Pursuant to the February 6 memo from Dean Cornett and COE Senate Chair Gable to COE faculty and staff, this is to report the proposal from OSFE faculty as to its place in the reorganized College of Education. Our proposal has been shaped in several faculty meeting discussions as well as group electronic communication since Dean Cornett’s presentation at the COE Faculty meeting on November 14, 2003.

The changes we are proposing speak more to breaking down the “silos” than to cost savings. However, the unit has already made several changes which have realized cost savings. Closing San Antonio has eliminated one faculty member, Julio Noboa, and returned Christine Canning to campus for on-campus instruction. The Marshalltown and Ottumwa Centers have been closed as centers with resident faculty. OSFE has also given up an unfilled secretary line and is now sharing the account specialist with the Dean's office.

The Unit
We believe it is imperative to continue the concept of student teaching centers and the comprehensive state-wide network OSFE currently maintains. With over 300 student teachers each semester, UNI needs schools throughout the state for its clinical placements. That we have a UNI faculty coordinator in each center who is a part of that community, who knows the schools and their teachers, and who maintains a positive relationship with school administrators is critical to maintaining the quality of our program. It is also critical to maintaining the welcome we currently enjoy in schools across the state as well as to being resourceful to these schools as they help train and then hire our graduates. At the same time, resident coordinators who represent the College and University in various meetings and projects in their communities are a valuable contribution to the University’s influence across the state.

We further believe it is important for all those engaged in student teaching supervision, i.e., OSFE faculty, to “stay together” as a group. OSFE meetings are important for the interactions of OSFE and other teacher education faculty as they maintain relationships which are contexts for electronic interactions between meetings. All these communications provide for dialogue to support maintaining program quality and coordination with the programs of other units, maintaining program consistency across student teaching sites, program planning, and collaboration in problem solving. Without these team-building opportunities, student teaching experiences may become conceptually as well as geographically distant from the University.

In Dean Cornett’s draft, presented on November 14, 2003, Student Teaching is in an oval in the box alongside MPLS and with other service units, IRTS, Freeburg Center, etc. The administrative head of the box is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, Laboratories, and Facilities. We propose that the “student teaching” unit become the Office of Clinical and Field Experiences (OCFE). This would be a service unit to provide the service of student teaching supervision to all UNI teacher preparation students. It would also continue to provide coordination and/or assistance with Levels I, II, and III by Kathy Oakland and could provide help with other field experiences where requested and/or where appropriate. The OCFE unit would be administered by Roger Kueter as Executive Director of Clinical and Field Experiences.

Faculty
OSFE faculty who hold terminal degrees would stay with the OCFE unit but make a voluntary transfer to an academic department for an academic home: Christine Canning, Rori Carson, and Janey Montgomery to C & I; James Kelly to Science in the College of Natural Sciences; Richard Fehlman to English in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts; Dianna Briggs to the College of Business. These faculty would be tenured in and take their academic ranks to these departments. While their academic homes would be in these departments in the COE and across campus, their budgetary home and primary professional responsibilities would be in the OCFE unit. Specific course assignments, however, could vary. For example Christine Canning might teach sections of Classroom Management in C & I in return for supervision help from other C & I faculty.

OSFE faculty without terminal degrees would remain attached to the OCFE unit as “Clinical Faculty,” retaining the academic rank of Instructor and being tenured in the OCFE unit. If this unit remains linked to the PLS/Department of Teaching, OCFE Clinical Faculty would continue to abide by the Department of Teaching PAC policies and procedures; if the OCFE would be a separate unit, PAC policies and procedures would need to be established. It is our belief that this would not require any modification to the Master Agreement.

We further propose that OCFE Clinical Faculty be assigned as representatives of OCFE to various colleges and departments in COE and across campus. Their representative responsibilities would be to visit with the teacher education faculty or their representative(s) for informal exchanges in person several times a year and more often electronically. At the same time, we propose that other colleges and departments appoint faculty representatives to OCFE for the same types of communication. These relationships would provide for more effective lines of communication, for the “breaking down of silos.”

Summary
OSFE faculty agree that it is important to stay together as a unit while at the same time enhancing the exchange of participation of this unit with the various teacher preparation units in the College and across campus. We further believe that having a professional faculty state wide is important to the University as well as to the schools across the state.

This proposal represents the collective thoughts of the OSFE faculty and is supported and endorsed by this group.