who were struggling with the basics like dividing and multiplying.”

Previous research has shown that teachers’ own math anxiety can impact how these basics are taught in elementary school, she said, and some choose to teach lower grades because of their own math anxiety. Because her sample group is smaller than she had planned due to the pandemic, her study changed to focus on virtual mathematics instruction and how teachers approached it.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 11

RESEARCH

Improving school culture vital to easing achievement gap Improving the professional culture of Wisconsin schools is critical

LARGE DISPARITIES FOUND

for improving the achievement gap between students of color and white students.

That’s the finding of a recently completed report from the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness Research Partnership.

Curtis Jones, director of the University of WisconsinMilwaukee’s Office of Socially Responsible Evaluation in Education, led the three-year study (2016-2019) of 211 Wisconsin schools. Jones, also co-director of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness Research Partnership, worked with Marlo Reeves, also at SREED, and Katharine Rainey, of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, to do the study.

The study compared schools with a strong professional culture with schools that had a weaker professional culture.

The researchers surveyed educators at the schools and, based on the results, defined the school culture as either organized to improve or organized to stagnate. The categories were based on educators’ commitment to their school; the amount of collaboration teachers engage in; their trust with their principal; their perceptions of the performance feedback they receive; and their retention and job satisfaction.

The results showed a large disparity in academic results between Black, Latinx and white students, which was largely explained by a disparity in the strength of the professional culture of the schools each group of students attended.

Specifically, very few schools serving Black or Latinx students had a strong professional culture with a stable group of educators who worked effectively together, trusted each other and were committed to their school.

12 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

“At one level it’s the achievement gap, and at another level, it’s the opportunity gap, with Black and Latinx students being in less-effective schools.”

Given the well-known achievement disparities between students of color and white students. The gap between Black and white students in Wisconsin is the largest in the nation so Jones said he was not surprised at the results, but at the size of the gap.

“At one level it’s the achievement gap, and at another level, it’s the opportunity gap, with Black and Latinx students being in

less-effective schools. Both those gaps I think were much larger than I was expecting.”

FEW STUDENTS OF COLOR IN STRONG SCHOOLS The research also showed that the achievement gap between students of color and Marlo Reeves white students was much smaller in schools that were organized to improve, but only a minority of students of color in the study were in these schools, according to Jones.

Many of the schools designated as organized to stagnate fit what he described as “hard-to-staff” schools.

“A teacher who leaves is often replaced by a either a long-term substitute or an emergency certified teacher, and that’s like the best case scenario,” Jones said. “In some cases, students have a different substitute every day of the week. “How are you supposed to learn in that situation?”

If this type of situation happens in more privileged schools, parents either demand change and/or are able to provide other educational opportunities outside of school for their children, according to Jones.

A CUMULATIVE IMPACT But, for students who already come to school facing racial and social injustices, overcoming the challenges of schools that aren’t organized to improve is much harder. Jones explains they are already dealing with what the preeminent scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings described as “education debt,” the cumulative impact of fewer resources and other harm directed at students of color. (Ladson-Billings is the former Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has done pioneering work on educating Black children.)

“It’s not just school,” Jones said. “Schools are definitely a part of it, but it’s a combination of a lot of different things, (and) schools can make it worse. If we have really strong schools working with Black and Latinx students, then we can have a pretty good measure of how much everything else is impacting them. But right now it’s just piling on the inequities that society has leveled on them.”

To overcome these challenges, Wisconsin schools have to recognize the racial inequities and focus on improving the professional culture in those schools that are not organized to improve, said Jones. That’s where the state’s efforts for improving test scores should be targeted.

“This study shows that if you improve those things, white student (achievement) will stay about the same, but Black and Latinx students improved quite a bit. If you want to improve state test scores, then you need to bring the students who are struggling up.”

SURVEY SHOWS GAPS Curtis Jones, a senior scientist at the UWM’s Socially Responsible Evaluation in Education program, surveyed 3,227 parents and students in 16 Wisconsin districts, most from the northern, rural part of the state, about the impact of the pandemic.

The survey, done as part of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness Research Partnership, found nearly half of the students were failing to keep up with homework as much as they had before the pandemic.

• Their findings showed that students who were already behind were being hit hardest. Only 15% of survey respondents said their child was learning as much as before the COVID-19 crisis.

• “Any type of negative impact on the education system hits people who have privilege less hard,” Jones said. “They can pick up that slack themselves. People who have less privilege, it’s more impactful. It hits harder.”

• The impact was particularly acute for families without reliable internet access, with some families reporting driving to libraries or settling in at fast food restaurants so their children could access WiFi.

STATE TARGETS ISSUES The state’s Department of Public Instruction is aware of these issues and is targeting them, though change takes a commitment of resources and effort.

‘DPI I think is taking some leadership to try to get out in front of these things, especially this year with Black Lives Matter and the growing understanding about institutional racism in all parts of society. I think that’s a really positive movement in our state.”

Research like this report can help increase public awareness and understanding of the issues, Jones said.

Jones, Reeves and Rainey presented their findings on reorganizing the professional culture in Wisconsin schools to eliminate racial achievement gaps to the Advancing Equity Coalition in a virtual program in November.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 13

RESEARCH

Researcher studies how to prepare to talk about racism Kelly Allen’s research on how social

studies teachers are being prepared to talk about race and racism in the classroom grew out of her own experiences.

Allen, who is in the third year of her doctoral program in urban education, didn’t really hear much about Black history in high school. It wasn’t until she started at UWM as a piano performance student that she discovered her passion for education.

She chose Africology as one of her general courses. “As a Black woman, this was the first time I really learned about Black history. “All these dots started connecting in my mind. I changed my major to social studies teaching.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree in curriculum and instruction from UWM’s School of Education, she started teaching in Milwaukee Public Schools. “All my students were African American or Black and this was the first time they had been taught about Black history,” Allen said. “I realized this was a systemic issue.”

Her students told her they thought she should teach other teachers, and that planted a seed. “I thought, wouldn’t it be awesome if all teachers knew how to teach history in a way that resonated with their students?”

14 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Her dissertation research focuses on barriers and challenges of those preparing future teachers to address racial issues in the classroom. As part of that, she is following and interviewing 13 professors of social studies education — 12 at universities in the U.S. and one in Canada.

“We already have a lot of research that says when people get out of school and go out into the classroom, they’re not really confident in navigating issues of race and racism,” she said. “I think it’s time to confront this topic head on and be explicit about what we’re doing,” she added.

While Allen is still collecting data for analysis, she does see some patterns emerging. One is that many professors are critical scholars, who can change their own mindset and research about race and racism, but aren’t sure how to teach others to do it.

Another challenge is preparing new teachers to navigate the sometimes murky political waters they may face when they get into classroom discussions on potentially controversial topics.

“They (professors) feel a responsibility to talk about it with their preservice teachers, but they also are very cognizant of the fact that this is a very controversial

topic,” she said. Some classroom teachers and professors of education have had their jobs threatened, faced backlash on social media and, in a few cases, even received death threats, she added.

Allen plans to graduate in the spring of 2022. As a research assistant for the ACCESS grant, she has also looked at the role of professional development in creating more culturally responsive pedagogy. She has done other research with the ArtsECO program, with Jeffrey Hawkins, associate professor of teaching and learning, on hip-hop pedagogy, and is working on a project with Candance Doerr-Stevens, associate professor of teaching and learning, looking at teachers five years out from graduation. “We’re having them reflect on what their teacher education could have done to prepare them differently now that they are in the field,” she said. “On the flip side, what did teacher education do really well, especially related to culturally responsive education in practice.”

Allen’s eventual goal is to teach future social studies teachers and do research at the university level.

“When research is done right, it can be so beneficial to our field.”

Scholarship helps student continue youth counseling Meredith Head has known what she wanted to do with her life since she was a teen.

“I think I’ve known I wanted to be a therapist since I was about 13 or 14. I’ve had friends who would tell me, ‘You should be a therapist; you’re so empathetic and understanding.’”

Head, a graduate student in the Educational Psychology program, was awarded this year’s Love Kindness scholarship.

Mike Robertson, an ordained minister, established the scholarship in 2017 to as a way to support and honor those who were making a difference in the community.

Head’s focus is on clinical mental health counseling. She works with homeless and runaway youth at Pathfinders, where she will join the staff full time after she completes her master’s degree in the summer of 2021.

