Alternate Reorganization Proposal, Submitted by Thomas R. Berg

Rationale:
Reorganization can strengthen or weaken the College of Education. This proposal is put forward in the spirit that it might make us more effective in a number of our basic educational missions.

1. To follow common sense in linking together the academic disciplines, resources, and facilities that seem to belong together to enable us to get the job done.
2. To group together the entities that would most provide a fertile ground for research by linking academic areas to the appropriate worlds of practice.
3. To build a closer link between academic learning and both field experiences and student teaching.

Explanations:
Placing elementary, early childhood, and special education together and linking them to the Regents’ Center, Freeburg School, CDC, and TLC puts all of the major entities that focus primarily on elementary and early childhood education together.

Linking of HPELS and the Sport and Performance Center.

The focus of Educational Leadership is the management of schools. It would make sense, therefore, to link EL to the university’s school, so that it can be shaped to serve as a demonstration school, reflecting best practices in both educational leadership and the education of students.

The “Professional Education Requirements” for students in education are described on page 45 of the University Catalog. Merging Educational Psychology and Foundations, OSFE, and Educational Media to create a Department of Professional Foundations and Field Experiences would bring together all of the academic areas responsible for providing the courses and experiences that constitute the Professional Core (with the exception of Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners). The advantage would be many, the most important of which would be reducing the isolation of OSFE so that it can provide constant feedback on the adequacy of professional preparation, based on observations of student teachers.

The IRTS could be reinvented to become both a repository for and a showcase of state-of-the-art educational media as well as the more traditional instructional resources and is a logical and practical extension of Educational Media. (Educational Media might seek to broaden its purview to include all instructional resources.)

Disclaimer:
This proposal focuses upon the academic programs and disciplines and is based on the concept that form should be dictated by function. It does not address the overall administrative structure and how that might also be reshaped to support the academic missions of the College. It should be noted that the proposal does “clean out” the lower right hand box in the 11/14/03 proposal by linking each of the entities formerly in that box to an academic department which can both benefit from such a connection and bring benefit to that entity.

Final Thought:
The Advising Center has disappeared from the organizational chart. It might make sense to anticipate the need for program planning and advising as well as advising on certification requirements etc. The logical location for a modest advising capability would be in association with the Office of the Associate Director of Teacher of Education.

Organizational Chart (.pdf)