Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

Standard 4

Standard 5

Standard 6

Standard 7

Standard 8

Standard 4 Supporting Artifacts

Narrative

Standard 4: Diversity

The unit designs, implements, and evaluates curriculum and experiences for candidates to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. These experiences include working with diverse higher education and school faculty, diverse candidates, and diverse students in P-12 schools

Standard 4.1: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Curriculum and Experiences

The unit has an established campus reputation as a leader in multicultural education. The multicultural initiative was formally launched in the college in 1993 when Dean Buccino established multicultural education as one of 3 “primary agendas” for the College of Education. In AY1994 the unit established a Task Force for Multicultural Education (MCTF) that then worked for over 10 years to lead efforts in the college related to multicultural education. Its activities included seminars, workshops, mini-grants to support multicultural research, and a local conference related to multicultural and diversity issues. Other colleges on campus have looked to the Multicultural Education Initiative established by the unit as a model for their own efforts. The current Dean's Council on Diversity (DCOD), an evolution of the MCTF, continues to help facilitate and lead multicultural and diversity initiatives in the college.

The college is committed to providing all candidates with experiences that foster the development of knowledge, skills and experiences to help them create respectful, supportive learning environments for all P-12 students. One way in which this commitment is demonstrated is through both university and college cultural diversity requirements.

In the late 1990s the university established a subcommittee of the curriculum committee that met every two weeks for eighteen months to develop a university cultural diversity requirement that included a global as well as a domestic orientation. This requirement was approved through the university curriculum committee and university council and in 1998 the university asked each college to establish its own diversity plan to show how each of the majors would satisfy this university diversity requirement. 

During this same time period, the College of Education’s Multicultural Task Force was engaged in a similar process of creating a college diversity requirement. The unit’s cultural diversity requirement specifies the "knowledge of application" and the "conceptual knowledge" candidates are expected to demonstrate. The commitment to diversity is also reflected in how the requirement is met. Rather than specifying experiences or common courses across the unit, individual departments determined how the requirement would be fulfilled. Each department created diversity plans in 1999, to show how the departmental programs would satisfy the diversity requirement.  After review, critique, and revision, the plans were sent forward to the university level curriculum committee, university council, and approved. The plans, implementation and regular reviews of these requirements represent an innovative and forward-thinking initiative in the college (paper document files).

COE Undergraduate Cultural Diversity Requirements

College of Education Cultural Diversity Requirement

2001 COE Department Diversity Plan

Depending on the department, the requirement can be met through curricular experiences in the form of departmental diversity-specific courses, through courses with diversity content fully infused with discipline-specific content, or through extra-curricular experiences with diversity, such as academic service learning projects in diverse communities. A required course for all pre-service teachers is the EFND 2030, Foundations of Education. Based on the National Council for Social Foundations standards, this course provides candidates the opportunity to examine the historical, philosophical and socio-cultural influences on education. Candidates are challenged to examine past and current educational issues through different lenses, and to explore how policies and practices have impacted education, particularly for candidates of color and with disabilities. This course extends the ways in which our pre-service candidates acquire knowledge, skills, and dispositions to help all students learn. As is evident in all the unit’s programs, diversity is integrated throughout many of the courses at the undergraduate level. In addition the unit focused curricular efforts at the graduate level to meet the needs of advanced candidates with diversity content required in each graduate program. A survey of graduate courses that have cultural diversity as a central focus of the course shows that there are many courses available to candidates in advanced programs. In addition the unit offers programs and courses related to various kinds of diversity including exceptionalities, socioeconomic diversity, linguistic diversity, global studies, and gay and lesbian studies.

University of Georgia Bulletin

In addition to formal course-related experiences, candidates in the unit have multiple opportunities to raise awareness of the importance of diversity in teaching and learning. The Dean's Council on Diversity (DCOD) has been holding diversity seminars for over a decade. This past year, the DCOD joined efforts with the Center for Latino Achievement & Success in Education (CLASE) to offer a series of seminars related to diversity. The DCOD also sponsors an annual "Fall Fling," an event that brings diversity-related organizations as well as work of individual faculty to a poster-type session where candidates can talk to others involved in diversity work. Several faculty in the unit are actively involved in Study Aboard programs, taking candidates to countries ranging from Brazil to Russia to South Africa.

College of Education Study Abroad Programs

A Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching Program (COST) offers teacher education candidates with opportunities to student teach abroad. In the past four years (Fall 2002-Spring 2006), 47 candidates have been placed in countries including:  Ecuador, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, Bahamas, and England.