She earned her undergraduate degree at UW-Madison in psychology and women’s and gender studies.

She became interested in focusing on young adults while working at Rogers Behavioral Health in the residential adolescent mood disorders unit. ‘I always knew I wanted to work in mental health, and when I got the opportunity to work with teens, they were my favorite group to teach and do therapy with.”

However, she felt strongly about reaching out to those who weren’t able to afford therapy. That’s why she chose Pathfinders when she was deciding on the site to do her clinical experience at UWM. “I sought out Pathfinders. It wasn’t on the list. I found them because I wanted to work with youth, LGBTQ-identifying youth, diverse youth. It was like a perfect fit for me.”

She saw a need that she felt called to fill, she added.

Meredith Head and Mike Robertson of the Love Kindness Fund

“There’s such a gap in support for these populations. Most of the youth I work with have never been able to see a therapist.

There’s a lot of trauma they carry with them, not being able to go home at night, not being able to trust your family or your community.”

In addition to her academic work, Head does volunteer work. During her undergraduate years, she taught sexual health education with an organization called Sex Out Loud. At UWM, she taught a workshop about consent to a group of high schoolage girls with Girl Power, which is part of BBYO, a Jewish teen movement.

Head said she is extremely grateful for the Love, Kindness scholarship, given the loans and financial burdens of graduate school.

“Even though I’m not in this field for the money, that scholarship has lifted a burden off my shoulders. I am able to serve the community without burning the candle at both ends.

Earning the scholarship really meant a lot as well as honoring my interest in love and kindness.”

SOE STUDENT EARNS SERA AWARD Noah Wolfe, a School of Education student, was one of seven Senior Excellence in Research Awards (SERA) students for 2020. UWM’s award-winning undergraduate research program encourages and highlights the work of students all over campus.

The summer before his first year at UWM, Wolfe applied to a lab that focused on autism, but it was full. So he talked to Kyla Esguerra at the Office of Undergraduate Research, who suggested Chris Lawson’s lab on cognitive development in the Department of Educational Psychology.

“So I met with him,” says Wolfe. “He’s very outgoing and really cool. He shot me an email that said we’d love to have you in the lab. I literally fell in love with the work.”

Wolfe has been working for the past three years with Lawson, associate professor in educational psychology. They are

researching inductive reasoning in school-age children – looking at how they learn information in one context and then apply that knowledge to new questions in a different context.

During his senior year, he’s hoping to focus on students with special needs and compare their results with those found in earlier research.

He has presented research at multiple conferences throughout the Midwest and has published an article in the Journal of Cognitive Science.

Wolfe is also the first student in a new accelerated master’s degree program in special education that combines undergraduate and graduate studies and includes teacher certification. Through that program, he’ll be able to earn his master’s degree much sooner.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 15

SCHOLARSHIPS

Scholarship winners for 2020-2021 Congratulations to students who were awarded scholarships for this academic year. And once again, many thanks to the donors who make these scholarships available.

Thanks to our generous donors, the School of Education was able to award $366,000 in scholarships to students for the 2020-2021 academic year. A total of 266 scholarships were awarded.

In past years, we have held scholarship banquets to honor students and thank donors, but due to COVID-19, we were unable to do that this year. We have highlighted both students and donors in this issue of EdLine. If you know any of these students, please drop them a note of congratulations.

Frank Adams Memorial Scholarship D

R

Rolland Callaway Memorial Scholarship

Mary Louise Williams (deceased) Madeline Rice, Christopher Kroschauger

D

R

Wilma H. Berg Scholarship D

R

R

Wilma H. Berg (deceased) Stephen Dreyna, Teresa Yank, Luis LizardiRodriguez

Estate of Amy Tessmer Boening Atsuko Borgman, Calvin Lewis, Johanna Groene, Fabiana Azurmendi, Erin O’Halloran, Kari Garon, Rebecca Olson-Reece, Michael Garamoni, Molly Wolk, Dominique Cobb, Adriana Rodriguez, Xiaorong Wang, Xinzhi Wu, Barbara Prendergast, Rachel Haos, Sarah Harris, Angela Kowalski, Carl Sloan

D

R

R

Multiple individual donors Julie Schneider, Samantha DeLeon

Benita and John Clark Scholarship Fund R

Jennifer Esparza

Day/Finch Memorial Fund D R

Linda Finch Agnieszka Mosio

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education Conference Scholarship D

R

Multiple individual donors Antonette MatthisLowhorn

Robert Edward Burns Scholarship R

D

City Year Scholarship

Amy Tessmer Boening Scholarship D

Joan Callaway (deceased) and the Callaway family in memory of Rolland and Joan Callaway Anna Concannon

Chris and Sven Dikander Memorial Scholarship

Elsie Egan Scholarship D R

Elsie Egan Roshi Lawrence

D R

D

R

donor(s)

R

R

Maria H. Flores in the name of the Salomón H. Flores family Leticia Cortes

D

Maria L. Gallegos Kathy McGraw, Javier Perez, Brenda VazquezCarranza, Yomaris Zapata-Castellano

Randy Goree Fund D

R

Family and friends of Randy Goree Cali Belanger, Angela Rattin, Kassandra Thompson, Aubrie Thompson

Sydney G. Hambling ’37 Scholarship D

R

James C. Fisher Kasondra Mero

Recipient(s) * Graduate Student

16 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

D

James C. Fisher Adult Education Scholarship R

Natalya Cerda, SokMei leong, Tomera Sheets

Reuben K. Harpole Jr. Education Scholarship

Robert E. Gallegos Fund

Margaret Ferris Tracy Allen, Jamie Keefe

Salomón H. Flores Memorial Scholarship

D

R

Margaret Ferris Scholarship

D

Marie Enderle

Ellen Swan Dixon & Estate of Hilma Christine Dikander Kendra Bacon, Elizabeth King, Sarah Pfeifer, Shannon Piecha, Madison Price, Gentry Spore, Sierra Kanvik, Sydney Drewes, Jessica Rieder, Kaylie Krausz, Hannah Thomas, Eryn Cox, Noelle Pawelski, Tatiana Patterson, Maggie Meyer, Larni Bleese, Marina Gonzalez, Samantha Thom, Madison Price, Allison Hoffman, Stephanie McAllum

Great Milwaukee Foundation Cecil Foley Scholarship

Marguerite D. Hambling (deceased) Zoe Anderson, Georgia Baker, Isabella Gordillo, Madison Price, Isabel Scudella, Tessa Voisin, Caity Garris, Melissa Plautz, Allyssa Mudgett, Megan Gee, Brandon Lucas, Aleksandria Amerson, Maya Shub, Clare Dillon, Cory Klafka, Dunya Khoury, Silba Isein, Lauren Watson, Cooper Janicki

Richard and Dawn Haney Scholarship in Science Education D

R

Dr. Richard E. (deceased) and Mrs. Dawn H. Haney Alexander Wells

R

Reuben K. Harpole, Jr., Mildred A. Harpole (deceased) Alpha Phi Alpha Foundation, Helen Bader Foundation, Marshall & Isley Corporation, Wisconsin Energy Foundation, and multiple foundation and corporate donors Noah Duncan

William B. Harvey Scholarship D R

William B. Harvey Taymah Hewitt, Keane Burkett

John and Louise Hatton Scholarship D

R

Mr. John (deceased) and Mrs. Louise (deceased) Hatton Jacquelynn Parmley

Earl and Kathryn Henry Scholarship D

R

Patricia Finlayson, Jill Finlayson, Earl Henry (deceased), and Susan Yates Breanna Eckhardt, Madalyn Hall

Jean E. Hoffmann Scholarship D R

Jean E. Hoffmann Kaylie Kraus

Lorena Jacobson Math Education Scholarship Fund D R

Lorena Jacobson Allison Landwehr

Jeannetter Seloover Johnson ’62 and R. Douglas Johnson Deaf and Hard of Hearing Scholarship R

Mariah Pfundweller, Molly Willman

Kellner Scholarship D R

Mary and Ted Kellner Willy Diaz-Tapia, Karaline Fusco

Kellner Early Childhood Education Scholarship D R

Mary and Ted Kellner Ashley Xiong, Emily Burns

Henry Kepner Mathematics Education Scholarship D R

Henry Kepner Derek LeClair, Maliha Shafiq, Maura Horgan

Walter ‘Pop’ Arnold and Robert ‘Bud’ Knapp Scholarship R

Sophia Scaffidi, Michael Penn

Alyce M. Kraemer Scholarship D

R

The family of Alyce M. Kraemer Lauren Dinnell, Madeline Hogue, Rose Irwin

Cozette Krueger Scholarship D

R

Estate of Evelyn A. Krueger ‘42 Eric Momou, Alyssa Krieg, Nicole Pomasl, Chloe Wasson, Jennifer Rudd

Chancellor Mark Mone spoke at the 2018-2019 scholarship event.

