Standard 5.A
Qualified Faculty
Target: Professional education faculty at the institution have earned doctorates or exceptional expertise, have contemporary professional experiences in school settings at the levels that they supervise, and are meaningfully engaged in related scholarship. All clinical faculty (higher education and school faculty) are licensed in the fields that they teach or supervise and are master teachers or well recognized for their competence in their field.
Institutional-Based Faculty Qualifications. In addition to the tenure-track faculty members in the College of Education who teach in the professional educator programs and the tenure-track faculty members in two other EMU academic colleges who teach in the professional educator programs, the professional education faculty is supplemented with full-time lecturers and part-time adjunct faculty members. Non tenure-track faculty members are used not only because of extremely rapid growth and financial necessity but because of the special expertise they can bring to the candidates.
EMU is extremely fortunate in that the greater Ypsilanti area, encompassing the Ann Arbor metropolitan area and much of the Detroit metropolitan area, includes a large and well-qualified pool of talent to support our professional education programs. This talent pool not only includes an unusually large and rich pool of persons from which to draw for non tenure-track instructional purposes but for provision of field experiences for the candidates as well.
Exhibit 5.1.A provides information about the total institution-based faculty for professional education, including information on doctorates and exceptional expertise. Also found in this Exhibit is information about contemporary professional experiences in P-12 schools. Additional information about the background and experiences of the professional education faculty may be found in the selected vitae given in Exhibit 5.2.
Information about the scholarly activities of the professional education faculty is given in brief in Exhibit 5.1.A. Additional information about scholarly and service activities is contained in the vitae included in Exhibit 5.2. Yet additional information covering the considerable work of the College of Education faculty may be found in materials of the COE's Office of Collaborative Education and, especially, in the annual reports of various types of scholarship and outreach.
Information about the qualifications of the supervisors of student teachers may be found in Exhibit 5.1.B. This pool of persons includes tenure-track faculty members from three academic colleges, a group of full-time lecturers hired/retained solely on the basis of their interest in and strong ability to support student teachers, and part-time adjuncts who provide assistance for certain geographical areas and the number of candidates involved.
School Faculty Qualifications. The geographical area in which EMU places student teachers is rich in strong districts, good schools, and highly able cooperating teachers. In the Student Teaching Handbook (Exhibit G-25) it will be noted that the minimum criteria for serving as a cooperating teacher are (a) a minimum of three years of teaching experience; (b) a master's degree; (c) a recommendation from the building principal or department head; and (d) demonstrated success in teaching children and youth. Exhibit 5.1.C demonstrates that many of the cooperating teachers far exceed these minima.