TO: Media Covering Education Reform and Teacher Quality
FROM: Mimi Cunningham
Assistant Vice Chancellor for University Relations, UNCW
601 S. College Rd.
Wilmington, NC 28403
910/962-3171 ph 910/962-3847 fax
[email protected]
DATE: Oct. 7, 1999
RE: Former UNCW Watson School of Education Dean to Address Teacher Quality at SREB Legislative Work Conference
How can university schools of education be improved to more effectively prepare quality teachers and impact education reform?
This is one topic to be explored at the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)'s Legislative Work Conference Oct. 7-10 at the Renaissance Vinoy Hotel, St. Petersburg, Fla. About 100 of the South's leading state and national legislators will be attending.
Dr. Robert Tyndall, former dean of the UNC Wilmington Watson School of Education, has been invited by the SREB to speak about this issue at 8:30 a.m., Friday, Oct. 8. Tyndall, now vice chancellor for strategic information technology systems at UNCW, is the only one on the program who will bring the perspective of school of education dean. His focus will be on a number of critical program changes which he and his faculty successfully implemented during his tenure as dean at UNCW:
* Getting education professors into public schools as partners in a truly collegial relationship
* Creating new expectations of education faculty to include rigorous field rotations and research that is meaningful and applicable to helping K-12 schools improve
* Evaluating success of schools of education based not only on the performance of their graduates, but the success of the students whom the graduates teach
* Allowing alternative entry to the teaching profession without lowering standards.
Speaking on the panel with Dr. Tyndall will be Sen. David Karem, co-chair of Task Force on Teacher Quality in Kentucky, and Sen. Nikki Setzler, chair of the Senate Education Committee and newly appointed chair of the Governor's Commission on Teacher Quality in South Carolina.
Dr. Tyndall can be reached at his office at 910/962-3888 or at the hotel during the conference at 727/894-1000.
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