Because of the pandemic, there is no banquet this year, but the school still celebrates who received scholarships for 2020-2021.

Marsha Krueger Scholarship Fund R

Janne Collins Bekley, Emily Martin, Sydney Sweet, Cynthia Schmahl, Derek Rinehart, Madalyn Hermes, Kelan Klug, Seth Kochheiser, Briant Lois-Novinkski, Zoe Zeman

Kuehneisen/ Teachers for a New Era Fellowship D

R

Joseph and Loretta Eiserlo/ Robert Kuehneisen Teachers for a New Era Scholarship D

R

Estate of Robert Kuehneisen Clarissa Elmore, Alexis Bartel, Haley Elmendorf, Nichole Goetsch, Kayla Doll, Jennika Wirsching, Alexander Wells, Emily Duelge, Ella Winkles, Reagan Crist, Harmony Riemer, Renee Anderson, Gabrielle Borst, Morgan Louchart-Inches, Mariam Franks, Maverick Thill, Holly Miller, Jerica Fehr, Tomera Sheets, Sydney Tidler, Patricia Cannon, Maura Hogan, Kalyn Gackowski, Claire Kartz

Estate of Robert Kuehneisen Janine Hedges, Kathryn LaRoque, Sheila Kilb, Stacey Endicott, Alannia Mosely, Greg Neuberg, Elise Matteucci, Michael Clark, Nina Linneman, Lauren Mascari, Charlotte Shanaver, Patrick Frankenthal, Stephanie Burrows, Yi Ting Chen, Corey Abernathy, Alicia Blalock, Soonha Paek, Kathleen Monahan, Jana Schwai

Nancy Lindenberg Emergency Relief Fund D R

Nancy Lindenberg Grants to various students as needed.

Robert and Hope Longwell-Grice Scholarship D

R

Milwaukee State Teachers College Scholarship D

R

D

R

R

Dorothy B. Maksimowicz Scholarship D

R

Henry A. and Dorothy B. Maksimowicz Trust Carly Rias

Michelle A. Miller Memorial Scholarship D R

Edward and Faye Miller JaNae Teer, Patrick Frankenthal

Walter and Ruth Munchschau Jennifer Vice Reshell

National Junior Honor Society R

Robert and Hope Longwell-Grice Roshi Lawrence Mike Robertson Meredith Head

D

R

Elizabeth Colden, Jasmine Salton, Yamaris ZapataCastellano, Madison Custer, Kailey Alsbury, Allison Hoffman, Grace Kusch, Makayla Racek, Savannah Wallace

Casper and Mary Ondrejka Scholarship D R

Linda Paul Therese Yank

Marguerite Pavlick-Gostomski Scholarship D

R

Family and friends of Marguerite PavlickGostomski Tensie Jackson

Beta Epsilon Chapter of Pi Lambda Theta Michael Clark, Jason Anderson

Chester A. and Mildred Raasch ’45 Scholarship D

R

School of Education Scholarship Fund

Love, Kindness Fund D

Paul Melrood on behalf of the Milwaukee State Teachers College Class of 1941 and multiple individual, corporate and foundation donors Marie Enderle, Kashea Jennings, Tyler Hartman, Samantha Lewis, Jennifer Rudd, Noah Wolfe, Samantha Swenski, Morgan Weathers, Kristen Green, Elizabeth King, Sierra Kanvik, Sydney Drewes, Jessica Rieder, Ashlyn Klecka, Eryn Cox, Gentry Spore

Pi Lamda Theta Lura Carrithers Scholarship

Estate of Chester A. and Mildred Raasch ‘45 Hannah Skroch, Morgan Garlock, Sarah Griffie, Samantha Schams, Kristina Schell, Chineva Smith, Katelyn Matt, Kayla Diamond, Lauren Sandler, Jaclyn Stoczanyn, Karen Coleman

Ann Rae Raskin Scholarship: Student in Science Certification D R

Ann Rae Raskin Aleia Olson, Brittany Olson, Jennika Wirsching

Emily Kachel Robertson ‘80 Scholarship D R

Emily Robertson Jennika Wirsching

Russell D. Robinson Adult Education Scholarship D R

Helen Robinson Pahoua Yang, Andrea Knope

Dorothy Emile Shankwitz ’63 Scholarship D

R

Philip and Diane Shankwitz Sarah Elliott

Ura M. and John G. Silveus Scholarship D

R

Estate of Marian Silveus Kayla Diamond, Aaron Shavers, Kristin Weber

Clara Hertel Slaymaker Scholarship D

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Dale Ihlenfeldt (deceased) and Elinor Slaymaker Ihlenfeldt Franco Romero, Mercy Ndon

School of Education General Scholarship D

R

Multiple individual donors Jacqueline Parmley, Francesa Berta

SOE Restricted Scholarship Fund D R

Leah D. Temkin ’69 Scholarship in Adult Education D

R

Dean Alfonzo Thurman & US Bank Education Scholarship D

R

R

R

Miscellaneous Jill Ritzman

Racine Area Community Foundation Cameron Blau, Erika Wendt, Megan Steensen

Stella Johnson Staunt Scholarship D R

Norma Jean Larson Ashley Kay

Jennie D. Steinberg Scholarship D

R

Jennie Steinberg ’42 (deceased) Dianna Herron, Christopher Kroscher

Sullivan Scholarship D R

Dr. & Mrs. Alfonzo Thurman, US Bank Corporation and multiple individual donors Yazmin Cruz, Shannon Williams, Madeline Bohn, Nicholas Gamble

Greater Milwaukee Foundation Donald Timm Scholarship

Jeanette F. Sokol Scholarship D

Leah D. Temkin ’61, ’69 and family Dereje Assayew

Antonette MatthisLowhorn, Kylie Leverett, Tashea West, Brynne Wolfe, Bess Aranoff, Elizabeth Maier, Hailey Peterson, Carly Garofalo, Maiah Broesch, Cheryl Bledsoe, Mikaely Schmitz, Hannah Schley, Kristen Weber, Hannah Borga, Emma Schmick, Claire Kartz, Samantha Zander, Melissa Schweda

Harvey A. Uber Scholarship D

R

Edith “Edie” M. Anderson Emily Ryan, Hannah Ludwig, Patricia Gable, Jacqueline Rowley, Alissa Breen, Haley Grimm, Pilar Garcia Clavel

Leon Sullivan Angela Kowalski SPRING 2021 EDLINE 17

ALUMNI

App developed at UWM helps explore Black history Former School of Education faculty member Deborah Blanks has

University. He is director of cultures and communities at turned a project she started for her son in grade school into Milwaukee Film. Along with his wife, Element Everest-Blanks, a Black history app that aunched Feb. 17. It’s free and will be and his mother, he owns Kairo Communications LLC, a available in the Apple store, through Google and on the web. communications consulting firm. Deborah Blanks’ focus in the Blanks, who earned her doctorate in urban firm is on research and analysis of racial equity studies from UWM, launched the Blackistory issues such as police-community relations, app, with help from UWM’s App Brewery. government contracting and organizational The Brewery partners student developers with capacity building. community members, health care providers and After working with her son in grade school, other nonprofit organizations to create a wide Deborah Blanks thought it was important to help variety of apps. other young people understand Black history.

Blanks’ app grew out of teaching her own son, “What I learned as a single parent is that you Geraud, about Black history. When he can’t focus on making a better future was 10, he was the only Black child in for just your child only. You have to be a predominantly white advanced math committed to make the world better for “There is wisdom and talent and class, said Blanks. When he went out all families.” wonder in the Black experience to the playground for recess, he told Learning more about Black history his mom he wasn’t sure if he should can benefit all people, especially in that you should connect with stay and play with his white classmates learning about the roots of racism, and work to serve.” from math class or with the other black Blanks added. “The more you know students. not just about our struggle and the “I told him, ‘If you’re a young Black man, it’s important you get diaspora, but also our achievements and contributions in the U.S., along with both,’” Blanks said, but she also felt it was important the better you can understand the cause and effect, how all of he understood his own this impacted where we are today.” history.

