Interview with Education's Dean Carlson

What's happening in the College of Education?

Our fastest growing program is the Early Childhood Program, the PreK-3 initiative [pre-kindergarten for 3 year-olds]. [Louisiana's late Superintendant for Education and UL alumnus] Cecil Picard really got that initiative going.

So now UL's getting the The Cecil J. Picard Center for Child Development. It's partly funded by a generous donation from Lloyd J. Rockhold, partly funded from the state. The Director is Dr. Billy Ray Stokes, who is really getting this thing off the ground. So the work we're doing in the classroom with Dr. Stokes is cutting edge, and we have a state-of-the-art research center to support it. The Center started with the LA 4 program looking at the importance of reading in early childhood intervention. From there, we're looking at health, poverty, and other issues that affect early childhood education.

Tell us about graduate studies.

We have the new doctoral program, an EdD in consortium with Southeastern Louisiana University, and that's going very well. We have 50 students from both campuses, and they're progressing quickly. Perhaps by Spring 2009, maybe earlier, we will begin graduating EdD's. So a year from now the University will see those terminal degrees added to UL's total production, and that will enhances our ranking, and our reputation.

I understand you have educational components that tie into computer games and animation.

A very big area for us is the work that Doug Williams and Yuxin Ma [see ultoday.com article here] are doing developing educational video games. They have landed some large grants, and they are producing research and software that are cutting edge. What they are doing of course ties into UL's traditional strength in Computer Science, and it also crosses over with the University's initiatives in computer gaming, computer animation, film, and potentially Cognitive Sciences. Their games will also be part of UL's intellectual property, which will give us new sources of funding.

The College of Education has established itself as an innovator in educational leadership in Louisiana. Tell us about that.

We were chosen as the first University in the state, and one of the first 11 universities in the Southern Region Educational Board (SREB), to work with the SREB on educational leadership. Working with modules that all universities are now training on, we developed our new Masters of Leadership. It was the first to be approved in Louisiana, so we have shared our knowledge with about half a dozen other Louisiana universities. One of the concepts that we are using in that program is "tapping": instead of waiting for leaders to step up from the teaching ranks, schools are now starting to nominate good candidates.

The State used our Masters Degree educational leadership model to get a $3.6 million grant from the prestigious Wallace Foundation. The grant is funding 4 regional partnerships between local school systems and their universities-- UL, UNO, SU and SLU-- to improve training and working conditions for educators. The goal is to develop initiatives that will support the recruitment, preparation, induction and support of educational leaders at the local level.

The School Systems are using the program to develop teams of school leaders, so UL and the Lafayette Parish School System will end up with about 20 teachers from 4 or 5 schools, who will take our data and strategies courses. Completion of the basic program allows them to add a Teacher Leader endorsement to their certification. Those are also the two introductory courses for the Master's programs, encouraging participants to continue toward a Master's degree, and some have done so. The first cohort of the Leadership Program graduated in the Spring, with about 20-25 graduates.

One of the unique programs we have is the 2+2 Program with LSUE in Elementary Education, and Early Childhood Education. The unique aspect of the program is that the students at LSUE take their first 65 hours at LSUE, then our faculty deliver the final 60+ hours to them, on their campus. I don't believe I've ever heard of another 4 year university collaborating with a 2 year college in that format.

And so, each Spring there are cohorts of 25-35 students from LSUE who graduate along with our students here at UL.