These local efforts are supplemented with other initiatives across campus, such as events sponsored by the UGA Office of Institutional Diversity, UGA Career Center Diversity Resources and UGA Minority Services and Programs, and UGA Study Abroad programs.

Knowledge, skills and experiences around diversity are assessed in a variety of ways. At the unit level, diversity is one of the topics in the exit survey for candidates. This data is used to evaluate the extent to which candidates feel prepared to help all students learn (link to exit survey). In the 2004 exit surveys, 98% of the candidates reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: I am able to provide a climate that encourages equitable engagement of diverse students in productive tasks. Almost all of the candidates (98%) also strongly agreed or agreed with supporting the diverse needs of all students (I am an advocate for learning environments that support the diverse needs of all students). Finally, 99% agreed or strongly agreed that they I interact and work with individuals from diverse ethnic, racial, gender and socioeconomic groups equally well.

At the program level, several programs regularly distribute diversity surveys to obtain feedback from candidates on the extent to which they believe they are prepared to work with diverse student populations

Department of Elementary and Social Studies Education

Data is gathered from faculty and staff related to multicultural issues. During 2004-2005, as part of a continuing self-study of diversity within the unit, the Dean's Council on Diversity (DCOD) and Dean Castenell led an initiative of focused conversations in the unit to gather information from faculty to begin a systematic diversity climate study. Monthly focus groups with faculty in the COE were planned with Dean Castenell and representatives from the DCOD. The sessions, lasting one hour to one and a half hours, were held during luncheon meetings over a four-month period. A total of 25 people participated during the four sessions. Participation was diverse, with representation from a variety of program areas throughout the COE. Participation was also diverse relative to gender, race and rank of the faculty attending.

Three main themes emerged from the data: climate, efforts to be more inclusive, and suggestions for initiatives/activities to further promote and develop diversity in our college.  Climate relates to the overall atmosphere in the college related to diversity. One major challenge that is evident in the data is associated with the size of the unit and the belief that because of its size, it is difficult to establish a common level of commitment to diversity.  Efforts to be more inclusive included data related to what the unit has been doing, as well as what the participants viewed as challenges. Overall findings from this data include a need for professional development for diversity, more communication on all levels - dean's office, department head and within the department and college overall - related to diversity and the value of multiple perspectives. The need for even more active recruitment and retention efforts is evident in the data. The final theme, suggestions for activities/initiatives, presented ideas offered by participants for continuing diversity work in the COE. These suggestions range from encouraging more conversations to formal professional development opportunities for all in the unit. The DCOD is moving forward on these suggestions and follow up activities are planned for the spring to address some of the issues raised in the conversations. For example, the unit is sponsoring its first conference on Black Issues in Higher Education on February 3, 2006 to focus on issues of tenure and promotion, mentoring, and leadership and administration.

Recruitment Benchmarks Oct 2001-Oct 2005

Teacher Exit Survey AY 2004-05

Standard 4.2: Experiences Working With Diverse Faculty

The university has made considerable effort in the last five years to recruit and retain faculty and candidates of diverse backgrounds. The unit has also demonstrated its commitment to increasing the number of faculty of color through focused recruitment and retention efforts as indicated on the summary table of faculty diversity within the 14 colleges at UGA.

Table 4.1 Full- time faculty by ethnicity in UGA’s five largest colleges

Ethnicity	Franklin College of Arts and Sciences	College of Agricultural and Environmental Science	College of Education	College of Veterinary Medicine	Terry College of Business
Asian	53 (8%)	19 (7%)	6 (3%)	7 (6%)	10 (11%)
African American	33 (5%)	6 (2%)	24 (13%)	4 (4%)	3 (3%)
Hispanic	21 (3%)	4 (2%)	2 (1%)	5 (5%)	2 (2%)
Indian, American	3 (.5%)	N/A	1 (.5%)	N/A	N/A
Multi Racial	1 (.2%)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
White	554 (83%)	227 (89%)	151 (82%)	92 (85%)	75 (83%)
Total	665	256	184	108	90

The College of Education, with a fulltime professional education faculty of 184 is the third largest institution on campus, when compared to the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science with a faculty of 256 and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences with a faculty of 655. Since all of our teacher candidates take their first 60 hours in the arts and sciences, they are given ample opportunity to work with a wide array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in both colleges.

