February 28th, 2000
From: New Programs and Innovations

Minutes

Recommendation and Report of New Programs and Innovations on the

Unified Elementary/Special Education Certification Program

The committee met and discussed the proposal twice, ant then asked for clarification and additional information on a number of points. At the third meeting, we made our decision and authorized this report.

We applaud the Education and Special Education departments for working together to bring this new program SCSU. We understand that SCSU is the only one of the four CSU institutions to be so far in the process of developing their program, even though new state certification mandates require elementary teachers to be dually certified in the near future. Overall, the program show strong collaboration throughout the design and expected implementation, and reflects the kind of cooperation our committee wants to encourage.

Our major concern was that the document we received reflected a lack of specific technology competencies, and more importantly, the absence of a clear plan for where the resources, both technical and human, would come from to implement them.

The departments answered our request by providing us with a more detailed matrix of the ways in which the listed competencies would be infused throughout the curriculum. While we could have hoped for something more, we approve them.

We are aware of the constraints, both internal and external, that affect the way this program was designed. We recognize that the All University Requirements (AUR), the State requirement for education majors to take a second major, and this combined education degree all together require so many credits that there may not be room for a dedicated technology course to be taught by specialists. It would be good, however, if one were at least available as an elective.

The strategy, therefore, that education is adopting is to have students exposed to different competencies throughout the program. Since repeated exposure is generally a more successful way to teach, we have no objection to this. Our concern is that these technology competencies are going to be phased in over the next three years, while UCF approval is one-and-for-all. That is, we have no idea how this will work out, and no mechanism to make sure that it does. That is, there is nothing in the proposal that speaks specifically to whose responsibility it is to make sure that faculty actually deliver the stated material.