NCATE

1.1

What are the institution’s historical context and unique characteristics
(e.g., HBCU or religious)?

Adelphi University began as a private preparatory school in Brooklyn, New York in 1863, gaining a reputation for its innovative curriculum, particularly in physical culture and early childhood education. Adelphi College was begun in 1896 as a liberal arts institution with 57 students and 16 instructors. In 1912, the Board of Trustees voted to make Adelphi a college for women and within the decade, severed ties with Adelphi Academy. By 1928, there were 652 students in a Brooklyn building intended for 560 and, the following year, Adelphi became the first private, coeducational institution on Long Island. In receivership during the Great Depression, Adelphi began to grow in enrollment during World War II and by 1955, had 3,667 students. Adelphi was granted university status in 1963 with 209 faculty that same year. The main campus grew to 70 acres and from 3 buildings to 16. Adelphi has hired more than 280 new professors since 2001. Current full-time and part-time faculty total 956, with a student/faculty ratio of 10:1. Over the past five years, the campus has grown to include the Center for Fine Arts, the Performing Arts Center, the Center for Recreation and Sports, an outdoor sports complex, and a new building for the Alice Brown Early Learning Center. Currently (Fall 2011), over 7,922 students attend the main Garden City campus and at centers in New York City, Hauppauge, and Poughkeepsie.

1.2

What is the institution’s mission?

Adelphi’s mission is to provide quality undergraduate and graduate education and to offer professional preparation of the first rank in arts, education, business, clinical psychology, social work, nursing and other health sciences. The University prepares a broad spectrum of graduates and undergraduates for a wide range of life pursuits while fostering a passion for knowledge; an understanding and a questioning of cultural values; and a view of themselves as independent, life long learners, and contributors to knowledge and service in an ever-changing world. Recognizing the interrelatedness of worldwide political, scientific, and cultural life, the University is committed to sustaining and improving its ethnic, social, and geographic diversity, and curricula that reflect global awareness. Thus, Adelphi recruits students nationally and internationally as well. Adelphi also seeks to attract an outstanding faculty, committed to teaching excellence, scholarly inquiry and artistic achievement, and public service, from all parts of the United States and from abroad. In addition to its traditional emphasis on teaching and research, Adelphi supports the growth of students outside the classroom by offering a wide range of cultural and artistic programs, and leadership and participatory opportunities in athletics and recreational programs; in internships, public and community service; and in student government. The University’s Board of Trustees recently adopted a strategic plan (AU 2015) to focus the mission of the University over the next five years around four ‘pillars’ – recognition as a center of intellectual and creative activity, relevance in a changing world, student success in a range of education goals, and a reputation as an excellent yet affordable institution. Key to this strategic endeavor is the establishment of an interdisciplinary unit, the Center for Health Innovation.

1.3

What is the professional education unit at your institution, what is its relationship to other units at the institution that are involved in the preparation of professional educators, and what are the significant changes since the last NCATE review?

The Ruth S. Ammon School of Education (RSA SOE) is the professional unit, which began in 1984 as the Institute for Teaching and Education Studies, formerly the Department of Education within the College of Arts and Sciences. The relationship with the College continues to be primary in the preparation of professional educators. Virtually all of the undergraduate and graduate programs include coursework and faculty involvement in curricular matters from the College of Arts and Sciences, including collaboration on the current self-study for NCATE.

The RSA SOE includes undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs that are registered with New York State, spread across three departments, Curriculum and Instruction, Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Health Studies, Physical Education and Human Performance Science. The links to unit catalogs and other printed documents describing general education, specialty/content studies, and professional studies are offered in Exhibit 1.5.a. The syllabi for professional education courses are offered in Exhibit 1.5.b. The findings of other national accreditation associations, the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association are offered in Exhibit 1.5.d. The updated institutional, program and faculty information are offered under institutional work space in AIMS (Exhibit 1.5.e).

There have been a number of important changes that have occurred within the RSA SOE since the last NCATE review, listed below, that are helping to guide the efforts towards continuous improvement for the unit, its candidates’ knowledge, skills and dispositions, its connections to the community, and the students’ learning: 

• A new Dean was hired for the RSA SOE in June 2009.
• A new Associate Dean was hired for the RSA SOE in January 2010.
• A new Director of Research and Evaluation was hired for the RSA SOE in March 2010.
• The number of faculty in the School has increased from 62 in 2006-2007 to 68 in 2011-2012.
• The reshaping of the teacher education programs within the RSA SOE over the past five years has been due to enrollment changes and planning to meet new demands of the field including developing new programs for example in special education and educational technology. Enrollment has declined about 11% since 2007 reflecting the completion of a funded partnership program with the New York City Department of Education along with a tightening of the local job market for teachers. However, 13 new programs have been registered with NYSED since 2007 to meet the changing needs of the field.
• The creation of a unit-wide Continuous Improvement Advisory Team in 2010 including leadership from all programs/sites, RSA SOE faculty committees and the College of Arts and Sciences, to review RSA SOE data, facilitate communication and policy development. This expanded a former “leadership team” dedicated solely to accreditation. 
• The Office of School and Community Partnerships (OSCP) expanded in 2010 with the hiring of a Fieldwork Liaison; a Partnership Liaison is being recruited in 2011; both positions are enhancing the opportunity for collaborations with schools, districts, and other educational organizations.
• The number of Adelphi Model schools/districts increased from 16 in 2007 to 20 in 2011, the majority of which are serving diverse and/or high-need students, involving teacher candidates in year-long field placements.

