Oct. 11, 2022

MESSAGE FROM INTERIM DEAN HORN

All – We’ve made it to the midpoint of the semester! I have been reflecting this last week on Dr. Marcelle Haddix’s presentation, sponsored by the FEC, and finding deep inspiration in her words to us, especially as it amplifies the book I’ve been reading, Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman. Erdrich writes: 

“Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years… This bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world.”

Dr. Haddix and Ms. Erdrich both remind us that ours is a unique calling in life — to help shape possible futures for ourselves, our students, our communities. I am humbled by our shared privilege and immense responsibility. I am deeply grateful for your investments in instruction and research and in making a reality everyday our mission to lead and inspire generative transformations of learning, health, leadership, and well-being.

In continuing to move with increasing intention toward clear collective impact, the leadership team has been working to develop aligned goals and incremental metrics that will help us gauge our progress. We have also been analyzing historical expenditures to ensure that we steward our resources well and in alignment with our strategies. Finally, enhanced through the generosity of your shared thought leadership, we are working to finalize descriptions of the new associate dean goals, roles, and responsibilities. We will be hosting an all-college meeting in early December to present this information for your consideration and continued feedback.

Appreciate you. Appreciate your work.

Best,
Cathy

P.S. Please make sure to share with your networks our faculty job openings; we need to expand our community of equity-centered experts!  

P.P.S. Please remember to exercise your civic responsibility and vote.

And one more P.P.S. Bobby, my dog, has decided that she too has a hunger for knowledge, most recently represented by devouring the cover of my Night Watchman. I welcome any good ideas about how to help her feel nourished without gnawing my best books. Please reach out, dog whisperers!

Banner caption: A skateboarder enjoying a fall-ish day outside Farish

MARK YOUR CALENDAR 

• UH Homecoming Football Game — Saturday Oct. 29. Time TBD. TDECU Stadium. 
• State Employee Charitable Campaign — Deadline to give is Monday, Oct. 31. Reminder, online giving is available for all transactions. If you wish, you can still submit paper forms. Please refer to the Oct. 11 email from Paula Canada for details.
• DREAMZone Ally Training — Friday, Nov. 11. 9 to 10:45 a.m. Farish Hall, Room 232. Invite with RSVP information to follow.
• Thanksgiving staff holiday — Thursday, Nov. 24 and Friday, Nov. 25. (No classes Wednesday, Nov. 23.)
• Fall 2022 Commencement — Friday, Dec. 16. 7 p.m. Fertitta Center.
• Spring 2023 Commencement — Saturday, May 13. 7 p.m. Fertitta Center.

OFFICE OF THE DEAN

Associate Dean for Faculty and Staff Equity, Belonging, and Success

• Coffee and Conversation: About 40 faculty and staff members registered for the listening sessions. We appreciate your interest, time and ideas shared. Additional sessions will be announced soon.
• Promotion and Tenure Review
  • For the tenure-track faculty candidates, the departmental-level reviews (the committee and the chair) are underway. The College P&T Committee has been formed and its review is expected to start in mid-October.
  • For the clinical and research faculty candidates for promotion, the department committee reviews are expected to start by the end of October.

Associate Dean for Student Equity, Belonging, and Success

• Student Success Celebrations
  • For undergraduate students who graduated in AY 2020-21, COE had a 5% increase in those who received their standard teacher certification one year post graduation.  
  • According to newly released Texas Education Agency data, COE certification students and alumni who took the state exams during AY 2021-22 are exceeding the state threshold with a 95% annual pass rate on the PPR exam and 93% on non-PPR exams.  
  • Wondering about your program’s degree awards for AY 2021-22? You can find the info (and more fun data) in the COE Fact Book (via the intranet).  
• Staff Update
  • We are joined by Fernando Hernandez, a proud UH alum and experienced academic advisor who served with the UH College of Technology. He will advise teaching and learning students after completing his training.  
• Undergraduate Faculty Reminders
  • The spring 2022 class schedule will soon be viewable to students, so it’s a great time to recommend that students meet with advisors about their future enrollment. Students may make advising appointments through Navigate. Teaching and learning students and health students may also meet advisors on Thursdays for online drop-in advising.
• Graduate Faculty Reminders
  • Curriculog is now open for submitting proposals for graduate course creations, revisions, deletions and catalog updates for 2023-24. The departmental review and approval deadline is Nov. 23.

Communications

• If you have the old College of Education logo on materials, please let Ericka Mellon know so they can get in the queue to be updated. And thank you for your patience as we await some department and center logos.

DEPARTMENTS

Editor’s note: External grant awards are listed under Office of Research. For publications, additional authors are not included. Please email Ericka Mellon with any questions. 

Curriculum & Instruction

Publications

• Jeannette Alarcón, Jen Chauvot. “Unpacking Survey Data within Critical Autoethnographic Study as a Quantitative Exercise,” The Teacher Educator.
• Travis Weiland. “Taking a Spatial Turn in Mathematics Teacher Education,” Mathematics Teacher Educator.

