SOCIAL FOUNDATIONSSUMMER 2014

Program News Social Foundations and Change in the 21st Century AcademyBY DERRICK P. ALRIDGE, PROFESSOR

T he 2013-2014 academic year was eventful for the Social Foundations program. In response to rapid transformations occurring nationally in higher education, programs across the

University and around the country are seeking strategies to remain viable and relevant in the 21st century.

The Social Foundations program is addressing these issues head on. In fulfilling our commitment to serve as the “humanities of education,” we strive to be both nimble and pragmatic in responding to the needs of our students, the Curry School, and the University.

Students have been at the forefront of helping us move the program forward. This year several students graduated from the Social Foundations doctoral program and many completed their M.Ed. degrees. A significant number of Social Foundations students received Curry awards and fellowships this year, attesting to the excellence of our students and the quality of our programs. Our alumni are making valuable contributions to K-12 education, higher education, the broader public sector, and the private sector.

Faculty research produced this year has further elevated the status and visibility of our pro-grams. Sharon Shaffer was recently featured in the Arab Times for her contributions to museums and education. Diane Hoffman recently received a grant to fund contemplative research with students in schools in Haiti.

Carol Anne Spreen is working this summer with the Young African Leaders Institute, a six-week leadership, academic and mentoring program that will take 25 participants of the Washington Fellows program to six of the commonwealth’s most prestigious locations.

I received a Jefferson Trust Grant to fund work on an oral history project entitled “Teachers in the Movement,” which explores the roles of K-12 and university teachers in civil rights and educational reform activities.

of Education

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/// Carol Anne Spreen (left) will be leaving the Curry School for a new position at New York University. We look forward to welcoming Rachel Wahl (right) to the Social Foundations faculty this fall.

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curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter

Social Foundations is published by the Curry School Social Foundations program and is sponsored by the Curry School of Education Foundation.

Ruffner Hall Reopening Celebration

&All-Curry Reunion

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

The Ruffner Hall renovation is nearly complete, and we’re taking advantage of a great

opportunity to bring back our alumni for a celebration.

Mark your calendar and watch your email for more details!

/// Derrick Alridge

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These are just a few of the Social Foundation faculty’s many projects and awards that we believe will keep us in the public eye.

In fall 2013, Sharon Shaffer and Dan Driscoll offered the first fully online version of Introduction to Social Foundations. The course was well received and provided an opportunity for Social Foundations to extend its reach beyond Charlottesville and Northern Virginia. At the same time, the course gave students from across the state the opportunity to take a course together and grapple with issues from a variety of perspectives.

The Social Foundations program plans to develop several additional online and hybrid courses over the next two years to meet the needs of our students and to establish a larger footprint in the state of Virginia and beyond.

Social Foundations is excited to be actively involved in the new undergraduate major in the Curry School: Youth and Social Innovation, which is designed for students who seek to engage the community around educational issues. We are proud that Social Foundations will offer several courses in the program and look forward to reaching more students in the Curry School and expanding our influence.

Social Foundations also looks forward to co-sponsoring Educational Studies, a new undergraduate minor, with the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education. Our ambitious agenda, at once visionary and pragmatic, will better position the program in the Curry School and the University for decades to come.

The coming year will bring personnel changes to Social Foundations as well. Carol Anne Spreen will be leaving to take on a new position at New York University this fall. Words cannot express the sense of loss we feel at Carol Anne’s departure. During her decade here, she has taught hundreds of students, been an activist and crusader for social justice in the Charlottesville commu-nity, engaged with many programs and units across Grounds, and contributed an incredible amount of intellectual and creative energy to Social Foundations, Curry, and the University as a whole.

We have chosen not to say goodbye to Carol Anne just yet; she will be on cam-pus often this fall, guiding her doctoral stu-dents. She will always be a part of our Social Foundations family.

This fall also brings great excitement to the program as we welcome Rachel Wahl to the

Social Foundations faculty. A recent graduate of New York University, Rachel studied philosophy of education and comparative education. In spring 2015, she will teach our long-anticipated Philosophy of Education course, along with a course in comparative education. Rachel will also help further develop our Peace Corps M.Ed. program.

Meet Rachel Wahl

Rachel Wahl is currently a research scientist at New York University and a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University.

She received her Ph.D. in International Education from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University in 2013.

She has published peer-reviewed articles and policy pieces on education, human rights, and violence, as well as presented her work at numerous conferences in educational philoso-phy, international education, human rights, and political science.