Those who shape and make decisions about people of color As a result, she came particularly need to understand this history, she said. up with 500 questions “Sometimes they don’t totally understand the people they’re about Black history making decisions about and how those decisions impact their that over the next 32 lives. There is wisdom and talent and wonder in the Black years she developed experience that you should connect with and work to serve.” and refined into The current version of the app gives users the chance to try 1,000 questions. That out the 1,000-question quiz on their own or compete against grounding in Black themselves to see how quickly they can answer questions, Blanks history served Geraud said. They are fine-tuning one segment of the app that allows well, she said. users can compete against others.

“I saw he had a real “Working on this project was a welcome change from understanding of who he our current medical and research-based projects, said was, his background and Chase Letteney, senior iOS developer for the App Brewery. how history impacted “Collaborating with Dr. Blanks on how to create an app where him.” gaming and learning can be done on multiple platforms was fun.”

Geraud Blanks Blanks plans to continue to enhance and improve the app, graduated from UWM based on feedback, and is conducting research to create a smaller, with a double major separate app for Wisconsin Black history to bring it down to the in Africology and community level. communications, earned It’s important for all to understand the significance of Black a master’s degree in history as part of U.S. history, she said. “The level of respect communications and is Black folks are given should be magnified 100 times. We’ve working on his doctorate shown our allegiance to this country, contributed greatly to it, at Northwestern and challenged it to be better and to live up to its ideals.”

18 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

County Executive using what he learned in the School of Education David Crowley spent several years at UWM, but isn’t yet an alumnus.

However, Crowley, who was elected Milwaukee County Executive in the spring of 2020, says he is committed to becoming a future alum of the School of Education.

“I have something to prove to myself and to my three children. I want them to know that education is extremely important,” says Crowley, who is the first African American and, at age 33, the youngest person to be elected county executive. “It’s important that we set an example for all of our young people, particularly here in Milwaukee where we know disparities between Blacks and whites in college education are still wide.”

Crowley had some academic struggles in the years he was at UWM and had to drop out to deal with family issues, including caring for his mother. But, even though he is now busy with his new office and raising three young daughters, he feels it is important to complete college.

“I want to be a beacon and an encouragement to everybody,” he adds. “That’s why I’m going to make a commitment to finish my degree.” Right now, his goal is to re-enroll in the fall of 2021 in Educational Policy and Community Studies, where he previously took classes. His wife, Ericka, is a graduate of the program, earning her degree in community engagement and education.

Being an example to others is a key value for Crowley, who credits mentors for helping him in his own success.

“When I think about all the organizations, people, mentors, everybody who poured so much into me, I felt one of the best ways for me to give back was to get involved in public service.”

Crowley grew up in the troubled 53206 ZIP code. His parents divorced and, at one point, he was homeless.

A chance meeting in his high school cafeteria during his junior year turned his life in a different direction. His cousin and a friend were looking over a PowerPoint about the Urban Underground, a community organization focused on developing urban teens as leaders in social justice.

Crowley started organizing efforts around issues affecting young people — police accountability, teen domestic violence, finances and education.

“That program, outside of being involved in sports my freshman and sophomore year, was the first thing that I ever committed myself to,” he says.

“One thing I quickly realized as a young person was that public officials were the gateway to making change. He became involved in other organizing work and eventually moved into politics

himself, joining Russ Feingold’s Senate re-election campaign in 2010.

After serving as a legislative aide to Nikiya Harris Dodd when she was on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors and in the state Senate, he went on to run for office himself. After losing one early race, he had a successful run for the state Assembly in 2016.

Along the way, he started classes at UWM. Although he hasn’t finished yet, he said many of the things he learned at UWM are still helpful to him. “One of the biggest things was just going on campus and going to school. It was one of the most diverse places I ever encountered in Milwaukee. It helped me understand different cultures and deal with relationships.”

He remembers especially mentors like Gary Williams, associate professor, and Florence Johnson lecturer, in educational policy, and Ahmed Mbalia a senior lecturer in Africology (now African and African Diaspora Studies), who passed away in 2017.

“David was in some of my classes and was a good, hardworking student,” Johnson remembers. “I knew back then he would do great things.”

Overcoming the city and county’s racial disparities is among Crowley’s key goals as county executive, he says. Two years ago Milwaukee County declared racism to be a public health issue.

Tackling issues of racial disparity related to housing, education and job opportunities were key themes of Crowley’s State of the County address in 2021.

“Milwaukee County is the economic leader of the state. My goal by the time I leave office is to move us off of the list of being one of the most segregated areas in the country.

“We need to be ahead of this, we need to lead the charge on how do we become the healthiest community, while also achieving racial equity.”

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 19

ALUMNI

Teacher takes his question to the top It’s not often that a teacher gets a chance to ask the president of the United States a question in person.

Justin Belot at his school, Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education

But that’s what happened to Justin Belot, a School of Education alum.

Belot was one of a group of people invited to take part in the CNN Town Hall in Milwaukee with President Joe Biden on Feb. 17. He had responded to a note from the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association about the opportunity, and ended up being one of those selected to go to the event to ask his question.

(Joel Berkowitz, professor in Foreign Languages and Literature, also was able to ask a question).

Of course, Belot, who teaches high school English at Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education (Obama SCTE) in Milwaukee, took the opportunity to ask the president about the push to reopen schools for in-person learning.

“While there are numerous

warnings not to be in large groups or to have dinner parties or small parties,” Belot asked, “why is it ok to put students in close proximity to each other for an entire day, day after day? With large class sizes and outdated ventilation systems, how and when do you propose this to occur? Finally, do you believe all staff should be vaccinated before doing so?”

The president responded that he was advocating following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. “Nobody is suggesting, including the CDC in this recent report, that you have large classes, congested classes. It’s smaller classes, more ventilation, making sure that everybody has masks and is socially distanced, meaning you have less … fewer students in one room.”

Biden said he advocated making sure all the staff in the school – sanitation, maintenance

José Trejo leads South Division, state’s largest bilingual high school South Division High School Principal José Trejo has a special empathy for his students who are immigrants or speak different

languages.

“The immigrant experience is definitely something we have in common,” he said. “It involves coming into a place that’s different, having complete culture shock, then trying to figure out how to navigate the language at the same time you’re trying to master the content.”

More than half South Division’s students have a primary language other than English, and it is the largest bilingual high school in the state. It’s not all Spanish/English either — students speak 26 languages, according to Trejo, who became South Division principal last summer after serving as assistant principal. In March 2021, he was one of six people chosen to 20 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

receive Milwaukee Magazine’s first-ever Unity Award for helping build a better Milwaukee by encouraging diversity and inclusion.

Trejo lived the experience as a child when he moved from a small town in Mexico to Davenport, Iowa, and started school in a classroom where nobody spoke Spanish. He was part of a “very tiny” Latino community in the city. “Teachers struggled to help,” he said, but the schools at that time didn’t have any support programs for English language learners.

After graduating from Bay View High School, Trejo moved into working with community nonprofits such as Voces de la Frontera to help other young people gain citizenship. However, he eventually decided education was where he wanted to be to make a difference in the community. After earning his associate degree at MATC, he came to UWM to earn a degree in broad field social

and cafeteria workers as well as teachers — are vaccinated. He also said he advocated avoiding the congregation of a lot of people — getting on a school bus, for example. “It’s about needing to be able to socially distance, smaller classes, more protection.”

Biden added that people working in schools should be on the preferred list to get a vaccination.

(Wisconsin made teachers eligible in March.)

Belot said he asked that particular question because as a teacher he was concerned about the way politicians on both the state and federal level were rushing to try to force schools to reopen.

“There’s this push to reopen schools when scientifically it’s not the safest thing to do. I wanted to see where the president stood.”

He was only partially satisfied with the president’s answer, Belot said later. “He kind of gave a half answer … he kind of danced around it.”

He felt the answer didn’t really address the challenges faced by urban schools with limited resources.

“I get what he was saying about large class sizes, but the reality is that we do have large class sizes. How do you cut

studies with certificates in bilingual education and English as a second language. He also earned a master’s degree in administrative leadership.