Measures have been put into place to increase the diversity of the faculty. For example, search committees are encouraged to advertise in a variety of venues to attract diverse candidates. Recruitment has included advertisements in magazines such as Hispanic Outlook and Issues in Black Education.  As indicated on table 4.2, twenty-two faculty of color are tenured and hold rank at the professor and associate professor levels, while an additional twelve faculty hired in the last five years are assistant professors.

Table 4.2 Tenure track faculty by rank and ethnicity

Academic Rank	Ethnicity
	African American	Hispanic	Asian	American Indian	White
Professor	3 (1.7%)			1 (.57%)	67 (38.78%)
Associate Professor	14 (8.09%)	3 (1.73%)	1 (.57%)		48 (27.74%)
Assistant Professor	6 (3.46%)	1 (.57%)	5 (2.8%)		24 (13.87%)
Total	23 (13.29%)	4 (2.31%)	6 (3.46%)	1(.57%)	139 (80.34%)

The unit provides support to assist faculty with ongoing professional development to work and teach effectively in diverse environments. The Dean's Council on Diversity, CLASE and other university entities such as the Office of Institutional Diversity offer seminars and workshops to expose faculty (as well as staff and candidates) to local, regional and national scholars and leaders in the field of multicultural education.

Faculty demonstrate knowledge, skills and dispositions to integrate diversity into their work through their publications. In 2004, of the 371 faculty publications including books, chapters, and journal articles in national and international outlets, 74 or 20% were focused on diversity topics. Faculty in the unit are actively engaged in grant funded projects focused on diversity issues and work with faculty from across campus to secure funding. For example, a collaboration of faculty in the Colleges of Education, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and other units on campus, were recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to hold The Conference on Diversity and Learning at UGA in the spring of 2006. This conference will bring many nationally recognized leaders in diversity and multicultural education to campus, thus increasing the pool of diverse professional resources for candidates, staff, and faculty. The college received a $3.5 million Goizueta Foundation grant to improve Hispanic education in Georgia. The college is currently conducting a national search for the Goizueta Chair of Excellence. The following Projects focused on education for African Americans have received prestigious grants:

• Jerome Morris: African-American Adolescents in a Black Suburb in the U.S. South: A Social Study of Schooling, Identity, and Achievement
• Ron Butchart: Historical Study of Education of Freed People
• Derrick Alridge: Footsoldiers for Equal Justice Project
• Deryl Bailey: Gentlemen on the Move

The Goizueta Foundation

Standard 4.3: Experiences Working With Diverse Candidates

The University of Georgia has engaged in a strategic university-wide recruiting initiative to diversify its student population. The 2005 freshman class is not only the most academically prepared, but also the most diverse as compared to previous years. Almost 700 of the new freshman, or 15.6 percent, are minorities, including 256 Asian Americans (5.5 percent of the class), 202 African Americans (4.5 percent), 146 multi-ethnic/multiracial (3.3 percent), 72 Hispanics (1.6 percent) and 9 Native Americans.  More than 300 of the freshman are the first in their family to attend college. Successful recruiting efforts include outreach efforts to Georgia’s schools, personal contacts with potential candidates from university administrators and faculty as well as programs such as Dawg Days, a spring program that brings minority youth to campus for extended periods to provide them with college experiences and to put them in contact with faculty and advisors in different fields of study. In November, the university was awarded $22 million by Hispanic Scholarship Fund shared with the University of Texas for a five-year pilot project to recruit Hispanic students, and to work with K-12 students to develop pathways through which Hispanic students can enhance their credentials to enter higher education institutions.

At the unit level, the Director of Student Services actively collaborates with the university’s admissions office recruiters to develop strategies to recruit not only more diverse candidates, but to also recruit candidates who are interested in critical shortage teaching fields. She holds information sessions at feeder two-year institutions aimed at recruiting underserved population transfer candidates. In summer 2005 the unit hosted 40 African American high school students who participated in Project Grad to encourage them to apply for admission to the College of Education. We have made plans to continue our involvement in this program for next summer.

The unit also collaborates with the Graduate School to bring prospective underrepresented advanced candidates to campus for Visitation Days. Potential candidates meet with faculty, students and staff in degree program areas where they might apply for admission the following year.

