Graduate School of Education

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Visiting Team’s Report Released

UCR’s EVC and Provost Ellen Wartella commissioned a Visiting Team to study the GSOE’s climate for diversity.The Visiting Team held campus meetings on January 15^th and 16^th with faculty, students, staff, alumni, advisory boards, and members of the community at-large. The Visiting Team’s report and the campus press statement have been released. 

Dean Bossert’s Statement about the Visiting Team’s Report

Many of the Visiting Team’s suggestions correspond to recommendations included in a recent External Graduate Division Review and in a strategic communications study completed this past summer by Peterson Skolnick & Dodge. The Graduate School of Education is fully committed to increasing faculty diversity, addressing curricular and programmatic needs of our ethnically and culturally diverse region, nurturing stronger partnerships with educational practitioners, strengthening community relations, and making citizens more aware of the GSOE’s substantial teaching and research contributions to Inland Southern California schools and communities. Revitalizing intellectual community is an ongoing, continuous process for all academic programs, and the Visiting Team’s report reiterates its importance as the GSOE prepares for the future.

The GSOE faculty clearly understands the importance of excellent mentoring and is designing creative, individualized mentoring plans for all new faculty members. The strength of these mentoring plans and the commitment demonstrated by the GSOE faculty has resulted already in four new outstanding minority faculty appointments for the next academic year. All of these new faculty members study issues directly related to improving the educational success of minority students and English Language Learners. The GSOE is ready to finalize additional appointments and continue to cultivate other minority faculty candidates – at the senior and junior levels – once approval is given by the campus.

I look forward to working with Dr. Wartella in implementing the Visiting Team’s recommendation to establish a community advisory council that will assist the Graduate School of Education in charting its future.

Steven T. Bossert, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor