Message from the Dean
Making every second count!
The isolation we’ve experienced over the past 20 months or so drove many of us to seek alternative ways to feel connected. As the pandemic raged on, the number of chat groups to which I belonged grew. It was a wonderful way to stay connected with friends and family! Belonging to several groups, however, also came with a significant expansion of my inbox. With so many messages coming at me, I often have to delete them as they come in. One, a discussion of Acts 24:27, made me pause. This verse mentions the length the time Paul had to wait for his court case to be heard by Festus — two years! (Paul had been falsely accused of being a troublemaker and of trying to desecrate a temple.) Such a long wait can be discouraging. During that time waiting, Paul preached, wrote letters, and prayed for others. He used every opportunity to preach the gospel. Even his defense at his trial was an opportunity for him to preach sermons.
We have done a lot of waiting since early 2020. What is the CDC going to recommend about masks and vaccines? What announcements about returning to schools will the governor make? Are we switching to remote working and learning? Are we returning to campus? At times it seemed all we did was wait for announcements and decisions to be made. Such waiting can be draining and demoralizing, causing us to lose hope. What can we learn from Paul? He did not simply sit, complain, and accuse. Yes, COVID-19 has been around for a while and we have not been able to do things the same way we did before. What do we do while we wait?
I can tell you what we have been doing in the School of Education:
- You will see in this issue that our newest program, Early Childhood Education (ECE), has now been launched!
- We continued to graduate people of competence and character much like the ones featured in this issue.
- We have continued to strengthen our community through our outreach efforts, such as the Educators Hub for teachers we recently launched. Focused on the current needs of K–12 educators, this is an easy-to-navigate hub with a wide variety of relevant course offerings led by subject matter experts. SPU, the largest provider of continuing education credits for teachers in Washington state, is also adding to its continuing education library with new Career Accelerator courses designed to build workplace skills. Learn more and check out our new hub.
Our task as educators is a critical one — we want to help all children thrive. We are all in this together. As members of the community of educators, we wish to share what we’re learning with you. On our Professional Development Resources page, you will find recorded webinars (including our EdTalks) on a wide range of topics from leading experts in their respective fields, podcasts, and other resources. As fellow educators committed to lifelong learning, we hope you find these resources as helpful as we have. If you have additional ideas for more resources we can share here, let us know!
Let us not just sit and wait. Let us not complain. Let us seize the moment and make every second count.
Blessings to you,
Nyaradzo Mvududu
Dean
School of Education
Alumni & current students highlights
In a unanimous decision, the school board selected Dr. Deborah Rumbaugh as the new superintendent of Stanwood School District. Deborah previously served as the executive director of instructional leadership in the Highline School District in King County. She earned her professional administrator and superintendent certificates, as well as her EdD, in SPU’s Educational Leadership program. Deborah has been in education for 18 years, starting as a science teacher at Auburn Riverside High School in the Auburn School District in 2003. She moved into the role of assistant principal at Kentwood High School in the Kent School District in 2010, and in 2013 joined Highline Public Schools as a principal.
Dr. Stacy Mehlberg has been hired as the new assistant principal at Finn Hill Middle School in the Lake Washington School District. A public education and research leader for over 15 years, Stacy completed both her PhD in Education and her Principal Certification in 2020. She has also served as an executive director for The BERC Group Inc. Stacey’s particular interests center on public-private collaboration and partnership to support community development through education.
Malissa Weatherbie has been promoted to principal of Pilchuck Elementary in Lake Stevens School District. She completed our Principal Certification program in 2019 and has been a middle school assistant principal.
Travis Savala has been hired as assistant principal of Federal Way High School for the 2021–22 academic year. During the 2020–21 school year, he served as the dean of students at Hazen High School in Renton, Wash. Travis completed the SOE Principal Certification program in 2021.
Julia Dorn has been offered a position as an assistant principal at Briarwood Elementary in the Issaquah School District. She previously taught at Opstad Elementary School in Bend, Wash. Julia completed her MEd in Educational Leadership with Principal Certification in 2020. For Julia it’s a family affair — her sister is now in our program!
Tobi Nussbaum, School Counseling student interning at Highland Elementary, a Title I school in the Renton School District, has put together an amazing “year of cultural awareness” in collaboration with school staff to create events, reading opportunities, and other school counseling interventions to create awareness of various cultural groups. What is unique about Tobi’s approach is that she has made this a schoolwide event with buy-in from school staff. For example, the school librarian is putting together book lists for the students on the various topics each month, and each topic includes professional development/staff training.