Diversity has been at the center of recruitment efforts at the university and in the unit. As can be seen from the description of our efforts in previous Board of Regents Reports from 2003 and 2004, we continue to build our capacity with recruitment efforts. All the efforts described in those reports still stand.  One significant diversity recruitment effort has resulted in at least 50 bilingual candidates (mostly Spanish/English speaking) pursuing teacher certification through the Teachers for English Language Learners (TELL) program.  This program awards loan forgiveness scholarships to bilingual individuals interested in becoming teachers. Most of the participants are non-traditional candidates who have been in the workforce and are interested in a career change. One TELL Scholar, Javier Zapata, had been working in Athens for two years for Even Start, a program with the goal of family literacy. "Since I arrived in the United States, I had been looking to go back to school, but couldn't due to my economic situation. In addition, I didn't know how I was going to balance work and school. The TELL scholarship pays for my studies, which allows me to work at the same time because all my classes are in the afternoons at the University of Georgia,” said Zapata

COE Recruitment Efforts Take a (G)STEP in Positive Directions

Another of the unit’s effort focused on recruiting diverse and non-traditional candidates in the unit is the recently grant-funded Special Education Training on the Web: Certification, Undergraduate, and Mentoring program (SPECTRUM). The goals of this program are to recruit non-certified teachers, special education paraprofessionals, and mid-career professionals, many from rural communities across the state, into special education certification programs. The current SETWEB program that has produced 228 new special education teachers since its inception caters to a similarly diverse population. SPECTRUM differs from SETWEB in that it incorporates the use of Webcam supervision, providing frequent feedback to students in distant districts regarding their teaching skills.

The unit is currently building an initiative that would target students from under-represented groups at the middle school and early high school years. The Dawg Tag program, targeted at middle school students, is designed to plant the seed early and provide follow-up from COE undergraduate student mentors, Culturally diverse background Continued contact will occur with high school juniors through several initiatives, including: ProjectGrad; Georgia DAZE; Future Educators Annual Conference; Targeted College Fairs; FEA Day at UGA. Finally, the unit will continue to participate in Get Smart, a program that targets unspecified Arts and Sciences majors.

Through all of these university and college efforts, the unit has realized a steady increase in the diversity of its candidates with more than 14.74% of its student population from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Table 4.3 College of Education Student Diversity, 1999 & 2005

Ethnicity	1999	2005
Asian	1.7% (77)	2.2% (102)
African American	7% (333)	9.6% (448)
Hispanic	.7% (35)	1.3% (60)
American Indian	.2% (10)	.1% (5)
Multi Racial	.7% (33)	1.54% (72)
Total students of color	10.3% (488)	14.74% (687)
White	85% (3991)	79% (3699)
Not Reported	5% (218)	6% (286)
Total undergraduate & graduate students	4,397	4,672

Since the 1998-99 academic year, the College of Education has increased in size by 275 candidates. The number of African American candidates increased by 115, Asian candidates increased by 10, and Hispanic candidates increased by 25. Since 1999 there has been a 6 percent decrease in white candidates. When considering all of the unit’s candidates in educator preparation programs including school counseling, school leadership, and school psychology, the diversity levels increase within our graduate student body.

Candidates taking classes in the unit and in colleges across campus experience numerous opportunities to interact with candidates from diverse backgrounds. This interaction occurs through formal coursework, field experiences, clinical practice and in-service learning programs. Several programs have service learning projects that enable candidates to work in culturally diverse communities. For example, four faculty members recently received grants from the university’s Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach through two programs that encourage development of sustainable domestic and international outreach activities. The 2005 Scholarship of Engagement Grants for University Engagement (SEGUE) included  “School Counselors as Educational Leaders for Georgia Latino/a K-12 Students” in which the School Counseling Program and Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE) will collaborate to support school counselors in serving the increasing K-12 Latino population in Georgia through a statewide conference at UGA focused on outreach to in-service and pre-service school counselors, leading to the formation of a Latino counseling research collaborative centered at UGA. The second SEGUE grant was awarded for a project called “Cultivating a Culture of Service-Learning: A Partnership Between the Consortium for Better Teaching and Learning and the Classic City High School Performance Learning Center.”

Standard 4.4: Experiences Working With Diverse Students in P-12 Schools

The college is committed to placing teacher candidates within diverse school environments for field experiences, student teaching, and clinical practice to work with students from diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups, and those with disabilities. Field placements are closely monitored and assessed at the program level to ensure that candidates have experiences atypical to those they have experienced in their own educational background. Unit level guidelines ensure that all candidates have experiences in diverse field settings.

