UCA’s College of Education is holding its inaugural meeting of the Superintendent’s Advisory Council meeting on Mon., March 1. The Advisory Council includes local and state-wide K-12 school superintendents who have agreed to advise and support UCA’s College of Education to effectively prepare educators for Arkansas schools. The initial meeting will familiarize the Superintendents with the College of Education undergraduate programs, graduate programs, and outreach endeavors. Additionally, Superintendents will offer information on the schools’ personnel needs and provide feedback about changing expectations and demands of educators to meet current school priorities. UCA President Allen Meadors, Dean Diana Pounder, and other members of UCA’s College of Education faculty will be in attendance. The following Superintendents will serve on the council: Richard Abernathy, Bryant School District; Doug Adams, South Conway County School District; Laura Bednar, Stuttgart School District; Merle Dickerson, Van Buren School District; John Gray, Mayflower School District; Frank Mitchell, Vilonia School District; Kenneth Muldrew, Hope School District; Greg Murray, Conway School District; Tony Prothro, Benton School District; Kenneth Ramey, Siloam Springs School District; Belinda Shook, Beebe School District; Larry Smith, White Hall School District; Scott Spainhour, Greenbrier School District; Tony Thurman, Cabot School District; Andrew Tolbert, Warren School District; Bob Watson, El Dorado School District; Tony Wood, Searcy School District; and Ron Wright, Farmington School District.
The College of Education will sponsor its annual Leadership Institute on June 11 on UCA’s Campus in Brewer-Hageman Hall. The program will include a morning keynote address on Leadership for Learning: Assessing Behaviors that Count by Dr. Ellen Goldring of Vanderbilt University. Small group break-out sessions will be led by state educational leaders. A small registration fee will be charged and lunch will be served. Participants will include K-12 school and district administrators, educational leadership professors, aspiring leaders, and school board members. For registration information, please check our College of Education website www.uca.edu/education/.
One hundred percent of all College of Education students passed the Praxis III Classroom Performance assessment, with each area scoring above the state average. The PRAXIS III is an assessment of classroom performance created by Educational Testing Service (ETS) to assess the skills of beginning teachers in classroom settings, using direct observation of classroom practice, review of documentation prepared by the teacher and semi-structured interviews. These assessments are administered to all graduates of teacher education programs in the state of Arkansas.
The new Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program’s first graduates completed their program of study in 2008. These MAT graduates performed, on average, above the state mean on the PRAXIS III assessment. Thus, these graduates are achieving outstanding classroom performance results, demonstrating that this program not only attracts high numbers of students, but also yields high quality novice teachers to the profession. UCA’s MAT program has been nominated for the Outstanding Teacher Education Award with the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE).