A welcome message from Dean Gallagher

Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

As we begin the new academic year at USC Rossier, I want to welcome all of our new students and wish continued success to our returning students. I also want to express my gratitude to our faculty and staff, whose dedication will ensure that our students become the kinds of educational leaders that will advance educational equity—as teachers and admission officers, as researchers and administrators, as counselors and advisors.

This fall we are commemorating the centennial of USC Rossier as a school of education. We have actually been preparing teachers at USC since the 1890s, when we were a small department of pedagogy in the College of Liberal Arts. Our early success led to the establishment of a formal school of education in 1918, and over the ensuing decades we have grown and adapted while expanding our impact in our neighboring district, across the country and around the world.

But this is also a time for reflection and renewal at USC. At convocation last Thursday, interim president Wanda Austin appealed to the strength of the USC Trojan Family as she invited all of us to begin the process of rebuilding community right here at USC.

Varun Soni echoed these words when he spoke at the annual kick-off event for USC Rossier faculty and staff last Thursday afternoon. As the Vice Provost for Campus Wellness and Crisis Intervention, Dr. Soni reminded us that wellness and community are shared responsibilities. He called on each of us to be part of a culture change that will help us create the conditions whereby our whole community can flourish and thrive.

Our foundation as a school of education is built on 100 years of innovation and renewal. I believe we have the ideal conditions at USC Rossier to begin this new year with hope, healing and justice.

Thank you for joining us in our shared mission.

 

Fight On!

 

Sincerely,

Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.

Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA  90089-0031

Asst: hardison@usc.edu

213.740.5756 (office)

213.821.2158 (fax)

 

The Purple Gavel Group (PGG) is launching this August!

Hello Fellow Trojans,

The Purple Gavel Group (PGG) is launching this August and needs your support!

PGG is a California based non-profit organization with a specific focus on empowering teens and young adults from primarily low-income communities through strategic counseling programs, conferences and events, and through access to relevant legal and professional workshops and web content.

As a former Rossier graduate student, educator and counselor, it is important to me to share our vision with like-minded educators and professionals and build momentum around our mission to empower, educate, and elevate our youth in certain under-represented communities. I am currently reaching out to all of my personal and professional networks to share our information and build support in any way we can including strategic partnerships, volunteers, counseling/ MFT interns, sharing of information, donations, etc.

My direct line is below and I can be reached at any time. This mission is very near and dear to my heart and I welcome all suggestions, recommendations, and advisement. We aim to get this right and truly impact the communities we serve.

Thank you!

Allison L. Sherman

|Co- Founder, President|

The Purple Gavel Group

Phone: 323-312-7723

www.purplegavel.org  |    info@purplegavel.org

Nominations for Faculty Mentoring Award – Due May 15

The Rossier Mentoring Committee in coordination with the Office of Faculty Affairs and the Office of Research is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the Rossier Faculty Mentoring Award. This award will be presented at the 2018 Rossier Fall Kick Off event to honor individual faculty members whose contributions to the academic and professional success of Rossier programs, students, and scholarship deserve special recognition. Please refer to the attached call for nominations, which include the criteria for the award and the award nomination instructions.  Please submit nomination materials as a single PDF to Deborah Karpman, Assistant Dean for Research at dkarpman@rossier.usc.edu by May 15, 2018. Late or incomplete nominations will not be accepted.

Mentoring Award Final

Sincerely,

Lawrence O. Picus

Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs

Richard T. Cooper and Mary Catherine Cooper Chair in Public School Administration

 

Rossier Research Updates

UPCOMING EVENTS

Rossier at AERA: You can find the complete line-up of Rossier faculty and student presentations and Rossier events at AERA here.

AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS

Estela Bensimon (CUE) received the AERA Division J Research Award. Julie Posselt (Pullias) received the AERA Early Career Award.

Zoe Corwin (Pullias), along with her co-authors Tattiya Maruco (Pullias), Stephen Aguilar (CELDTECH), and others outside USC, were awarded the Top Paper Award by AERA’s Media, Culture, and Learning SIG (special interest group) for her paper, “Evaluating the effects of a game-based intervention on FAFSA completion.”

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang was one of three internationally identified finalists for the Joseph E. Zins Distinguished Scholar Award for Outstanding Contributions to Action Research in Social and Emotional Learning, given by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) The award is for a senior scholar at the Full Professor level.

Julie Marsh’s (CEPEG) article with Michelle Hall, “Challenges and Choices: A Multidistrict Analysis of Statewide Mandated Democratic Engagement,” was selected as Publication of the Year for the AERA Districts in Research and Reform SIG.