University of Georgia’s College of Education programs ensure that all professional education candidates have the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions to help all students learn. To accomplish this, programs ensure that all candidates are placed in a variety of field placements that provide experiences for working with P-12 students of color, students of diverse socioeconomic status, and students with exceptionalities. Program coordinators or their designees track field experiences of candidates and submit to the College a copy of the program’s field experience database as well as aggregated data at the end of each academic year (due May 1).  At the College level, aggregated data of candidates’ field experiences is summarized, reviewed, and shared with program coordinators for possible program improvement

For the academic year 2003-2004 there were 1,486,125 children enrolled in K-12 schools in the state of Georgia. Of these, 38% were black, 7% Hispanic, 2% multiracial and 51% white. Moreover, 12% of students are with disability, 4% have limited English proficiency and 46% were eligible for free or reduced meals. According to U.S. Census Bureau 2000 data, Athens Clarke County has a Latino population of 6.3%, 2nd only to Gwinnett County whose population is 10.9%. The counties where 98% of the unit’s student teaching and field placements are made have considerable socioeconomic diversity and include rural, suburban, and urban populations as illustrated in Table 4.4.

Georgia Facts and Figures

Table 4.4 Selected demographics for UGA’s surrounding counties

County	% African American Population (2000)	% Hispanic Population (2000)	% of all persons below poverty line (1999)
Barrow	9.7	3.2	8.3
Clarke	27.3	6.3	28.3
Gwinnett	13.3	10.9	5.7
Jackson	7.8	3.0	12.0
Madison	8.5	2.0	11.6
Morgan	28.5	1.6	10.9
Oconee	6.4	3.2	6.5
Oglethorpe	19.8	1.4	13.2
Walton	14.4	1.9	9.7

Field placements occur in a variety of settings in the greater Athens area. Athens-Clarke County, the metropolitan area surrounding the university, is culturally and racially diverse. A majority of our student teaching and field experience candidates are placed in the Athens-Clarke County schools at least once during field experiences. In 2004 the unit placed 110 student teachers as well as numerous field experience candidates in this county district.  Of the 11,392 student body in the district, 73% are students of color with 56% African American, 14% Hispanic, and 4% Asian, and 3% identified as other. Two-thirds of the Athens Clarke County student population is eligible for free and reduced lunch.

Each semester candidates in all programs complete a classroom level (teacher candidates) or school level (other school personnel) demographic summary that documents demographic information about the classrooms or schools they are working in (student race/ethnicity, SES through free and reduced lunch, and number of special needs students). It also documents the experience and cultural background of the mentors. This data is aggregated at the college level.  Spring 2005 summary data for field experience/student teaching classrooms indicate that of the classrooms sampled, 28% of the students were African American, 17% Latino/a, 4% Asian,  < 1% Native American, 51% White, and 2% other.

College Wide Field Experience/Student Teaching Classroom Pilot Survey on Classroom Demographics Summary Data, Spring 2005

The unit participates in the university’s initiative to support service learning as a way to engage candidates with community projects in diverse settings. For example, during 2004-05, 134 candidates participated in the Oasis Catolico Santa Rafaela tutoring program, one of the service learning programs serving the children in the Pinewood Estates community and facilitated by the unit’s Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education. Both undergraduate and graduate candidates within the unit (approximately 75%) and across other units on campus (approximately 25% in arts and sciences, business, public and international affairs, journalism, pharmacy, and engineering) participate in this program. In fall 2005, 110 volunteer tutors worked in the Oasis program with an additional 12 at the Pinewood Library, and 15 more at Garnet Ridge, all agencies within the Pinewood Estates community. A comprehensive list of courses with a service learning component may be found at the following web address: Digest of Current Inventory of Service-Learning Courses.

Initial candidates work with diverse students as a part of the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching Program (COST) and other study abroad initiatives. For example, in the Brazil exchange project, candidates work with schools and other candidates in Brazil while Brazilian candidates come to the States and work with schools and other candidates here in the college. Several other study abroad initiatives are available for candidates in the college including Peru, England, Mexico, Italy, Kenya and Russia. The Office of International Education provides local and international support for these programs as well as for international students and faculty in general.

The unit has a long-standing commitment to preparing education candidates to work with diverse students and communities. Faculty ensure that diversity is infused throughout the programs in formal coursework as well as in field experiences and clinical practice. Active recruitment efforts at both university and college levels have led to in an increase in the numbers of faculty and candidates from underrepresented groups resulting in rich, diverse experiences for the unit’s candidates.