Books/Book Chapters

• Alberto J. Rodriguez. “Contextualizing the Need for Supporting Social Justice-Driven Science/STEM Education Research” and “Exposing the Invisibility of Marginalized Groups in Costa Rica and Promoting Pre-service Science Teachers’ Critical Positional Praxis” in “Equity in STEM Education Research: Advocating for Equitable Attention” (edited by Rodriguez).

Awards/Honors/Notable

• Jen Chauvot was inducted into her new three-year position as president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators of Texas.

• Melissa Gallagher was accepted into the 2022-23 cohort of the National Science Foundation Quantitative Research Methods for STEM Education Scholars Program.

Community Engagement

• Bulent Dogan directed and hosted four STEM summer camps/academies at UH that involved mentoring more than 70 undergraduate students and 215 K-12 students.

Presentations

• Carrie Cutler and Jen Chauvot presented sessions at the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators of Texas Conference held at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
• Bulent Dogan presented at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education Conference about pre-service teachers teaching at a virtual STEM summer camp during the pandemic and about a virtual technology camp’s impact on elementary school students.

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies

Announcements

• Charlotte Carp is the new special populations undergraduate program coordinator.

Community Engagement

• Kmt Shockley partnered with Baltimore City Public Schools to provide training in African-Centered Education for teachers. He also partnered with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to provide the training for area school leaders. 

Presentations

• Virginia Snodgrass Rangel delivered two presentations for universities in Chile: “Mentorías para el desarrollo de carrera de grupos minoritarios” for Universidad Padre Alberto Hurtado and “Rutas Formativo-Laborales de Mujeres en STEM. ¿Cómo incentivarlas en la Educación Técnico-Profesional?” for Duoc Universidad Católica.

Psychological, Health, & Learning Sciences

Publications

• Julie Dunsmore. “Creation of a short-form and brief short-form version of the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale,” Assessment. “Adolescents’ perceptions of helping and aggressing at school: Salience of benefit-harm, extent of impact, and collective dyadic power,” Current Psychology.
• Leslie Frankel. “Mental health matters: Parent mental health and children's emotional eating,” Appetite.
• Lorraine Reitzel, Ann Chen, Isabel Martinez Leal, Maggie Britton, Virmarie Correa-Fernández and Anastasia Rogova. “Organization-level factors associated with changes in the delivery of the 5 A’s for smoking cessation following the implementation of a comprehensive tobacco-free workplace program within substance use treatment centers,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
• Nathan Smith, Lorraine Reitzel. “A text-based smoking cessation intervention for sexual and gender minority groups (SmokefreeSGM): Protocol for a feasibility trial,” JMIR Research Protocols.

Community Engagement

• Virmarie Correa-Fernández served as a research coach/presenter on “Evidence-Based Practices to Address Tobacco Dependence” at a workshop at the University of Texas.
• Allison Master’s research was featured by the National Girls Collaborative Project as part of “5 ways to counter STEM stereotypes in children and youth.”

COE IN THE NEWS

• Check out the latest media clips, most recently featuring Melissa Gallagher (CUIN), Cathy Horn (ELPS) and Toni Templeton (ERC).

OFFICE OF RESEARCH

Awards

• Familes CAN: Purchased Health Services Unit. Texas Department of State Health Services. $199,694. Shelley Townsend (ELPS), PI.

Submissions

• Sub Award to Rice University. Rice University (IES). $975,323 (incl. 55% IDC). Cathy Horn (ELPS), PI.
• 2/3 CTSA K12 Program at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Houston. Baylor College of Medicine (NIH). $1,873,476 (incl. 8% IDC). Ezemenari Obasi (PHLS), PI.
• Assessing Academic Skills for Students With Autism: Enhancing the Accuracy and Ecological Validity Of Remotely-Delivered Curriculum-Based Measurement. Baylor College of Medicine (IES). $758,054 (incl. 55% IDC). Milena Keller-Margulis (PHLS), PI.
• HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: King-Chavez-Huerta Undergraduate Mentoring Program. National Science Foundation. $499,425 (incl. 55% IDC). Dave Louis (ELPS), PI.
• Contributions of Parent Hazardous Drinking to the Development of Early Precursors of Hazardous Drinking: Focusing on Emotional Processes. University of Kentucky (NIH). $1,363,223 (incl. 55% IDC). Julie Dunsmore (PHLS), PI.
• Designing Relevant Experiences in Science Education through Translanguaging (RESET) in Middle Schools. National Science Foundation. $1,878,659 (incl. 55% IDC). Jie Zhang (CUIN), PI; Sissy Wong (CUIN), Alberto Rodriguez (CUIN), co-PIs.
• Employee Selection and Retention Using Explainable Artificial Intelligence in the STEM Workforce. National Science Foundation. $499,424 (incl. 55% IDC). Laveria Hutchison (CUIN), co-PI.

Questions about the Dean’s Update? Email coecomm@uh.edu and emellon@uh.edu.