Julie Posselt’s (Pullias) book, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, & Faculty Gatekeeping, was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Rachel White (CEPEG) was awarded the AERA Division L 2018 Outstanding Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled, “Donut Devourers, Fish Fanatics, Politicians, and Educators: Faces and Voices of State Education Policymaking.”

Rachel White (CEPEG) was awarded the 2018 Outstanding Dissertation Award for the AERA Politics of Education (PEA) Special Interest Group (SIG).

NEW PUBLICATIONS

Benbenishty, R., Astor, R., Roziner, I. (in press). A School-Based Multilevel Study of Adolescent Suicide Ideation in California High Schools. The Journal of Pediatrics, 1-7.

Ching, C. D. (2018). Confronting the equity “learning problem” through practitioner inquiryThe Review of Higher Education, 41(3), 387-421.

Copur-Gencturk, Y., Tolar, T., Jacobson, E., Fan, W.(2018). An Empirical Study of the Dimensionality of the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching ConstructJournal of Teacher Education 1-13.  

DePaola, T. & Kezar, A. (2017). The Changing Face of Employment at Research Universities. New Directions for Institutional Research vol. 176, 83-96.

Kezar, A. (2018). Using philosophy to develop a thoughtful approach to going public or not. In L. Perna (Ed)., Taking It to the Streets: The Role of Scholarship in Advocacy and Advocacy in Scholarship. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kitchen, J.A., Sonnert, G., & Sadler, P. (2018). The impact of college- and university-run high school summer programs on students’ end of high school STEM career aspirationsScience Education, 102(1), 1-19.

Marsh, J. A. & Hall, M. (2018). Challenges and Choices: A Multidistrict Analysis of Statewide Mandated Democratic Engagement. American Educational Research Journal, 55(2), 243-286.

Pullias Center for Higher Education & Get Schooled. (2018). How is Technology Addressing the College Access Challenge?: A Review of the Landscape, Opportunities, and Gaps

New York: Get Schooled.

Quinn, D. M., Thomas J. K., Greenberg, M., & Thal, D. (2018). Effects of a Video-Based Teacher Observation Program on the De-privatization of Instruction: Evidence from a Randomized ExperimentEducational Administration Quarterly. Advanced online publication.

Tierney, W.G. A road less travelled: The responsibilities of the intellectual. In L. Perna (Ed)., Taking It to the Streets: The Role of Scholarship in Advocacy and Advocacy in Scholarship. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

PRESENTATIONS, INVITED TALKS, AND MEDIA

Shafiqa Ahmadi (Rossier Justice) gave the closing keynote at the Women’s Leadership Forum at Chapman University.

Ron Astor was interviewed about gun violence and school safety on NPR and for UCLA Center X’s publication Just Talk: Voices of Education and Justice.

Ron Astor presented at a Congressional briefing on the topic of gun violence and school safety.

Estela Bensimon’s (CUE) piece Creating Racially and Ethnically Diverse Faculties appeared in Inside Higher Ed.

Estela Bensimon (CUE) gave the Claremont Colleges Center for Teaching and Learning Distinguished Lecture, “Reframing the Production of Racial Inequity as an Organizational Learning Problem.”

Charles H.F. Davis III (Race and Equity) was the opening keynote speaker for the California College Personnel Administration Spring Institute on “Intersectionality and Inclusion.”

Charles H.F. Davis III (Race and Equity) participated in a public debate on campus free speech with Dr. Walter Kimbrough, President of Dillard University, at the Wisconsin Civil Liberties Symposium.

Charles H.F. Davis III (Race and Equity) was the keynote speaker at the the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges’ Faculty Institute on student protest hosted at Middlebury College.

Charles H.F. Davis III (Race and Equity) led a breakout session on “First-Generation College Students and Their Intersecting Identities,” and was the keynote speaker at El Camino College’s annual First-Generation Institute.

Elizabeth Holcombe (Pullias) gave a series of invited presentations on shared leadership at the Foundation for California Community Colleges’ professional development sessions.

Elizabeth Holcombe (Pullias) presented “Creating a Unified Community of Support: Increasing Success for Underrepresented Students in STEM,” a live webinar hosted by Accelerating Systemic Change Network (ASCN).

Adrian Huerta (Pullias) gave an invited presentation titled “Strategies to support Latino male community college students: Three tools for success” for Diversity Week at the College of Southern Nevada.

Adrian Huerta (Pullias) gave an invited lecture, “Latinos, gangs, and the higher education pipeline: A qualitative view on the school-to-prison-pipeline,” at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Adrian Huerta’s (Pullias) research on Latino men, gang-related issues, and inequalities in educational opportunities was featured in El Tiempo, a Spanish-language newspaper in Las Vegas.