Her research has been funded by gov-ernment fellowships such as the David L. Boren National Security Education Program Fellowship, university grants such as the NYU Steinhardt Dean’s Grant for Student Research, and private donors such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Spencer Foundation.

Rachel is thrilled to soon join the Social Foundations Program at the Curry School of Education as an assistant professor.

Hoffman Returns to Haiti

Diane Hoffman, asso-ciate professor, received funding from the Contemplative Sciences Center at U.Va. to implement mindfulness training in Haiti.

She will be working with Curry doctoral student Lynne Crotts on the project, which aims to introduce mind-fulness practices to two groups, community mental health agents and teachers. The proj-ect also includes a research component that will explore how Haitian participants respond to ideas of mindfulness, with a particular focus on how local cultural contexts and belief systems condition understanding and adop-tion of mindful practices.

The project gets underway this summer and will continue with follow up research through fall of 2015.

Social Foundations Faculty Derrick P. Alridge, ProfessorDiane Hoffman, Assoc. ProfessorDaniel Driscoll, Assoc. ProfessorCarol Ann Spreen, Assoc. Professor

Go online to read about the achievements and current work of the Social Foundations faculty.

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/// Hiking Old Rag: A Social Foundations Tradition. Early every fall semester, Social Foundations faculty and students hike Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park. The event is followed with good food and drink at a faculty member’s home. This tradition dates back at least 20 years. Please join us this fall for what is always a day of fun and community building. Information about this year’s hike is coming soon. This year, we hope many alumni will join us!

For a decade now, Sharon Shaffer has been known to many of our off-Grounds students as the instructor

of the Introduction to Social Foundations course.

Despite teaching this conventional educa-tion course for our program, she has spent the past 26 years working her day job in a more unconventional education context.

Shaffer is considered a leading expert in the field of early learning in museums. From 1988 to 2012 she worked with the Smithsonian Institution and founded the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, a model lab school for young children.

Shaffer’s connection with the Smithsonian happened serendipitously when she moved to the Washington, DC, area. She had been directing a lab school for young children in Pennsylvania, but all her training was in formal, in-school learning contexts. The Smithsonian grabbed her up anyway.

After the first decade of gaining expertise on the job at the Smithsonian, Shaffer want-ed to consider a more academic perspective. She chose the Curry School’s program in Social Foundations because it would allow her the flexibility both to pursue a formal study of museum learning and maintain her work at the Smithsonian.

After the doctorate, she became a highly sought-after expert. She is asked to write and speak about early learning in museums at workshops and seminars for educators and museum professionals across the US and in a dozen or so countries abroad. In 2012 she was guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Museum Education on the topic of early learning, and she is currently working on final revisions of a book called Engaging Young Children in Museums.

Since her retirement from the Smithsonian in 2012, she has devoted time to her own international consulting business on object-based learning – a topic she finds applicable to both informal and formal learning contexts.

And, of course, she continues to teach

for the off-Grounds Social Foundations program, which she has done since finishing her Ph.D. work.

“It’s the nexus between her professional and academic careers that makes her such an interesting and valuable faculty member,” says Dan Driscoll, associate professor in the Social Foundations program.

Last fall she put the Introduction to Social Foundations course online. Then, she devel-oped a new face-to-face course, called Visual Education: The Intersection of Museums and Schools, which she delivered for the first time this past spring.

“The course was oversubscribed and was the most successful new course we’ve ever introduced in the off-Grounds Social Foundations program, based on student eval-uations and feedback,” says Driscoll.

Shaffer is passionate about learning, her-self, which is why she continues to teach. “It pushes me to keep abreast of current practice and thinking about learning,” she says.

The visual education course is the perfect opportunity to bring together her life’s work and apply it across formal learning contexts.

“It’s at the heart of what I’ve done. I’m so excited to talk about it with practicing teachers.”

From Museum to ClassroomSharon Shaffer (Ph.D. ‘04) brings her Smithsonian experience to Curry SF students

Thank You!

