The University of Iowa College of Education

Education at Iowa

Spring 2005

Table of Contents

EDUCATIONAL POLICY & LEADERSHIP STUDIES

Hot Off the Press
Ogren, Pascarella, and Sanders Cassell pen new books that advance Social Foundations and Higher Education

The American State Normal School

Ogren's book cover

The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good” by Assistant Professor Christine Ogren is the first comprehensive history of the state normal schools in the United States. Nearly 200 state colleges and regional universities throughout the country began as normal schools, but by the 1920s when they began to offer four years of college work, they rechristened themselves “teachers colleges.”

As these institutions later became state colleges and/or regional universities, they celebrated their work outside the field of education and sandblasted buildings to remove the low-status “normal” label. In doing so, they buried the rich history of generations of students for whom attending normal school was an enriching, and sometimes life-changing experience. Ogren captures this important history.

The American State Normal School is a terrific book, one that will have a major impact on many fields,” says Stanford University Professor David Labaree. “It is an important contribution to the history of higher education, the history of teacher education, the history of teaching, and the history of gender in education.”

Linda Eisenmann, dean of the College of Education at John Carroll University, concurs. “The America State Normal School significantly expands our understanding of the relationship between teacher education and gender issues,” she said.

Focusing on the students, the book provides a well-researched, much-needed reexamination of the state normal school.

“There is simply nothing else like it,” Labaree said. “Ogren’s effort to resurrect the valuable role that the normal school played in the lives of its students is an important part of what makes this book so effective.”

Intelligent and Effective Direction

Sander's book cover

With the book-length manuscript on Fisk University’s Race Relations Institute, Dr. Sanders Cassell fills a large gap in the knowledge of race relations research and scholarly activities in the 20 th century,” says Columbia University Teachers College Professor of History and Education V.P. Franklin.

In her new book, Intelligent and Effective Direction—The Fisk University Race Relations Institute and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1944-69, Assistant Professor Katrina Sanders Cassell clearly finds that education was only one of the Race Relations Institute’s objectives. Its emphasis on training participants to engage in activities to bring about social change had not previously been discussed.

As the first comprehensive examination of the Race Relations Institute, Sanders Cassell clearly shows the multifaceted emphasis on education, litigation, and legislation that by the early 1960s served as a springboard for social protest and direct action in the area of black-white relations. Sanders Cassell documents the impact of cold war competition, international human rights campaigns, the movements for decolonization on the Race Relations Institute’s programs and activities in the 1940s and 1950s, and explains how increased black militancy and nationalism in the late 1960s contributed to the demise of a program committed to integrationist goals and objectives.

“I have no doubt that the book will be a significant contribution to 20 th century U.S. social, educational, and intellectual history,” Franklin said.

How College Affects Students—Volume Two

Pascarella's book cover

Thirty years of research about how college influences students’ learning is gathered and synthesized in the long-awaited second volume of Professor Ernest Pascarella’s classic book How College Affects Students.

The new, 848-page edition, subtitled “A Third Decade of Research, Vol. 2,” is likely to become as popular and respected as the previous edition, published in 1991. The book is coauthored by Patrick T. Terenzini, a longtime collaborator of Pascarella’s and a professor of higher education at Penn State.

Jacqueline E. King, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education, calls it “the essential reference for anyone trying to answer the question ‘What works?’”

George D. Kuh (PhD ’75), chancellor’s professor and director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, said the book is an “encyclopedic masterpiece—thorough, penetrating, insightful, and rich with implications. It is THE essential resource for anyone with a serious interest in college student development.”

The 1991 volume of How College Affects Students reviewed about 2,600 studies published from about 1967-1989. The new volume is a meta-evaluation of an additional 2,300 research studies published from 1989-2001 and detailing the effect of college on student cognitive growth, values and attitudes, psychosocial changes, career attainment, moral development and economic benefits.

When Pascarella was asked about the enormity of a second book project that turned out even bigger than the first, he compared it to painting the Golden Gate Bridge. “When you’re finished one end, you’ve got to start all over again with the other.”

Educational Administration Program Reaccredited

Educational Administration faculty:
Educational Administration faculty: standing, Susan Lagos (L) and Marcus Haack; seated, Carolyn Wanat (L) and Larry Bartlett.