He chose UWM because of its emphasis on urban education. “Having a community where I was able to be supported and finding the right resources was important for me.” He found support through faculty, fellow students and the Roberto Hernández Center, he said.

Trejo has maintained connections to UWM through M3 programs. The school is also developing pathways for students to prepare for careers in fields like education and health care, and working with Milwaukee Succeeds to encourage more students to prepare for college placement tests.

those classes in half or thirds? How do you do that when you don’t have the space or staff to do that?”

Belot said he’s dedicated to ensuring that students keep getting the best education possible.

Belot was a leader of the Student Wisconsin Education Association when he was at UWM. He’s found his passion in teaching English and has been a teacher-leader at Obama SCTE and with the UWM Writing Project. He’s also been a cooperating teacher for School of Education student teachers.

Like other teachers, he and his students have faced challenges in adapting to virtual learning – MPS schools are online this year. “It’s been hard adapting lessons to an online environment, keeping them engaging and trying to create a warm and

He is president of the Wisconsin Association for Bilingual Education and feels strongly about encouraging the diverse languages students bring to South Division. Some of the students, he noted, have their native language and maybe other languages from ethnic groups in their country, languages picked up in migration and refugee camps, and English. “I am often amazed at their stories.”

“For us obviously our biggest asset is our students. We have such a diversity of students speaking 26 different languages. I can definitely see the potential of having multilingual teachers coming out of South. We’ve always struggled in Milwaukee and Wisconsin to find enough teachers of color and multilingual teachers.”

welcoming environment.”

But Belot said he’s dedicated to ensuring that students keep getting the best education possible.

“I like writing and helping students find their voice. That’s what keeps me going all day. I want them to develop their skills and work towards their goals and find something they’re passionate about, whether or not it’s reading or writing.”

And he’s managed to cope with the criticism that’s sometimes comes from the public about how teachers are managing in the pandemic. “People say we need to get back to work ‘like the rest of us.’

Teachers are working just as hard as ever, even harder learning to manage online classrooms. Teachers are struggling and so are students. It’s very frustrating to hear people have such lack of respect for the profession when we’re here doing the best we can.”

Still, Belot said he was thrilled to be able to take part in the CNN Town Hall and speak for teachers. And the reaction was mostly positive. “The minute I sat down, my phone was blowing up with messages on Facebook and Twitter. All but one was positive.”

José Trejo is South Division’s new principal.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 21

ALUMNI

Alumna brings her voice to Village of Brown Deer

Wanda Montgomery (center) meets with colleagues at Brown Deer Village Hall.

Wanda Montgomery never wanted to get

involved in politics, even though friends had encouraged her.

“I thought politics was such a dirty business. Opponents dig up stuff that may or may not be true. I thought at this stage of my life, do I need the headache?”

Montgomery, a graduate of the School of Education’s Educational Policy and Community Studies program, had retired from Children’s Wisconsin as director of community partnerships and was active on numerous nonprofit boards and committees. She changed her mind about political office when she and her husband moved to Brown Deer seven years ago.

“We wanted to meet the neighbors,” she says. So she walked around the block, handing out handwritten invitations to a party on her patio on a Sunday evening.

That, in turn, led to a larger block party.

And, since she likes to get involved in every community she’s lived in, she invited local politicians. Friends and neighbors came, but no elected officials.

So, curious about how things worked in Brown Deer, she started attending Village Board meetings.

“I realized I’m the only person of color in there. All the elected officials were white, all the staff were white, all the people in the audiences — there weren’t many—were white.”

No one had answered her emails about 22 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

the block party, no one spoke to her at the meetings, and she began to wonder, “How are they representing me and everybody else? And nine times out of 10 I probably voted for them because there was no other choice.”

“Brown Deer was a tight-knit community where people knew certain networks and supported them no matter.

There was an unwritten code that you didn’t run against them.“ Given that the Village of Brown Deer is one of the most diverse suburbs in the state, Montgomery said she felt it was time for a more diverse Village Board. So she looked into what it would take to run.

With the encouragement of her husband and daughter, she began reaching out to the network of friends and political advisors she’d met to gather signatures to get on the ballot. She needed 20 and within 10 days, she had 160.

She started knocking on doors. “That was something my predecessor never did. People didn’t know who they were; they were just the only ones on the ballot.” With three people in the race, Montgomery got 42 percent of the vote.

Within a year, she ran for board president, unseating another longtime incumbent. “Residents began seeing that I was doing what I promised, and I’m still doing it. ” Being willing to step out, she says, gave

other people of color encouragement to participate in local government. “We need to expand the need for people to serve, not just in the elected positions, but on the boards and commissions that really make a lot of decisions about what happens in Brown Deer.”

Her experiences in Educational Policy and Community Studies helped prepare her for what she now does, Montgomery says. (She also has a master’s degree from Marquette.)

A degree in community education gave her many different opportunities, she says. “If you get a degree in engineering, you’re going to be looking for a job in engineering; if you get a degree in social work, you’re going to be looking for a job in social work, but a degree in community education lets you go many different ways,” she says.

Being an elected official in Brown Deer means facing some unusual challenges, Montgomery says. The village is surrounded by the City of Milwaukee and other communities. Brown Deer shares its ZIP codes with Milwaukee and even residents sometimes have trouble figuring out whether they’re in the village or the city.

“Our biggest challenge is the inability to expand development because we are landlocked,” says Montgomery.

“I try to keep people informed. I remind them of our meetings. I link the agendas to my Facebook page. I respond to all calls and emails, except for our salespeople. I send those to the village manager, “she adds with a smile.

Montgomery says she feels it’s important that the diverse voices of Brown Deer’s citizens are represented.

White people, Asians, Latinos, Black people all bring different viewpoints and experiences to government positions, she adds.

“For me, that’s what I bring, a voice that was not there before.”

Spaights Plaza honors Two alumni with ties to the School of Education were among those are honored with the Spaights Plaza award for 2020 at the annual

fall service awards ceremony on Oct. 22. They are: Allen B. Caucutt, who earned his BS in art education in 1957, the year UWM was established, and Diane Ogimaa-giizhigokwe Amour, who earned her master’s degree in education in community counseling in 1986.

The Spaights award, which is commemorated with an engraved plaque on the plaza near the UWM Union, is given in recognition of significant and long-lasting contributions to the university and the community.

Allen B. Caucutt is an artist,

educator, donor and proud alumnus of UWM. He dearly loves UWM and will tell anyone who cares to listen that the knowledge and experiences he gained and friendships he made earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees here have made all the difference in his life.

Caucutt was part of the first class to graduate from the newly formed UWM in 1957, earning his BS in art education (the program was then part of the School of Education) and then an MS in 1963 from the Peck School of the Arts. He taught art in the Milwaukee Public Schools and Maple Dale Elementary in Fox Point. While at Maple Dale, he created an award-winning curriculum that received the Rockefeller Fund Exemplary Arts Education grant in 1982 — at that time it was the only middle school in the U.S. to earn this award.

After “retiring,” he taught art education to future teachers as a senior lecturer at UWM starting in 1999. He retired from UWM in 2012. He also has mentored more than 160 student teachers, many from UWM. Among his many awards, he was honored as a UWM Distinguished Alumnus and received the Outstanding Service to the Arts Award from the Peck School of the Arts. He is an emeritus board member of the UWM Alumni Association.

His former students still appreciate his lessons.

One student summed up her experience, saying Caucutt taught her to never forget what makes teaching matter most, and what leaves the most lasting impression. She said he was absolutely the most notable and influential person she has ever met.

Caucutt met Susan, his wife of more than 60 years, when they were undergraduates at UWM, and both were active supporters of UWM. She died in February 2020. Allen Caucutt continues to be active as an artist with major artworks in more than 75 public venues and more than 1,500 works in private collections. He was a featured artist at the Peck School of the Arts’ Continuum Alumni Exhibition in fall 2020.

Diane Ogimaa-giizhigokwe Amour

has been instrumental in supporting American Indian students at UWM and sharing Indigenous culture with the broader Milwaukee community.

Amour, an elder of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, retired from UWM in 2016 after 40 years. She earned her master’s degree in education in community counseling in 1986 and her bachelor’s degree in social work in 1975, both from UWM. In her 30 years as coordinator of the American Indian Student Services Office, she went above and beyond to ensure that American Indian students aspired to attend UWM and were successful when they did.