Doctoral Students Publish and Present Research
(*indicates doctoral students/graduates; bold indicates SOE faculty)
*Clum, K., *Ebersole, E., Wicks, D., & Shea, M. (in press). “A case study approach to exploring resilient pedagogy during times of crisis.” Online Learning Journal.
*Rasikawati, I., Shea, M., *Zhou, S., Pattiwael, A., Wicks, D., & Sulastri, M. (2021). “Sustaining internationalization in higher education: Before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.” In James, W. B., Cobanoglu, C., & Cavusoglu, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the global conference on education and research (Vol. 4) (pp.151–153). USF M3 Publishing. www.doi.org/10.5038/2572-6374-v4
*Lau, W.S., Shea, M., & *Alexander, A. (June, 2021). “Building an inclusive K–12 classroom with culturally relevant social-emotional learning activities.” 4th Global Conference on Education and Research (GLOSER).
International Collaboration
Drs. Liz Ebersole, Munyi Shea, and David Wicks delivered an online professional development workshop for UKRIDA, titled “Applying Community of Inquiry Framework and Resilient Pedagogy in Online/Hybrid Learning” during August 2021.”
Global Placement
Yaru (Sarah) Zhou, our recent doctoral graduate, is now the Director of National Staff Adult Learning at International Schools Consortium in China.
Have a professional success to share? Send it to On Point at fryettl@spu.edu for publication in the “Alumni & Current Students Highlights” section of our next issue.
Faculty and staff highlights
Welcome
Dr. Grace Inae Blum joins us as associate professor of curriculum and instruction — ELL/bilingual education. Her experience as a daughter of first-generation Korean immigrants, mother to two school-aged, biracial children, and former P–12/Adult Literacy educator greatly informs her commitments toward culturally sustained teaching, scholarship, and service.
Dr. Blum has worked in a variety of educational settings. Prior to her work as a teacher educator, she was an elementary school teacher, working in both bilingual and mainstream classrooms in public schools in Chicagoland and greater Los Angeles. She has also worked as an adult literacy/ESL educator both in immigrant communities in the US and in northern Iraq. Most recently, Dr. Blum was an assistant professor of early childhood/elementary/TESL-bilingual education at Central Washington University. More about Dr. Blum.
Dr. Charles (Rick) Gressard joins our School Counseling program as an interim professor and chair. Rick recently retired as a chancellor professor in the Counselor Education program at the College of William and Mary. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Gressard worked as an addiction counselor for five years following his master’s degree from Kent State University. After receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa, he taught for seven years in the counseling program at the University of Virginia and for five years in the psychiatry department in the UVA school of medicine. In 1993, Dr. Gressard moved to William and Mary, where he coordinated the master’s program in addiction counseling, developed an in-program substance use disorder clinic, and served as department chair for seven years. He also initiated a parallel online master’s program and was president of the William and Mary Faculty Assembly. More about Dr. Gressard.
Rachael Kamwesa joins our placement team as the new placement assistant. Rachael had a “Zoom wedding” last year, and she and her husband, Dereck, celebrated their first anniversary on May 2. Dereck is enrolled in the MA in Theology: Reconciliation and Intercultural Studies program. Fun fact: she road-tripped from Pennsylvania to Washington two summers in a row!
Rachel has varied interests. She was on a roller derby team — for one practice. She took piano lessons for 10 years (but hasn’t had regular access to a piano in a long time!). She loves learning about ancient history, with a particular enjoyment of Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. Welcome to the team, Rachael!
Faculty Recognition
Dr. David Wicks’ chapter “Minimizing Zoom Fatigue and Other Strategies for a Successful Synchronous Class Experience.” was published in the book Tackling Online Education: Implications of Responses to COVID-19 in Higher Education Globally. The volume brings together leading experts from eight countries (the US, Canada, China, Japan, Sweden, India, Azerbaijan and Nigeria) to discuss how national conditions and institutions have shaped initial policy responses to COVID-19.
Dr. Jennie Warmouth, a second grade teacher at Spruce Elementary in Lynnwood, Washington and adjunct professor in SOE’s Literacy, Language, and Equity program, has been included in the top 50 shortlist for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2021 in partnership with UNESCO. Now in its seventh year, the $1 million Global Teacher Prize is the largest prize of its kind. Jennie was selected from over 8,000 nominations and applications from 121 countries around the world.