Adrian Huerta (Pullias) served as a panelist at the Young Men’s Leadership Conference hosted by the Los Angeles Superior Court.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang gave a keynote to 5,000 attendees at the TESOL International Convention in Chicago on March 30th.

Adrianna Kezar (Pullias) presented “Building organizational capacity and innovating for resiliency and thriving” at the 2018 Association of Presbyterian Colleges & Universities Members’ Conference.

Julie Marsh (CEPEG) presented Democratic engagement in education reform: The case of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) as part of the Leadership, Policy, and Organizations Colloquium at Vanderbilt University.

Maria Ott was a panelist and breakout session leader at the Women’s Leadership Forum at Chapman University.

Julie Posselt (Pullias) was an invited speaker at the American Physical Society’s annual conference, in Los Angeles. Her research presentation was entitled “Faculty Support & Student Wellbeing in STEM Graduate Programs.”

Julie Posselt (Pullias) was a plenary speaker for the Western Association of Graduate Schools annual meeting in Las Vegas, NV. Her talk was entitled “Beyond Old Boys Clubs: Trust Networks in 21st Century Graduate Education.”

William Tierney (Pullias) gave the opening keynote, “The Direction of Future Research in Higher Education,” at the Conference on Higher Education in Konya, Turkey.

Marissiko Wheaton (Pullias) served as a panelist for APIDA Community Conversations – What does a Model Minority Mutiny Demand in Higher Education?, a live webinar hosted by ACPA’s Asian Pacific American Network (APAN) and NASPA’s Asian Pacific Islander Knowledge Community (APIKC).

Announcing New Holder of USC Rossier’s Cooper Chair

Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

I’m pleased to announce that Dr. Lawrence O. Picus will be installed this fall as the Richard T. Cooper and Mary Catherine Cooper Chair in Public School Administration. He will continue as associate dean for research and faculty affairs.

An endowed chair is one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed upon an individual in the academic community. It is awarded to a scholar who demonstrates the highest level of excellence in leadership and research in his or her area of study.

Dr. Picus will be the second holder of this positon, following Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who served as dean of USC Rossier (1988–2000) prior to becoming the Cooper Chair in 2003.

The endowment was established from a gift in 2001. Richard and Mary Catherine Cooper were longtime educators in Los Angeles, Richard serving as a teacher, coach, principal and area superintendent, and Mary Catherine as a first grade teacher in the Pasadena Unified School District as well as a bilingual teacher in LAUSD. Richard, a two-time Rossier alumnus, died in 2016.

Dr. Picus is one of the nation’s foremost experts on school finance equity and adequacy and has made a number of important contributions to our understanding of efficiency and productivity in the provision of educational programs for P­–12 school children.

He is the co-developer, along with Allan Odden, of the Evidence-Based Model of school finance adequacy. This model, which is used to estimate the amount of funding needed to help all children meet state performance standards, has been used in over 20 states and is the most widely used approach for estimating school finance adequacy. He is co-author, again with Dr. Odden, of School Finance: A Policy Perspective, 5th edition, the leading textbook in the field of school finance.

Among his other books are In Search of More Productive Schools: A Guide to Resource Allocation in Education; Developing Community Empowered Schools; and Principles of School Business Administration. He has published numerous articles in professional journals and consults extensively on school finance issues with states and local school districts.

Dr. Picus is past-president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy and was the president of EdSource, where he was a member of the board of directors for 14 years.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Picus.

 

Sincerely,

Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.

Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA  90089-0031

Asst: hardison@usc.edu

213.740.5756 (office)

213.821.2158 (fax)

 

 

 

EDL: Mid Course Evaluations

Hello Trojans,

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Now that we are approximately midway through the Spring Semester, we want to gather feedback on your courses so that we can make adjustments (if necessary) to improve your learning experience while the semester is still in progress.  You will also have an opportunity to provide final thoughts at the conclusion of this semester.

We encourage you to provide detailed comments. While individual responses will remain confidential, please note that feedback and comments on mid-semester course evaluations will be shared in aggregate with the faculty course lead for each class so that they may provide feedback to instructors.

To complete the evaluation, click on the anonymous survey link below. We ask that you complete a survey for each of the classes in which you are enrolled. The survey will remain open until Friday March 2 at 5pm PST.

https://usceducation.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cYegQfuiT9N57VP.

We appreciate your feedback!

Announcing new holder of USC Rossier’s Crocker Professorship

Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

I’m pleased to announce that Dr. Gale M. Sinatra will be installed this fall as the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Education.

