DEAN'S WELCOME
Welcome to the Dean’s website
for the College of Education and Human Services. Before
telling you about some of the current initiatives of the
College, perhaps I can set the stage with some background
on myself.
I began my duties as the new Dean of College of Education
and Human Services in mid-July, 2005. I came to the University
of Wisconsin Oshkosh from Southeast Missouri State University
where I served as the Chair of the Department of Middle & Secondary
Education. During my time at Southeast, I received awards
for both teaching and scholarship and in 1999 was the recipient
of the university’s coveted “Pride” award
for excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the
university. Prior to Southeast Missouri State University,
I served as an assistant professor in teacher education at
Siena College in upstate New York and received my doctoral
degree from University of North Carolina – Greensboro
specializing in Foundations and Sociology of Education.
Before going into higher education, I was a middle school
science teacher in Compton (Watts), California, which is
an inner-city area of south Los Angeles, which also gave
rise to my interest in diversity, inner-city education and
the impact of urban poverty on student learning. Before becoming
a teacher, I was an attorney in the Los Angeles area graduating
in 1977 from Western States School of Law and before that
I worked as a commercial lending officer for one of the large
banking institutions in Southern California.
While working as a department chair coordinating middle
level and secondary degree programs, I also initiated and
managed the department’s alternative certification
program and several large grants that required K-12 school
partnering. From these experiences, I have come to believe
strongly in the need for colleges of education, as we have
here at UW Oshkosh, to maintain strong linkages to local
public and parochial schools and have set the revitalization
of those relationships as one of my priority goals. I think
this effort will be vital to the College of Education and
Human Services as we prepare to continue our accredited status
with NCATE as well as improve our ability to assess our programs’ impact
on K-12 learners.
In addition, we are moving forward with the development
of our own COEHS Alumni organization that we will kick off
at UW Oshkosh’s 2005 Homecoming and expand to include
as many of the 23,000 plus alums from this college we can.
While continuing our normal quality programs at the undergraduate
and graduate levels, we are also looking into involving the
College in helping teachers and districts with PDP concerns
arising from PI-34, expanding our cooperative efforts with
other system institutions, and developing for the first time
a robust advancement program linked to the University Foundation.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those
folks at the College and on the University campus, and including
those folks at the various school districts with whom I have
met, who have been so warm, friendly and helpful to both
Nancy and I as we made the transition to Oshkosh.
There are lots of other ideas for new programs and efforts
that I will talk about on this page from time to time. If there
are any questions or concerns you want to address to the Dean’s
office, please contact my office through either jensenm@uwosh.edu or
through yeof@uwosh.edu. |