Amour also reached out to the American Indian and broader Milwaukee communities. She was one of the founders of the annual UWM Pow Wow to connect UWM to the Native community and helped organize Milwaukee’s Indian Summer Festival, events that showcased and celebrated both traditional and contemporary arts and cultures of Wisconsin’s Indigenous people.

Amour provided the opportunity to allow people to have more realistic views of American Indians and lessen the stereotypical views of being perceived only in the past by showing American Indians in a contemporary setting, according to colleagues. She was all about education at all levels of life.

Beyond her work at UWM, Amour has been active in the educational community, serving on the Wisconsin American Indian Language and Culture Education Board and the Wisconsin Indian Education Association, and being a founding and current member of the Milwaukee Indian Education Committee. She also serves as a board member and secretary of the Indian Community School and served as vice president of Indian Summer Festivals Inc. Her fellow board members of the Indian Community School wrote that her work at UWM in supporting students, families and the community helped unite and strengthen the Indian community of today in Milwaukee. Her work to ensure there was a space for Native students to connect gave many of them an opportunity to earn their degrees, meet other Native students, and learn the true and accurate history of their people.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 23

IN MEMORIAM

In Memoriam Mr. Isadore J. Aiello, BS, 1959

Ms. Ernestine J. Edwards, BA, 1972

Mr. Robert E. Kupfer, BS, 1948/MS, 1961

Mr. Hector Luis Altoro, BS, 2006

Mr. Wayne E. Elliott, BS, 1962/MS, 1967

Mr. George Margosian, MS, 1964

Mrs. Patricia M. Andryk, BS, 1978

Mr. Bruce M. Gates BA,1957

Mr. George C. Matthews, Jr., BS, 2006

Mr. Joseph L. Baer, BS, 1947

Mrs. Janet D. Gibbons, BS, 1950

Ms. Marianne Louise Nelson, MS, 1993

Mr. Robert H. Baker, BS, 1971/ SOE, MS, 1975

Mrs. Ruth Greco, BS, 1953

Mrs. Judith I. O'Connor, BS, 1958

Mrs. Elizabeth M. Barcio, BS, 1962

Ms. Ute I. Guenther, LS, BA, 1993/ SOE, MS, 1995

Mr. Roland A. Perschon, BS, 1949 /SOE, MS, 1971

Ms. Ann M. Bents, MS, 1991

Mrs. Alane M. Harrington, BS, 1976

Mrs. Maud L. Pincus, MS, 1972

Mr. Elfred P. Bloedel, MS, 1964

Mr. John J. Hosmanek, BS, 1950

Mr. Theodore J. Rachofsky, MS, 1984

Mr. Donald R. Bullamore, BS, 1967/ MS, 1980

Mr. Glenn A. Jahnke, BS, 1953

Mr. Charles G. Sherba, BA, 1953/ MS, 1978

Ms. Therese M. Burger, BS, 1984

Mr. Hans G. Jakobsons, BA, 1968/ MS, 1987

Mrs. Barbara T. Spalda, BS, 1987

Dr. Katherine A. Couture, MS, 1974/ PHD, 1991

Mr. Thomas R. Janssen, MS, 1968

Miss Joan M. Thate, BS, 1966

Mr. Jon C. Kaufman, MA, 1976

Mrs. Helen A. Wallenfang, BS, 1946

Ms. Pamela A. Curtin, LS, BA,1981/ SOE, MS, 1982

Mrs. Diane K. Kielcheski, BS, 1961

Ms. Dorothy Weingrod, BA, 1943

Mrs. Diane C. Klarich, MS, 1970

Mr. Gerald E. Zunk, BS, 1964

Robert Jasna, a former School of Education faculty member and superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, died March 19, 2021, at age 83. He earned his BS in education from UWM, where he met his wife of 61 years, Judith. They started their teaching careers in Appleton until he was called up to serve in the Army.

Jasna was discharged from the Army at the rank of 1st lieutenant in 1963 and received an Army Commendation medal.

He was active as a captain with the 128th Infantry of the Wisconsin National Guard and was honorably discharged in 1969.

Jasna started teaching in Milwaukee Public Schools, and led several high schools before moving to the MPS central office in 1989 as associate superintendent, deputy superintendent and then superintendent from 1995 to 1997. After retiring from MPS, he began teaching in the School of Education.

A member of many community boards and organizations, Jasna received the Distinguished Alumni Award from UW-Milwaukee in 1990.

William Andrekopoulos, a former superintendent who considered Jasna

a mentor, told the Journal Sentinel in an article following his death: “My first impression of Bob was how personable he was and how supportive he was of his staff. He always valued people and he always put people ahead of himself.”

His daughter Erica Jasna Struble told Journal Sentinel columnist Alan Borsuk: “He believed that everyone was important — from the littlest to the oldest. He believed that we are all stakeholders and that we all have a voice. That we all need to work together to ensure that the needs of the children of Milwaukee were being met.”

Howard Fuller, who served as superintendent when Jasna was deputy superintendent, said Jasna was ahead of his time in trying to provide inclusive schools. “He was the kind of person you would want to be a principal or to be deputy or superintendent,” Fuller told the Journal Sentinel. “Bob thought about what is the best way to serve kids.”

After retiring from UWM, Jasna divided his time between homes in Florida and Milwaukee. Jasna’s daughter Kirsten told Borsuk that during her father’s last hospitalization at Aurora St. Luke’s

Medical Center, an impressive number of hospital employees stopped in to thank Jasna for how he helped them when they were students in schools he led.

A memorial gathering is scheduled from 1 to 4 p.m. July 6 at the Polish Center of Wisconsin, 6941 S. 68th St., Franklin.

In lieu of flowers, Jasna’s family suggested gifts to: Hunger Task Force, UW-Milwaukee’s Robert C. Jasna Scholarship for MPS graduates, a favorite veteran's charity or Aurora Health Care Foundation.

24 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

TRANSITIONS

Retiring this year Kathy Berry, certification officer, who worked for the university for more than 30 years, retired March 1. Over that time, she worked for the College of Letters & Science, Enrollment Management and the School of Education. In the school, she was instrumental in helping with teaching licensing, playing a key role in certifying new teachers and answering the many questions students had about the process.

She was also active in many community partnerships and projects, including the university’s African Diaspora Council. UWM offered her “a wonderful experience that has afforded many valuable opportunities to learn and grow.” She plans to spend retirement time enjoying her family.

Professor Donna Pasternak retired effective Jan 8. She arrived at UWM in 2001 with the responsibility to update the Secondary English Education Program. She took on the project with a serious energy, building a network of new and continuing educators that remains today. Her work led to a legacy of students being recognized as first-year and early career teachers of the year in English in Wisconsin. She has published numerous articles and a number of books. One of her books was honored with the 2018 National Council of Teachers of English Richard A Meade Award for the study of English Language Arts teacher education. Awarded emeritus status, she will continue to research, write and publish during retirement. She is looking forward to traveling to see her East Coast family, continuing road tripping to hike in every U.S. national park and monument, and if she gets selected, cleaning the inside of the fish tanks in her scuba gear at Discovery World.

Professor Marty Sapp of Educational Psychology retire at the end of the spring semester. He joined

the School of Education in 1988 after earning his doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati.

He is recognized as a leader in the field of multicultural counseling. His research and teaching have also focused on the use of hypnosis and mindfulness. He chaired more than 20 dissertation committees and served on numerous others. He wrote a dozen academic texts, and articles for 80 journals. He has also served on committees and national boards, including as president of the American Psychological Society’s Division 30 (The Society of Psychological Hypnosis). He will continue to serve UWM as an emeritus faculty member.

New Faces Shavonn Montgomery Brown joined the School of Education as development director in November 2020. She will also serve as development director for the UWM Libraries.

A graduate of UWM with a BA in mass communication, she has more than 25 years of experience in development work. She was with Wisconsin Public Radio for 18 years as senior corporate development manager, then with the Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast most recently as director of philanthropy. In that position, she managed all aspect of donor and stakeholder relationships and fundraising.

At the School of Education, she will have overall responsibility for development programs and fundraising strategies.

