NIU’s Wright Elementary School took center stage during a joint annual conference of school board members and school district administrators from across Illinois. Representatives from NIU and the DeKalb School District presented “On the ‘Wright’ Track: Expanding School and University Partnerships.”
NIU is home to “The Multiculturalist,” an online publication of the Office of the Provost that debuted in the fall of 2007. The semiannual publication contains information on the Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute, interviews with faculty, book reviews and helpful resources at NIU.
Three professors from the School of Nursing and Health Studies have received prestigious Nurse Educator Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Board of Higher Education. State leaders expect Karen Baldwin, Judith Hertz and Donna Plonczynski and some of their colleagues from around Illinois to work toward the retention of well-qualified nursing educators.
Literacy Education Professor Chris Carger won the 2007 International Reading Association’s prestigious Arbuthnot Award as the year’s outstanding teacher of children’s and young adults’ literature. The Arbuthnot recognizes knowledgeable professionals who are innovative teachers, leaders in the field, role models, mentors and disseminators.
The College of Education is representing NIU in a national effort to determine what sort of universal capstone experience is or should be provided to, or required of, those educators who earn doctoral degrees in preparation for professional roles in the field. The Carnegie Foundation invited NIU and 19 other U.S. universities to join the discussion.
Laurie Elish-Piper, professor of literacy education and director of the NIU Reading Clinic, was elected president of the College Reading Association. Elish-Piper will begin her service as the organization’s vice president before becoming president-elect in 2009 and president in 2010.
A three-year project between NIU and Indian Prairie School District 204 aims to empower youths with disabilities to become their own advocates toward “happy and self-sufficient lives.” Funding for Project MY VOICE comes from a $340,000 grant from the Illinois Council on Developmental Disabilities.
A trio of professors dedicated to women’s history is working to ensure their scholarly interests are handed down to future generations. Lucy Townsend, professor in the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations, and two colleagues from other universities have received a $5,000 grant from the International Society for Educational Biography in support of their “Educating Women Project.”
Literacy Education professor Mayra Daniel has won the first Jerry Johns Promising Researcher Award from the College Reading Association. Named after the retired NIU professor and internationally known literacy educator and researcher, the new honor includes a $500 stipend to support Daniel’s research.
Deborah Smith-Shank, head of the School of Art’s art education division, is the driving force behind “Visual Culture & Gender,” an online-only academic journal that debuted last September. Each fall’s multimedia posting will encourage and promote an understanding of how visual culture puts gender into context alongside age, class, race, sexuality and social units.
Rhonda Robinson, a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, is one of 30 recipients of the 2006 Inspired Teacher Scholarship for Visual Learning from Inspiration Software. The scholarship program supports professional development activities for educators in K-12 schools, colleges and universities who champion the integration of visual learning and technology into the curriculum.
NIU received a $5 million federal grant to work with partners in Rockford on a five-year initiative to enhance teacher quality and student performance in the city. Project REAL gives classroom teachers hands-on experience with new teaching techniques that help students do their best.
Project REAL’s “NIU REAL Experience,” a week-long summer camp for Rockford Jefferson High School students identified as having the potential for college but lacking the ambition or the awareness, has made an impact. Some of the campers are among NIU’s 2008-09 freshman class.
NIU leads the statewide “P-20” initiative that promotes better teacher training and higher student achievement from pre-school through graduate school.
One program under the “P-20” umbrella is leadership of a statewide initiative to improve math and science education in Illinois. NIU president John Peters served on a blue ribbon panel named by the U.S. Department of Education to study lagging student performance in math and science.
Most first-year teachers with NIU degrees believe they were prepared well to teach their primary subject areas and to implement developmentally appropriate instruction. Nearly 98 percent say they feel they meet the Illinois Professional Learning Standards regarding education as a profession and its benchmarks of professional conduct. They give good grades to their classroom instruction at NIU and their pre-service clinical experiences.
NIU is a partner with the Illinois State Board of Education, the Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois Resource Center in a federally funded initiative to recruit and train bilingual teachers. Students will need two-and-a-half years to complete the rigorous curriculum. The first cohort graduated in May 2008.
