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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, June 19, 2008

Speaker Biographies

Gerardo Gonzalez became University Dean of the Indiana University School of Education in 2000. As University Dean, he directs administrative and budgetary activities on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses and provides direction to schools and departments of education on the six regional campuses of IU. Under his leadership, the IU School of Education has continued to build upon its reputation as one of the nation's finest schools of education. For the ninth consecutive year, the school is among the top 20 of U.S. schools of education as listed by U.S. News and World Report's "America's Best Graduate Schools, 2008."

Don Hossler is Executive Associate Dean of the IU School of Education (appointment starting July 1) and a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, as well as the former Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Services at IU Bloomington. Hossler has just concluded a series of studies through the "Indiana Project on Academic Success," a collaboration with higher education institutions around the state to examine data and identify and research challenges to college students' success. The studies have been funded by a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education. Recent studies have examined factors surrounding the success of Ivy Tech Community College students across the state, including factors affecting transfers, mobile students and new college students. His research focuses on student college choice, persistence, enrollment management and higher education finance.

Martha McCarthy, Chancellor's Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the IU School of Education in Bloomington, specializes in education law and policy. Her research interests span church and state relations involving schools, free expression rights, equity concerns, privatization of education and curriculum censorship. She has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the McGhehey Award for Contributions to the Field of School Law, the Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement award from the University Council for Educational Administration -- the highest honor given in the educational leadership field -- and has been named a "Living Legend" by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration.

Faridah Pawan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Language Education at the IU School of Education in Bloomington, directs three programs designed to increase the number of highly qualified ESL teachers in Indiana. The federally funded Interdisciplinary Collaborative Program helps 200 Indiana teachers across the disciplines develop integrated curricula to teach language and content simultaneously. Fifteen to 17 of these teachers are then selected each year to take part in another federally funded five-semester program leading to Indiana certification in ESL. The Tandem Certification of Indiana Teachers, or TACIT, program teams the School of Education with Indiana school corporations that have significant populations of ESL students. Another program is an expanded effort to place more certified ESL teachers in the classroom in the urban areas of Hammond and East Chicago. The Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Content Area Teachers is funded by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

Pat Rogan, is Executive Associate Dean for the IU School of Education at IUPUI. Rogan is a professor of Secondary Special Education, and most recently served as chair of Secondary Education. Prior to that she was chair of Graduate Studies and Continuing Professional Development from 2002-2005. Her research expertise includes secondary special education, the transition from school to adult life, employment for people with significant disabilities and organizational change from sheltered to integrated employment.

Joshua Smith, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the IU School of Education at IUPUI and Director in the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education, studies educational transitions including the transition from middle school to high school and the transition from high school to college. Smith also works with schools and community-based organization to evaluate educational programs on student and organizational outcomes. He regularly teaches educational psychology in the undergraduate teacher education program and research methodology courses in the graduate school. Smith is co-principal investigator on the study "Twenty-First Century Scholars Program Qualitative Evaluation," funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education.

Terry Spradlin, is Associate Director for Education Policy at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) in Bloomington. In this position, Spradlin serves as a manager for the center's policy-related projects, with an emphasis on P-16 projects. In addition to daily oversight of a range of policy projects, he takes a lead in pursuit of external funding to support these activities. Spradlin regularly interacts with state policymakers and other educational leaders on behalf of the center. Before joining CEEP, Spradlin served as the legislative and policy analyst with the Indiana Department of Education. He represented the department in legislative matters and developed the department's K-12 education policy agenda. He coordinated information between state legislators and the department as well as conducted policy research on key issues. Spradlin regularly communicates with the public and members of the press about K-12 education issues.

Annela Teemant, Associate Professor of Second/Foreign Language Education at the IU School of Education at IUPUI, received a five-year National Professional Development Grant from the U.S. Department of Education to focus on university-public school efforts to prepare teachers in Indianapolis for English Language Learners. She began workshops with Indianapolis Public School teachers and School of Education faculty during the summer. Teemant served as a visiting educational researcher at the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence at the University of California-Berkeley for two years prior to joining IU. She also spent eight years at Brigham Young University where she acted as project director of an eight-year initiative to develop a comprehensive ESL endorsement for public school teachers using a distance education model.

Rob Toutkoushian, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the IU School of Education in Bloomington, centers his work around the application of economic theories, models and quantitative methods to a wide variety of education issues, including faculty compensation, student demand for higher education and education finances. His teaching focuses on the economics of education and school finance. He also works with the Indiana legislature to examine the equity of school funding at the K-12 level in the state. Toutkoushian is co-principal investigator on a two-year study funded by the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation.

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