2002 INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

FIPSE AWARDS $204,585 GRANT TO SOUTHEAST FOR CARE: CHILDREN AT RISK IN EDUCATION

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., Sept. 13, 2002 -- The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $204,585 grant to Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Elementary, Early, and Special Education for CARE: Children at Risk in Education.

Under the grant, a consortium of six universities -- three in the United States and three in Europe - will aim to develop a curriculum for student teachers to enable them to work with children at risk of failing in school, said Dr. Jean Benton, project director and associate professor of elementary, early and special education at Southeast Missouri State University.

CARE activities will begin Oct. 1 and extend through Aug. 31, 2005. Seventy-six percent of the total cost of the program, $268,981, is funded by FIPSE, while the remaining 24 percent, $64,396 is funded by non-governmental sources.

Dr. Shirley Stennis-Williams, dean of the Southeast College of Education, praised the Southeast faculty who secured the grant.

"The FIPSE grants are among the most competitive and prestigious in the nation," she said. "It is a significant accomplishment for Southeast to be the lead institution for this international project."

Children at risk in the project are defined as those who may fail to develop their educational potential because of social, economic and linguistic disadvantage, combined with race, ethnicity or gender difference. They include the children of migrant laborers and those whose first language is not that of the school. The consortium aims to facilitate the development of approaches and strategies to teaching failing pupils and the development and dissemination of curricular materials. In total, 54 students will travel abroad, 27 from the United States and 27 from Europe.

Benton says the CARE Consortium addresses the shared concerns of U.S. and European educators regarding young people at risk of failing or underachieving educationally. To assist in maximizing the potential of these young people, the Consortium will develop a curriculum for teacher candidates that will enable them to work effectively with low-achieving children. Teacher candidates will engage in supervised teaching practice and will study and analyze these experiences via the Consortium's Web site managed discussion lists and Web crossing activities. The Consortium's Web site will publish and make available curricular materials and findings based on the project, which will foster best practices in the education of under-achieving children globally, Benton said.

CARE Consortium partners in the United States include Southeast Missouri State University, which is the lead institution; Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina; and the University of Central Florida. European partners are Stranmillis University College, Queens University in the United Kingdom, which is the lead European institution; Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in The Netherlands; and the University of Leon, Spain. European partners are funded by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission.

"There are several aspects of this grant that introduce exciting and important programmatic elements into our teacher education curriculum," Benton said. "While we have been sending student teachers abroad since 1986, this is the first time that our third year students will be able to engage in practicum experiences abroad, where they will be placed in Dutch, Northern Irish, and Spanish classrooms."

Since requirements governing teacher education certification in every country throughout the world are exacting and stringent regarding transfer credit, it is difficult to have exchange students from other countries in teacher education classrooms at Southeast, she added.

"But this program creates the opportunity for our students to interact with the visiting European students," Benton said. "This infuses a European viewpoint in our college classrooms and at our practicum sites and ensures that our Southeast students will develop a comparative context about issues of educating at-risk students."

A third element is the Consortium's Web site that will be developed to create a virtual classroom for the 54 students to participate in managed Web forums and Web crossing activities. The Web site also will be used to publish and make available information on "best practices" in the education of underachieving children, Benton said.

For more information about the grant, contact Dr. Jean Benton at (573) 651-2440 or jbenton@semo.edu. For further information about FIPSE, visit www.ed.gov/FIPSE

New Exchange Program 
in College of Education

Dr. Shirley Stennis-Williams, Dean of the College of Education, has signed an exchange agreement with Stranmillis University College, a College of Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Stranmillis College was founded in 1922 to provide state-funded teacher training in the northern portion of the then, recently partitioned island. Until then, most Ulster teachers had been trained in Dublin. Today, the College is a multi-professional institution, no longer engaged solely in the education of teachers. It offers pre-service and in-service courses, undergraduate and post-graduate, for some 700 full-time students. All College courses lead to a qualification validated and awarded by the Queen's University of Belfast. The College currently has partnerships with similar higher education institutions throughout the European Union and beyond.

This exchange program is the result of a professional relationship, which began in 1998, when Dr. Phil Parette was supervising Southeast student teachers in Wales. Dr. Parette was also able to arrange a student teaching experience during that same time in Belfast for another Souteast student, and it was Prof. Sandra McWilliams with whom he coordinated this supervision. Since that time, Dr. Jean Benton, Coordinator of International Programs for the College of Education, has been working with Prof. McWilliams, Head of Teaching Studies and Partnerships, and Dr. Les Caul, Director of Academic Affairs and Head of Education at Stranmillis, to arrange the details of this exchange program and work toward the development of other types of collaborative professional relationships.

The exchange program with Stranmillis University College is similar in structure to the student teaching exchange program with Swansea Institute, University of Wales. Both institutions exchange students to teach in their local schools for 4-6 weeks, provide cultural and educational activities, and independent travel periods. Southeast students are eligible to participate in the program during the Fall 2002 semester.

The Stranmillis Exchange Program started on January 26, 2002 when the two institutional representatives, Les Caul, and Sandra McWilliams and 6 students arrived on campus. As with the Swansea exchange, these students stay on campus. This year they have been placed in Meyers Hall. While on campus for four weeks, their main professional activity will be practice teaching in the local schools. This year their practicum experiences will be at the Jefferson Elementary School in Cape. While there, they will be working with Mark Cook, principal, and six teachers: Ruth Smith, 1st grade; Joanie Skinner, 2nd grade; Yvonne Campbell, 3rd grade; Russell Grammer and Jeannie McCord, 4th grade; and Susan Pavlos, 6th grade. The six students are Katryna Bell, Graham Bennett, Jennifer Brown, Neil Campbell, Kathryn McNabb, and Claire Robinson.

NCATE RE-ACCREDITATION ACTIVITIES

In early March, the College of Education underwent its third re-accreditation inspection during a joint visit of NCATE and DESE Teams. One of the many activities presented during that time were poster sessions on all the special projects in the College of Education, e.g., Teacher Work Sample, In-Time Grant, NBPTS, Portfolio Development, Bi-lingual Education Program, Student Research, and International Activities.

Presenting the poster session on International Activities were 4 alumni of the teacher education program at Southeast who had participated in the Student Teaching Exchange Program (StepOut) with Swansea Institute, University of Wales during spring 2000:  Rebecca Boling, Berkley Summers, Heather Burger, and Lori Bles.

Renaissance Partnership Program Activated

This spring semester, three Southeast students participated in the Renaissance Partnership Program for international student teaching. Daisy Diederich and Susan Schindler both taught in Bath, England, while Betsy Weber was placed in a school in Rotherham, England.

For fall semester, one Southeast student teacher, Nicole Tilton, spent 8 weeks in Australia  student teaching in Melbourne, as part of the Renaissance Partnership Program.,

This program, coordinated by the University of Northern Iowa, offers student teachers the opportunity to complete the second half of their student teaching semester in schools throughout the world. Placements are available in over thirty countries in Africa, Middle East, Far East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.