A professorship is one of the most coveted honors that can be bestowed upon an individual in the academic community. It is awarded to a scholar who demonstrates the highest level of excellence in leadership and research in his or her area of study.

Dr. Sinatra will be the fourth holder of this endowed professorship, following Drs. Joanna Lemlech, Myron Dembo and Robert Rueda. The professorship was established through an endowment from Stephen H. Crocker, who also created a separate professorship at the USC Thornton School of Music.

Dr. Sinatra has been a professor of psychology and education at USC Rossier since 2012. Like her predecessors in this position, she is one of the top researchers in her field while also serving as an outstanding teacher and adviser. In the spring of 2017, she was one of 22 university faculty members to receive a USC Mentoring Award.

She is an internationally recognized expert on STEM learning and motivation. In particularly she has been a leader in research on climate science education, evolution education, conceptual change learning and the public understanding of science.

Dr. Sinatra has also been a prominent leader in her field through a number of organizations. In August, she will become president of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) educational psychology organization, Division 15, a role that also includes oversight of the prominent journal Educational Psychologist, which she edited from 2005 to 2010. She currently serves as an associate editor of the APA journal Psychological Bulletin, one of the top ranked journals in psychology.

As the Crocker Professor, she will continue on the path that she has already forged at USC Rossier, fostering the next generation of scholars while enhancing the impact of educational psychology on education and public policy.

Dr. Sinatra has edited two books, written dozens of book chapters, co-authored more than 60 scholarly papers and delivered nearly 200 conference presentations in education psychology. She is currently writing a book based on her 2016 article, “Public Understanding of Science: Policy and Educational Implications,” published in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain. The book will explore the psychology of science resistance, doubt and denial.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Sinatra for this important distinction.

 

Sincerely,

Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.

Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA  90089-0031

Asst: hardison@usc.edu

213.740.5756 (office)

213.821.2158 (fax)

 

 

 

Announcing New USC Rossier Dean’s Professorships

Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

I’m happy to share news of the appointments of Drs. Estela Mara Bensimon and Adrianna Kezar as USC Rossier Dean’s Professors.

Dean’s Professorships are rare distinctions at USC and arise from a nomination from a school’s dean to the provost. Drs. Bensimon and Kezar will be the first Dean’s Professors from USC Rossier.

Only full professors qualify for this honor, and holders of this position have distinguished careers including but not limited to groundbreaking scholarship, teaching and service. Drs. Bensimon and Kezar certainly exceed these requirements.

 

Estela Mara Bensimon

Dr. Bensimon will be the USC Rossier Dean’s Professor in Educational Equity, befitting her commitment throughout her career to achieving educational equity. She has demonstrated impact on universities and community colleges, as well as on leaders and policymakers, through her scholarship and through the creation and impact of the Center for Urban Education (CUE), which she founded in 1999.

In the last 10 years, Dr. Bensimon has earned the Social Justice Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA); the Research Achievement Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE); the USC Mellon Award for Mentoring; and the Research/Teaching Award for Outstanding Latino/a Faculty in Higher Education from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.

She became an AERA Fellow in 2011 and was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2017. Last month she was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Education Commission of the States.

Her work on equity has appeared in numerous journals, including Educational Policy and Review of Higher Education. Currently, Dr. Bensimon is the Co-PI on three grants focusing on equity-minded competence in instruction and assessment.

CUE is our second oldest research center at USC Rossier. Its impact on national and state practices in higher education is due largely to her vision and leadership. Both the Equity Scorecard and the tireless work she and her colleagues at CUE perform bring about change on campuses both for individual faculty and collectively at the institutional level.

 

Adrianna Kezar

Dr. Kezar will be the USC Rossier Dean’s Professor in Higher Education Leadership. She is the co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education and also directs the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.

She is a national expert on change, governance and leadership in higher education, and her research agenda explores the change process in higher education institutions and the role of leadership in creating change. She regularly presents her scholarship at conferences, seminars and workshops to help higher education leaders tackle key challenges such as shared governance, organizational learning and changing demographics and diversity.

Dr. Kezar has published 18 books and monographs, over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 100 book chapters and reports. She has also acquired approximately $13 million dollars in grant funding.

In 2015, she was recognized as an AERA Fellow, and in 2017 she received the Research Achievement Award from ASHE, given to scholars whose “published work advances understanding of higher education in a significant way.”

Please join me in congratulating Estela and Adrianna for these well-deserved honors. Their three-year terms in these positions will begin in the 2018–19 academic year. Each will deliver a Dean’s Professorship Lecture followed by a luncheon this fall.

Fight On!

 

Sincerely,

Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.

Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA  90089-0031

Asst: hardison@usc.edu

213.740.5756 (office)

213.821.2158 (fax)