Montgomery Brown has volunteered with numerous community organizations, and is currently a board member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals Southeastern Wisconsin (AFPSEWI Chapter), an AFPSEWI member (since 1999), AFPSEWI Scholarship Committee chair, charter member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Upsilon Mu Omega, graduate chapter, and member of Milwaukee Urban League Guild.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 25

NEWS BRIEFS

MAKING THE WORLD A WARMER PLACE A group of UWM students in Educational Psychology spent their

winter break making blankets for patients at Rogers Behavioral Health. Rogers treats a number of behavioral and mental health challenges; the blankets went to the eating disorder unit.

“The patients in our Eating Disorder Recovery program really appreciate the donation of blankets,” Linda Schieble wrote in a thank-you note. “Clinical staff tells me that patients with an eating disorder can experience low body temp, so they really enjoy the blanket.” Schieble is Rogers Behavioral Health Foundation special events coordinator.

A number of students in the Educational Psychology counseling program complete their practicum hours at Rogers Behavioral Health.

So when Jackie Nguyen, associate professor and the Educational Psychology Student Association Vittoria faculty advisor, became aware of Sipone the opportunity, they decided to pitch in and help.

A community member donated fleece, and 10 students from different program areas in the department cut and tied them into 20 blankets. Other students joined the project by buying supplies to make the blankets on their own or donated funds to purchase blankets.

Mikaely Schmitz “It sounded like a cozy, relaxing activity to do on a cold January day,” said student Vittoria Sipone.

“We cut and tied while we talked and socialized and did dissertation planning,” added Mikaely Schmitz.

Both Schmitz and Sipone are working on their doctorates in cognitive and developmental sciences. They are in a cohort together, which has been mostly virtual this year, but because they do regular COVID-19 testing and have been following CDC precautions, they felt safe getting together in person. They spent the day on Schmitz’s living room floor cutting and tying together 11 blankets and enjoying a few refreshments.

“It was a great way to start the new year,” said Sipone.

26 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

MICROSCHOLARSHIPS ENCOURAGE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS Every little bit helps.

That’s especially true with paying for college, and it’s one of the reasons the School of Education has pioneered microscholarships for first-year students.

The other reason is to encourage the students to stay on top of tools and programs that can help them succeed in their critical first year, according to Robert Longwell-Grice, recruitment and scholarship coordinator for the School of Education.

“The microscholarships are small financial incentives students can earn by completing activities that we know help them be successful at UWM,” said Jeremy Page, assistant dean of student services for the school. The SOE is the first school or college at UWM to offer the microscholarships.

The scholarships, which were first offered during the fall 2020 semester, can add up to $250 per semester to a student’s funding. Each semester students have up to four activities to complete to earn the funds, and the school tracks the activities so students don’t have to. At the end of the semester, students receive an email indicating how much additional aid they’ve earned.

During the fall semester 80 students earned the scholarships. For spring semester, the program was offered to 80 students.

Students earned the scholarships this spring semester by completing the Ignite Leadership program, filling out their FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), meeting with their academic advisor and signing up for at least 15 hours for fall semester 2021.

“It helped me the most because it gave me an incentive to do things I knew I needed to do,” said Ireland Hinze, who is studying teaching and learning, focusing on social studies. She is from Racine. “It really helped me stay on track.”

Ireland Hinze Reminders from her advisors helped her keep on top of what she needed to do to earn the microscholarship, she added. She earned the scholarship during the fall semester and is part of the program for the spring semester.

“It was super nice to get rewarded for simple little things Zoe Anderson that I felt I should already be doing,” said Zoe Anderson, who is from Arlington Heights, Illinois. She is also studying teaching and learning, focusing on social studies. Finding out about the availability of the microscholarship was a pleasant surprise for her and her parents, she added. “It was nice to have that to look forward to at the end of the semester.”

SUPPLY DRIVE HELPS SCHOOLS DURING DIFFICULT TIMES The African Diaspora Council in

collaboration with the UWM Police Department led an effort to collect and deliver school supplies to two Milwaukee public schools. The supplies were presented to the principals of Robert M. LaFollette and Hopkins-Lloyd Community schools at an event Friday, Oct. 9, at UWM. The UWM Police Department, which helped collect the supplies, then delivered them to the schools.

This is the fourth year the ADC, which includes 240 Black faculty, staff, retirees and alumni of UWM, and the Police Department have held a drive for LaFollette. Response was so strong this year that enough supplies were available to also donate to Hopkins-Lloyd. During this pandemic year, the supplies included disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer and cloth masks as well as backpacks, scissors, chalk, folders and other supplies.

“As we geared up for our fourth annual school supply drive, I knew it was more important than ever to ease some of the financial burden that our adopted school parents and teachers were experiencing during the COVID pandemic,” said Brenda Cullin, ADC co-chair and office manager in the Department of Economics. “I thought the best strategy would be to have a COVID-safe drop-off school supply collection.”

Supplies were collected at a tent outside Enderis Hall three times during September, and financial donations were sent online. “I believed in my vision, took control of the opportunity these challenging times presented, and I was very deliberate in organizing for a successful outcome,” she added. Diana Borders, assistant director of business services in the School of Education’s Office of Charter Schools, is ADC co-chair.

The effort received some unexpected help when UWM Police Officer Craig Rafferty went to the Germantown Walmart to buy hard-to-find disinfectant wipes. When he explained to the manager what he was looking for, the manager told him he had four pallets of supplies

The African Diaspora Council and UWM Police Department collected enough school supplies this year that they could donate to a second Milwaukee public school.

Marny Donalson-Gamble (left), principal of LaFollette School, and Natosha Harris, principal of Hopkins-Lloyd Community School.

that had never been picked up by another school. He donated those supplies and $200 to the UWM effort.

HELP APPRECIATED The principals at the two schools appreciate the supplies, especially this year.

“This is the fourth year our students have benefited from these generous donations that help our students,” said Marny Donalson-Gamble, principal of LaFollette. “Our students are working virtually and don’t have the usual easy access to supplies, so we are putting packets together for them to work at home.”

More than 90% of the students at Hopkins-Lloyd are socially and economically disadvantaged, said Natosha Harris, principal. “Many of the students’ families have lost their employment during the pandemic,” she said, and some have lost their homes.

The principals arranged drive-in supply pickups for families or delivered them to families who couldn’t make it to the schools.

Both schools are in the 53206 ZIP code, a few miles west of UWM, which

is one of the more impoverished areas in Wisconsin. Many UWM faculty, staff and students grew up in or near the area; other pass through it regularly on their way to campus, said Cullin. Some LaFollette students continue on to UWM, including 1968 LaFollette grad Joyce M. King-McIver, a clinical associate professor and speech/language clinic coordinator.

“The ADC’s partnership with LaFollette has a special place in my heart,” she said.

Teachers and administrators at the schools often dig into their own pockets to buy supplies. Having these UWM supply donations allows them to buy other little incentives for their students during traumatic times, Harris said. “It encourages them to keep learning.”

The pandemic has given many parents and community members a new appreciation for the work that schools and teachers do, Joan Prince, UWM vice chancellor for global inclusion and engagement, said at the presentation event. She noted that she also grew up in the 53206 ZIP code, and was proud the UWM community was helping children in the area continue their education with the donation of school supplies.

“This is what we should be doing as an R1 research public university,” she said.