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The Curry School Foundation recognizes the generosity of the following alumni from the Social Foundations program who have made donations in fiscal year 2014:

Nancy Jean Berg Carolyn C. Bertke Judith Bowns Claire Bradshaw Maureen C. Brain Patricia Brennan John F. Callahan Roger P. Catania Lorie Coker Carolyn D. Curtis Daniel Driscoll Mark H. Eastham Richard T. Ewing Bob Gibson Edele C. Gilkey Tatia D. GrangerKathleen H. Gray Patricia R. Griffin Tracy L. Hartzler-Toon Tanya Harvin Anne C. Hayes William Hildbold Todd W. KentKristen N. Lochrie Sarah McConnell

William McDermottMichael Morgan Charles Ostlund Tracey Pilone Walter Prehn Christine B. Reed Marian Robinson Andrew Rotherham Diane L. Runnels James ShannonPatrick S. Slebonick Shannon D. SmithMichael R. Sorrell Jean T. Souter Kenena Spalding Beatrice SparlingEileen M. VassalloEverett Vaughn IIISusan D. Vinisky Nancy H. VogtJennifer R. WashburnWendy V. WoodGuoping Zhao

These gifts directly benefit Curry students and the quality of their educational experiences. Your support is very much appreciated!

2014 Curry Foundation Award RecipientsCongratulations to the following Social Foundations students who received monetary awards established by donors to the Curry School Foundation.

Sahtiya Hosoda Hammell Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. Scholarship and the Curry Trustees Fellowship

Lauren Ware Robert Lynn Canady Fellowship and the Curry Trustees Fellowship

Read more about Sharon Shaffer and find learning resources about object-based learning at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter

Irma-Kaarina Ghosn (M.Ed. ’88) since 1991 has been on the faculty of the Lebanese American University on its Byblos campus, where she…is currently associate professor of English/TESOL and director of the univer-sity’s Institute for Peace and Justice Education. Recently, she served two years as assistant dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and three years as chair of the Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2013 she published Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, Research and Practice of Teaching English With Children’s Literature.Christa Kellas (M.Ed. ’07) was named the Teacher of the Year for Manassas City Public Schools in spring 2013. In November 2013 she was awarded National Board Certified Teacher status in the area of Early Adolescent Mathematics. She is a sixth-grade math teach-er and math department chair at Mayfield Intermediate School in Manassas, Virginia.Mirta Kirkland (M.Ed. ’10) is co-author of the brand new book, The Man in the Cowboy Hat (Tate Publishing).Chip Prehn (Ph.D. 05) wrote the chapter on Episcopal Schools for the Praeger Hand-Book of Faith-Based Schools in the United States, K-12, 2 volumes, edited by Thomas C. Hunt and James C. Carper (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012).Ellen Ramsey (M.Ed. ‘00) has never really left U.Va.! After many years in the Claude

Moore Health Sciences Library, she recent-ly took a new position as the Institutional Repository/Libra Librarian at the University Library. Most of the graduating Curry masters and Ph.D. students met her this year, as spring 2014 was the first time Curry dissertations and theses were deposited electronically with the University’s institutional repository, known as Libra, in electronic format instead of coming to the library in print or on CD. ...She still resides in northern Albemarle County with her husband, son, and twice-rescued dog.Andy Rotherham (M.Ed. ’00) is executive editor of the newly launched RealClearEducation (www.realcleareducation.com), part of the RealClearPolitics family of news and analysis websites. He is co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a national nonprofit organization working to support educational innovation and improve educa-tional outcomes for low-income students. He also writes the blog Eduwonk.com, and is the co-publisher of “Education Insider” a federal policy analysis tool produced by Whiteboard Advisors.Carol Sinwell (M.Ed. ’00; Ed.D. ’08) is recently retired as Dean of Learning and Technology Resources at Northern Virginia Community College. She continues to enjoy teaching in the Social Foundations program at U.Va.’s Northern Virginia Center. She is co-authoring the eighth revision of Library

Programs and Services: The Fundamentals to be publish by ABC-CLIO in 2015.John Stroup (Ph.D. ’08) is an assistant professor at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt. Recent articles he has co-authored include “Promoting the development of moral identity, behavior, and commitment in a social action program” in the Journal of Peace Education (2014) and “A Passion for service? The moti-vations for volunteerism among first year col-lege students” in the Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (in press).Chris Wilcox Elliott (Ph.D. ‘11) has been thrilled to use his social foundations back-ground in intercultural work in his new role as an Assistant Dean for Student Life & Global Programs at the U.Va. McIntire School of Commerce. ...Chris was a guest co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of International Education in Business, 6(2), on Innovative Practices in Undergraduate Business Education Abroad in June 2013.

Read more. Some notes were abbreviated due to space limitations. You can read the full versions of these class notes and more, along with photos and fond memories at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter.

CLASS NOTES

Social FoundationS alumni newSletterP.O. Box 400268417 Emmet Street SouthCharlottesville, VA 22904-4268

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