A rundown of significant events in the Penn State College of Education during the Spring 2024 semester.
College of Education offering new master’s program in special education
Starting in summer 2024, the Penn State College of Education will offer a master’s program in special education that enables students with undergraduate degrees in non-education majors to earn a teaching degree.
The post-baccalaureate program in special education is intended for students who have completed a bachelor’s program in a field related to education, such as rehabilitation and human services, human development and family studies or psychology. The bachelor’s program must be completed before beginning the master’s program in special education. Read the full story here.
College of Education faculty member Zembal-Saul selected as 2024 NARST fellow
Penn State College of Education faculty member Carla Zembal-Saul has been selected as a 2024 fellow by NARST: A Global Organization for Improving Science Education through Research.
The honor recognizes Zembal-Saul’s “significant professional accomplishments as a science education researcher and her exceptional and longtime service to the NARST community.” Zembal-Saul has been a NARST (National Association for Research in Science Teaching) member for more than 30 years, dating to her time as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Read the full story here.
College of Education offering new unified doctoral program
The Penn State College of Education is now offering a revamped doctoral program in the Department of Education Policy Studies (EPS) that combines three previously existing programs into a unified program that is designed to provide a wider range of academic and professional opportunities for students.
The Education Policy and Leadership (EPL) Program provides doctoral training for students interested in career areas pertaining to educational policy, educational leadership and higher education. The goal of the program is to prepare students to pursue careers and exert leadership in education as researchers, faculty or administrators within educational organizations or other organizations that pertain to education. Students engage common coursework pertaining to education policy, leadership, research, equity and diversity as well as specialized coursework that they select in consultation with their adviser to prepare themselves for the dissertation research that culminates their studies. Read the full story here.
Penn State College of Education names 2023-24 Equity Fellows
Three scholars in the Penn State College of Education who have demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) have been serving as Equity Fellows during the 2023-24 academic year.
Assistant professors of education Javier Casado Pérez, Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg and Tanner Vea were selected as the college’s Equity Fellows for 2023-24. Fellows are granted one course release per semester to provide the time needed to engage in program- or department-level work that aligns with the college’s commitment to DEIB and anti-racism and furthers our progress. Read the full story here.
College of Education assistant professor earns national dissertation award
Mariah Harmon, assistant professor of education (teacher education) in the Penn State College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, has been named as the 2024 recipient of the James Anderson Outstanding Dissertation Award, presented by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).
The award recognizes excellence in doctoral dissertation research that contributes to the knowledge base of educator preparation or of teaching and learning with implications for educator preparation. The award is named for James D. Anderson, whose landmark 1988 book, “The Education of Blacks in the South,” transformed the field of African American educational history. Read the full story here.
Education researcher examines school funding mechanisms in new book
The commonly held perception that school funding mechanisms originate at the local level is not only inaccurate but encourages complacency in dismantling structural inequalities, according to a Penn State College of Education researcher.
Matthew Gardner Kelly, assistant professor of education in the Department of Education Policy Studies, wrote his first book, “Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity,” which was published in January in the Histories of American Education Series at Cornell University Press. The book uses the history of local taxation and its alternatives to trace the role of school finance policies in expanding and entrenching structural inequalities in education in the 19th and 20th centuries. Read the full story here.
College of Education researcher among top 2% of those being referenced in field
A Penn State College of Education faculty member is among the top 2% of researchers to have their work referenced in the disciplines of languages and linguistics, according to statistics compiled by Stanford University professor John P.A. Ioannidis and available through the Elsevier Data Repository. Researchers included in the database are categorized in 22 scientific disciplines and 174 sub-fields.
Matthew Poehner, professor of education (world languages education and applied linguistics), made the list in the area of languages and linguistics.
Poehner researches how people develop abilities in other languages. The research topic that he is perhaps most strongly associated with is dynamic assessment — a manner of testing in which, when test takers encounter problems, support is provided and how the test taker responds becomes part of the interpretation of their abilities. Read the full story here.