The Ohio Board of Regents approved a Master of Arts in Education degree program at Wittenberg University, Nov. 16.

The program, designed to provide professional advancement for teachers, is unusual in its focus on collaboration with working teachers and for its emphasis on building teachers’ leadership skills.

The new master’s program is the only current graduate degree offered at Wittenberg and the first since the early 1980s. The program is a new model for graduate education, which serves to meet the range of challenges faced by working teachers.

It is also a model for professional collaboration between colleges and schools, which is intended to develop leadership among teachers for school reform.

“This new program builds on Wittenberg’s strengths in teacher education and is part of the university’s commitment to service in the community,” Wittenberg President Baird Tipson said.

The master’s program will formally begin accepting students for fall semester 2001. The program is expected to enroll up to 20 students each year.

In addition to degree-seeking students, the new program will provide opportunities for many more teachers to take graduate-level professional development courses designed to improve instruction, explained Robert Welker, professor of education and department chair.

Although Wittenberg’s focus is on excellence in undergraduate education, the long and close collaborative relationship with public schools in the Springfield area made the extension of that relationship to graduate studies a natural development, Welker said.

“One of the first things we did was to ask local teachers and school administrators what they thought teachers need to know and need to be able to do,” he said.

“The answer was that they needed skills to cope with the incredible variety and demands of an ever-changing student population.

“Social, cultural, economic and ethnic factors combine, especially in an urban school environment, to create difficult cultural and social landscapes,” Welker said.

“Without understanding the implications of that dynamic environment, effective learning seldom takes place.”

One of the most important elements of the graduate program will be the research requirement, which will develop teacher skills in assessing the results of their teaching strategies in terms of student learning and personal development.

This program will also stress teacher leadership in sharing successful teaching techniques in schools. “Teacher leaders must not only possess content knowledge, but they must also have the skills necessary to form effective collaborations,” Welker explained.

“They are able to share this knowledge in ways that improve the work of their colleagues and the schools where they work.”
Many area teachers were educated at Wittenberg, and partnerships between Wittenberg and the Springfield City Schools have continued to serve the needs of working professional teachers.

Among the partnerships are the Center for Professional Development, the Springfield-Wittenberg Teacher Institute, and the Institute’s Wittenberg Fellows program. — Jim Dexter