The report describes our effort to meet acceptable performance in standards 1,2,4,5 and 6, and target performance in standard 3. 

Summarize basic tenets of the conceptual framework, institutional standards and candidate proficiencies related to expected knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions as well as significant changes made to the conceptual framework since the last NCATE review?

The conceptual framework includes the mission of the unit (aligned with the institution, describe above), the Core Values of the unit (which represent the standards of the unit) and related unit goals to actualize the mission, the knowledge bases that drive the work of the unit, the candidate proficiencies that relate to the Core Values and knowledge bases, and the RSA SOE assessment system, which is detailed in Standard 2. Each of these is addressed in the paragraphs below and offered in Exhibit 1.5.c. 

The faculty, students, and community partners of the RSA SOE have engaged in an ongoing discussion over the past decade regarding our values, philosophy, mission, curricula, goals and outcomes. This discussion has guided our work in curriculum development, community partnerships, and the implementation of a unit-wide assessment system. We began the process of articulating a conceptual framework with discussion of the following fundamental questions:

1. What are our values? What do we cherish most in life and thereby in education?
2. What skills, understandings (knowledge), and dispositions should our teacher education graduates possess?

These questions are based upon the belief that values form the foundation of any philosophy of education. Our values determine our educational goals, which in turn should be embodied in the students we graduate. As such, everything from our admissions process to our assessment system reflects our shared values in thoughtful and substantive ways.

During the course of the 2010-2011 academic year our faculty and community partners re-visited the discussion of our conceptual framework as it relates to our unit mission, Core Values and proficiencies and knowledge bases. Our mission was revised and approved by faculty in December 2010, along with a reaffirmation of our Core Values and proficiencies.

The mission of the RSA SOE, adopted by the faculty in December 2010, is to prepare candidates majoring in education and allied fields to take teaching, leadership and counseling roles in schools, hospitals, clinics, and other educational and therapeutic settings. Based on the belief that the educational personnel of the 21st century will have to adapt to rapid social, cultural, demographic, and technological changes, our programs mesh a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences to professional preparations that link theory with practice in meaningful ways.

As a scholarly community, we are committed to providing educational opportunities for professional growth at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, and doctoral levels by creating authentic academic and field experiences, cultivating respect for the diverse populations we serve, embracing ethical practices, and preparing our students to become reflective change agents through research, collaboration and leadership.

In carrying out our mission we honor our Core Values:

• Scholarship
• Reflective Practice
• Social Justice
• Inclusive Community
• Wellness
• Creativity and the Arts

To actualize this mission, the unit affirms that:

• All teacher candidates pursuing initial certification programs will have pursued a core of general education courses and a liberal arts major in their undergraduate studies.
• All teacher candidates are prepared with a strong knowledge base of holistic child/adolescent development and instructional and assessment strategies linked to “best practice”.
• All teacher candidates are prepared to effectively promote learning through a socially mediated/reflective process that supports the candidate’s construction of knowledge.
• All teacher candidates participate in field-based learning in diverse settings to enhance and complement their academic knowledge.
• All teacher candidates are assessed with respect to student learning as a dynamic and on-going process that is used to inform the effectiveness of the “unit” and to strengthen and renew the program(s) it sponsors.
• All teachers pursuing in-service programs have the opportunity to extend their initial professional expertise or develop new expertise in related fields through scholarship, reflective practice, a shared wisdom of how students learn and think, and demonstrable skills and abilities.

The candidate proficiencies and knowledge bases are organized to offer some specific indicators of the RSA SOE Core Values for our candidates and to provide a justification for each of the Core Values, an integration of important writers about educational policy and practice as well as the extant literature that include relevant research. Both are offered in Exhibit 1.5.c.

The knowledge bases supporting our Core Values and described in the accompanying exhibit are in the process of being updated by a committee of faculty. The most recent version as of February 2012 is available in Exhibit 1.5.c, Faculty from our Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders developed a document aligning the conceptual framework with the standards associated with the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, offered as part of Exhibit 1.5.c. Included is a document detailing the expectations for the roles and responsibilities for a speech language pathologist that aligns with the conceptual framework and is used to guide the development of course syllabi.