Wendy Burke is the Interim Department Head of Teacher Education, as of July 1, 2018. She has been a professor in Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Teacher Education since 2000 and was the Director of Student Teaching at Eastern Michigan University from 2014 to 2018. As a faculty member at EMU, she has championed multiple EMU Best Practices Conferences, served as a co-PI on several grants for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (G.E.A.R. – U.P.), contributed to the EMU Bright Futures Program, and serves on the Learning Forward Michigan Board. She has also co-founded the Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s Adaptive Leadership Network and EMU’s Social Emotional Learning Collaboratory.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, Dr. Burke was appointed as the John W. Porter Endowed Chair to lead the implementation of a Secondary Place-Based Education program at Eastern Michigan University that will begin its pilot year in Fall 2018 with an official program start date of Fall 2019. She is also the current program chair of the American Educational Research Association’s School University and Community Collaborative Research Special Interest Group. Dr. Burke’s scholarly interests include school, university, and community partnerships, teacher learning and development, and leadership development.