The Iowa State Board of Education has reaccredited the Educational Administration program. As a result of the review process, the Educational Administration preparation program has made substantive changes in its approach to preparing future school principals.

“The program has moved from a preparation program that was mostly theoretical to one that is nearly evenly balanced between classroom theory and field, or clinical, experiences,” said Clinical Associate Professor Marcus Haack, the program’s director. “This change results in a program that allows students to more directly experience life in the ‘real world’ of the principalship.”

Another unique aspect of the program that emerged as part of the review process is that of mentor relationships with students. A group of principals from schools of various sizes in eastern Iowa has gone through an orientation that qualifies them to serve as mentors for students currently in the program. These principals, selected as outstanding practitioners by their peers, meet periodically with their assigned students to build a professional relationship that helps students gain greater insight and understanding of the life of the school principal.

“The program will continue to evolve over the next five years in order to respond more effectively and efficiently to the ever-changing nature of school leadership,” Haack said. “It is our desire to be on the cutting edge of preparing tomorrow’s school principals by exposing our students to the very latest leadership theories and providing them with the best real life clinical experiences possible.”

Top

McNabb Dodges Tsunami, Returns to Thailand to Help

McNabbs in 1990
McNabbs, 1990

A quirk of cartography may have saved the lives of Associate Professor Scott McNabb and his family, placing them on the side of Thailand opposite where the deadly tsunami struck last December. This spring, McNabb returned to southern Thailand to help in the reconstruction of damaged elementary schools, efforts which aid workers say are desperately needed to help children traumatized by the tsunami—many of them orphans—return to some state of normalcy.

McNabb’s relationship with Thailand dates back more than 35 years. From 1968-1971 he was a Peace Corps volunteer at Thammasat University, and has made many return trips since for research, consulting, and teaching work.

During 1990-91 he had a Fulbright research grant at Payap University and took along his entire family: his wife, Terry McNabb (PhD ’86), an associate professor at Coe College; two sons, Kirk and Darren, who were 8 and 5 at the time; and daughter, Anna, who was just 3.

Over the years the McNabbs have maintained their connections to Thailand and last year they decided to make a return family visit. They hoped to retrace some of their steps, but were unable to find the exact beach where they had previously stayed so they chose instead to go to a tiny island off Thailand’s east coast.

On the morning of Dec. 26, in a small bungalow just a stone’s throw from the water, McNabb felt a tremor through the floorboards. It wasn’t until he turned on CNN that he learned that a massive underwater earthquake had spawned a tsunami that swept away thousands and obliterated large swaths of land on the western side of the Thai peninsula—including the area where the McNabbs were originally planning to stay—one of Thailand’s hardest-hit areas.

“We were just 150 miles away from Phuket, as the crow flies,” McNabb said. “If the earthquake had hit further east, we could have been swept away.”

As the number of dead rose, McNabb said he and his family felt a sense of survivor’s guilt, a feeling that lingers to this day.

“It has been difficult for us to comprehend that at the same time that we were enjoying our family adventure in southern Thailand, on the other side of the country hundreds of thousands of people were suffering from a huge natural disaster,” he said.

McNabb knew that he was in an especially good position to provide assistance, given his deep familiarity with the country, connections cultivated through the Peace Corps, and his research and his fluency in Thai. In recent years, McNabb has been a consultant to the Thai Ministry of Education on non-formal education projects and is currently serving as U.S. evaluator on a project to develop community colleges in Thailand.

McNabb family
McNabb family recreates the 1990 pose on the steps of Wat Phra That temple. From left, in both photos, are sons Kirk and Darren; wife, Terry; Scott; and daughter, Anna.

McNabb began planning his return to Thailand almost immediately after arriving in the United States. He changed his spring sabbatical plans, and flew to Thailand to volunteer with relief and reconstruction efforts at the Ban Bang Muang and Bang Bang Sak elementary schools.

Some Iowa City K-12 classes collected supplies for the schools, and when McNabb returns he will talk with the students about his experience. “This way, local students can feel like they’re making a direct connection with the people in Thailand,” McNabb said.
For more information, visit www.uiowa.edu/~ournews/tsunami/project-restore.


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