SPRING 2021 EDLINE 27

DONORS

Thank you to our donors Thank you to the many donors whose support allows for continued research, improved teaching and learning, and the education of the very best future teachers. We welcome gifts of any size, though space only gives us room to include gifts of $100 or more for the most recent fiscal year (July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020). Pledges are included in the year they are made. Donors who have given $1,000 or more to UWM are marked with an asterisk as members of the Chancellor’s Society. $10,000+ Bader Philanthropies, Inc.* Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Inc. Krueger Charitable Fund* Donald P. Timm Scholarship Fund* Harriet Gordon* Karleen Haberichter* Louise Hatton* Lorena Jacobson* Dr. Henry S. Kepner, Jr.* Marianne Luther* Northwestern Mutual Foundation* Emily Kachel Robertson* Mrs. Judith S. Salinsky and Dr. Gerald B. Salinsky* Jack Simpson* Sorenson Communications, LLC* $1,000+ American Family Insurance* Association of University Centers on Disabilities* Chicago Community Foundation* Maria Cruz* Mary Domer* ExxonMobil Foundation* Ann and Leonard Fabos* Patricia Finlayson* David Flores* Maria Flores* Caroline Forster* Maria Gallegos* Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Inc. Cecile M. Foley Scholarship* Gwendolyn Greeler* Robert and Hope LongwellGrice* Michael D. Gordon, MD* Elinor Ihlenfeldt* Robert Jasna*+ Jewish Community Foundation of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation* Lois Kalmbach* Dr. Mary T. Kellner and Mr. Ted D. Kellner* Evelyn Knetzger*

Barbara McMath and Robert Ferriday* Barbara Michaels* Edward and Faye Miller* Joanne Neusen* Ivy Nevala* Ruth and Robert O'Toole* Dr. Linda M. Post* Roland Perschon* Jean Reif* Lindsay Slaggie* Slaggie Family Foundation* Elaine and James Sweet* Diane L. Thieme '73* Bruce and Margaret Weber*

$100-$249

$500-$999 Michelle and Marc Boff Cathy Callaway Susan Denes James and Barbara Fisher Reuben K. Harpole, Jr. Patrice Vitucci-Kessenich and Patrick Kessenich* Dr. Laura Lee L. Luebke Northwestern Mutual Foundation* The T. Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving* Dr. Joan M. Prince* Dr. Lois J. Seefeldt Mrs. Zora S. Shinn Rose Spang Terrie Temkin Cheryl and John Wozniak Daryl and Bonnie Wunrow Joan Yuen $250-$499 Beverly Archibald James Belland Susan Bremer Daniel and Jenice Burrell Dr. Simone Conceição Gregory DeNardo Judith and Richard Herbst* John Harrits Judith Kettler Jane Kirchhoff

28 UWM SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Dr. William Kritek and Ms. Shelley Geiselman Joan Kutter Chad Lehman Patricia Luebke and Kenneth Robinson James and Nancy Marsho Mildred Michalski Patty Lou and William Pohlmann Lynne Ptacek Professional Interpreting Enterprise Elizabeth and Jeffrey Purvis Cathy Wegner Dr. John A. Zahorik

Brian and Rebekah Barsch Nadine Barthuli Michael Beix Kathryn Blakesley Cindy Bock Veronica Boinski Dr. and Mrs. William K. Boylan Karen Bradley Gregory Brock and Wendy Wirth-Brock Joan and Ross Cecil Lori Checki Jon Cisler Jacqueline Cook Marlene Cory Linda Czernicki Dr. Vivien M. DeBack Larry Debbert Lois Debbink Susan DeFrancesco Patricia and Herman Delmenhorst Christopher DeMarco Marlo Dentice-Johnson Sarah Dergazarian Dorothy Dieter Richard Ehlert Barbara Elwood-Goetsch Exodus Family Services, LLC Gary Fritz John Gallagher Marshall Gallant and Rachel Gray-Gallant Ann Gallitz

Marjorie Ganzel Margaret Glancy Heidi Goetsch Paul Gunderson George Hanneman Susan Hansen Alexander Hardy Teretha Harper Mary Hauser Catherine Hayne Julie Hedgecock-Jacobson Dale Heinen Phyllis Henriksen Judith and Richard Herbst* Beverly Hess Ruth Holst Nancy Hyndman Christine Jameson James Janicki Janet Jenness Victoria Johnson Nicole Jones Diane Klarich+ Barbara Kelsey Judith and Roland Kohl Peter Koneazny Debbie Konings Christine Kronschnabel Elizabeth Kruck Ann Krueger Randall Kunkel Daniel Kuzlik Catherine Lafond Barbara Larkin Cynthia and Loren Larsen Bonnie Larson Mr. Peter M. Layde and Ms. Angela J. Carollo* Dr. Jane A. Layman Allan Leicht Barbara Leitner Carla Lenk Janice Liebenstein Samuel Lipton George Longo Barbara Lukaszewski Janice Massie James Mather Joan McCarthy Michael McElwee Dr. Peter T. Mich

Joyce Mielke Anna Miller Robert Miller Carmelo Minessale Sherman Moore Floyd Mosley John Nolan Mary Oliver Karen Olson Mary Ortmayer and Harry Knipp Marcel Piatek Barbara Pittman Heather Price Helen Proffit Karen and Robert Rasmussen Janice Reed Patrick Rehl Kathleen Rogers Gary Sampson Harold Schneider Terry Schubert Schwab Charitable Fund* Julie Seguin Timothy Sharko Joan Simuncak Bernadette Sinclair Bradley Smith James Sorensen Charles Starck James and Lisa Stark Kathleen Stevlingson Janet Strecher Richard Stuhlmacher Carol Talatzko Leah Temkin+ Marianne Thompson David Tomczyk Paula Touhey Dr. Donald T. Tuler Karen Vande Sande Andrea and Gerald Vigue James Walczak Sharon Wegner Mary Weinlein Bik Har Wong Marcia Zientek Eve Zucker Dennis Zuelke * Chancellor's Society + Deceased

Every effort was made to list donors correctly. If there is a discrepancy, please contact edline@uwm.edu.

Wards’ legacy gift benefits students for generations to come

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE WHEN STUDENTS NEEDED IT MOST Change is expected in life and can bring with it many challenges. This past year has definitely been one of change at the School of Education: Classes went online, students and faculty and staff were sent home, and everyone did their best to get comfortable with virtual video conferencing. But through change we saw growth, opportunity to re-imagine, and new beginnings.

We have had to adjust our processes and make hard decisions, but as the new development director for the School of Education, it was gratifying to know that so many of our donors share our values, vision and new way of working and wanted to help students thrive.

Joseph Ward and Marion Ward, were longtime supporters of the School

of Education and chose to leave a legacy with UWM and the School of Education.

Joseph, who died in 2020, and Marion, who predeceased him in 2016, recently left the majority of their estate to the School of Education’s Lillian Fuller scholarship fund. Their significant gift will support students now and for generations to come.

“Retaining the students who desire to teach,” partly inspired Joseph and Marion to establish the Lillian Fuller scholarship in 2002, an annual scholarship that was endowed as part of their legacy gift to honor Marion’s cousin.

The decision to set up and fund a scholarship in 2002 in her honor was an easy one, according to the Wards.

When Fuller, a UWM alumna, died just short of her 100th birthday in 2002, she left some stock to her cousin in her will.

“We decided to give that to the university in her honor,” Marion Ward said in a 2015 interview. “She loved education.”

They all shared a love and belief in education and were very close growing up.

Fuller was the longtime house mother for Kenwood House, a women’s dormitory for students attending UWM and its predecessor institutions.

She stayed on after Kenwood House became an international institute, meeting many dignitaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt.

Joseph graduated from Marquette University, and Marion Ward, who was born in 1926, grew up on a farm in rural Washington County.

While she thought about furthering her own education, World War II intervened and she was needed to help out on the family’s farm.

Through the years, she and her husband remained close to Fuller, often traveling from West Bend to visit with her and hear about her experiences at the university.

Fuller stayed in touch with many of the young women she had worked with. When they were interviewed, the Wards were happy to share a box of letters and news articles Fuller had left with them. “Many of them sent her Mother’s Day cards and several attended her funeral and donated to the scholarship in her name,” Marion said in the interview.

The legacy gift from the Wards is a great example of how you can honor someone, while making a big impact and creating opportunities.

I am so proud of the way donors, students, faculty, staff, researchers and the community stepped up with adaptability, creativity and dedication during challenging times brought on by COVID-19.

Because of your support and generosity, there were hundreds of ways students were supported, including continuous needs like student scholarships.

Last year we gave out 266 scholarships and awarded over $366,000 to students in the School of Education. Students were able to succeed even through a pandemic because of generous donors like you…that’s a testament to the commitment and compassion of our supporters.

We are looking forward to welcoming students, faculty, staff, researchers and the community back on campus in the fall. We thank you for your support during a difficult year that helped us create ways and opportunities for students to take part in all that the School of Education has to offer!

Your donations helped us push boundaries of innovation, research and creativity over the past year, and we hope you will continue to support us. With your continued financial help, we know students, faculty, staff and research can continue to thrive.

I hope we count on you again. Please support the School of Education and invest in our students by going online to uwm.edu/education or send a check made payable to the UWM Foundation, Inc. to the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0431.

Together we will continue to make a difference in the lives of students.

Shavonn Montgomery Brown

Development Director

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P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413

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