Jennie works with students from diverse and often low-income backgrounds, pioneering a way to help them heal while helping others, through crafting advertisements for difficult-to-place pets at the local animal shelter. This writing program, together with donations and fundraising drives, has helped some of her traumatized students work through their difficulties while building their empathy through helping cats and dogs. Not only has this work helped 800 children find new homes for 600 pets over the years, it has led to many of her students going on to college with their sights set on helping professions, including veterinary medicine, cognitive neuroscience, education, and creative writing. This healing and empathic approach to education has been shared by Jennie with international audiences interested in both educational innovation and animal/environmental causes.
Staff book recommendations
The Girl With the Louding Voice, by Abi Daré
Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell
Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II, by Daniel James Brown
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre, by Max Brooks, et al.
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Obit, by Victoria Chang
Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
Touching This Leviathan, by Peter Wayne Moe
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi
The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay
Searching for Certainty, by Shelly Miller
Rhythms of Renewal, by Rebekah Lyons
Becoming, by Michelle Obama
Daring to Hope, by Katie Davis Majors
News and events
EdTalks Series
On Sept. 16, the School of Education hosted our fifth installment of our EdTalks series event, titled “MTSS Framework for a Better and Equitable School Normal.” Dr. George Sugai shared about the multi-tiered systems of support approach that can serve as an organizational framework for providing better and more equitable learning opportunities for all students, especially students who are most at risk of academic and social behavior failure. He made a recommendation for implementing a few things well (i.e., not simply more) within an MTSS organizational framework. Dr. Sugai also presented practice and systems examples.
On Oct. 21, our EdTalk speaker was Dr. Jennie Warmouth. Dr. Warmouth described the cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes of the empathy-focused writing curricula she pioneered. As noted earlier, she teaches her diverse first-, second-, and third-grade students to hone their emerging literacy skills by writing online advertisements for “difficult to place” dogs and cats awaiting adoption at their community’s local animal shelter. Her innovative writing program, now in its 17th year of implementation, was the focus of her doctoral dissertation. Dr. Warmouth also discussed the impact of her National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship expedition to Arctic Svalbard on her students’ sense of global citizenship and environmental stewardship.
Our next EdTalk is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021. Our speaker is Dr. Linwood Vereen. In his EdTalk, Dr. Vereen will focus on the role of Black existentialism as a means of understanding for professional school counselors, clinical mental health counselors, student affairs professionals, and other therapeutic helpers.
The School of Education’s Early Childhood Education (ECE) program is officially launched! Autumn Quarter saw the first class of 24 students enroll in the introductory course in Early Childhood Education. This is the culmination of two years of hard work designing the major and gaining approval to offer K–3 state certification in ECE. Nine of the students have indicated that they will be declaring Early Childhood Education as their major.
SPU Hosts Virtual Symposium
This summer the Center for Global Curriculum Studies hosted another virtual symposium, focusing on two related themes: Post-Covid Education Thoughts/Plans; and Educational Innovations Needed in an Emerging World of Education. As in the past, it was a rich time of connections, learning, and professional growth. We give a special shout-out to organizers Dr. Art Ellis, Dr. Liz Ebersole, Dr. David Wicks, and Dr. Jeremy Delamarter. You did it again!
The School of Education will be co-hosting an international conference. Together with Krida Wacana Christian University (UKRIDA), our partner institution in Jakarta, Indonesia, the SOE will be co-hosting the 2021 International Multidisciplinary Virtual Conference on Productivity & Sustainability (IMPS) on Dec. 9 and 10. The conference will bring together experts, emerging researchers, and professionals in various disciplines — including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), behavioral sciences and language studies, economics and business, medicine, and health sciences — to share their investigation and interpretation of global issues and higher education practices. For further information, please email Dr. Munyi Shea at mshea@spu.edu.
Giving
Like you, we believe in our mission to engage the culture and change the world … starting in the classroom. That’s why SPU’s School of Education is always looking for new ways to help you connect with the future of education in our state and beyond. And there’s more than one way you can get involved. In fact, here are four ways to give.
On Point
Do you have news or know of any faculty, staff, or alumni that should be featured in the next issue? Please email On Point at fryettl@spu.edu