DCE Spring 2023 Minutes

Dean’s Circle of Engagement

April 24-25, 2023

The Gladys W. & David H. Patton College of Education

Patton Hall 104 - ��

Summary of Activities

Attendees: Ray Asik, Caryn Bailey, Mary Frances Bryja, Michelle Connavino, Maureen Coon, Linda Fife, Lisa Harrison, Chris Hayward (DCE Chair), Sara Helfrich (PCOE Interim Dean), Gail Houk, Marc Houk, Robert Murphy (DCE Vice-Chair), Connie Patterson, Kevin Rice, Helen Watson
Absent: Joan Motheral

Thursday, April 24, 2023
5:15-7 p.m. Dinner, Baker University Center, 5th Floor Terrace
7-8:30 p.m. Patton College of Education Awards and Recognition, Baker University Center Ballroom

Friday, April 25, 2023
Greetings, Introductions and Overview of Agenda, Chris Hayward, DCE Chair
The meeting came to order at 9:30 a.m. and Chris Hayward, DCE Chair, provided opening remarks and reviewed last evening’s activities and the days’ agenda. A brief discussion took place on the student scholarship process, the criteria, the selection process, etc.

Connecting Mathematics to the Real World: Collaborating with Children and Teachers in Engaged and Meaningful Learning – Courtney Koestler, Director of the OHIO Center for Equity in Mathematics and Science (OCEM) and Associate Professor of Instruction.
Dr. Koestler provided information on her background and also her role in the Patton College. She went on to discuss her current research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Connecting Mathematics to the Real World: Collaborating with Children and Teachers in Engaged and Meaningful Learning. Connecting math purposes and goals; the Connecting Math Project purposes and goals and provided an overview of the 3-year project; the arrays in the real world – Moving beyond typical ways of teaching mathematics to provide opportunities for children to learn more about the real-world contexts and to pose questions about those contexts. Final thoughts are 1) We must create space for children’s and teachers’ agency and development of critical literacy in mathematics and other content areas; 2) How might an orientation towards “collaboration” with children be leveraged; and 3) How can we collaborate more broadly with other stakeholders, e.g., families, admin., community members, elected officials, to strengthen not only students learning, but also support for public education.

Stevens Literacy Center Update - Julie Barnhart-Francis, Director
The Stevens Literacy Center (SLC) is named for Dr. Edward Stevens, a distinguished professor at �� – a true scholar – who taught at �� from the 1970s to 1990’s until he passed away unexpectedly. Julie was one of his graduate students in 1997-98, and she noted that he told her many times to leverage the resources of the university for the community. Our mission is for the Stevens Literacy Center to focus on improving lives by researching, developing and promoting literacy across the lifespan. The youngest we’ve had at the Center is a month-and-a-half and we have some grandparents recently.
She went on to provide an overview of recent activities within the SLC:

Literacy Ambassadors - You met last night. These are an amazing group of young men and women, not only from the Patton College of Education – students who want to work with children. Many are Federal Work Study students.
The Molina Foundation Grant – the SLC was awarded 30,000 new books. These are all new, high-quality books. We are utilizing the AceNet warehouse in Nelsonville for storage of these books. We have given away about 17,000 so far to schools, organizations, community fairs, KidsFest, etc. We received several books written in Spanish so we have been working with our Thom Stevenson who has colleagues in Mexico where we have shipped many of these.
Foundation for Appalachian �� Grant – this grant was to purchase shipping supplies to ship the books from the Molina Foundation Grant. These funds were also used to buy materials to make tote bags. We bought material and students cut and sewed it to make tote bags. We have over 100 tote bags.
Global Education Fair – we worked with our colleague, Yuchun Zhou, to go to the Athens Intermediate School and Athens High School to give away books. We gave away about 3,000 books.The Tree House Reading Club - Helen Mansfield Robinson Jobe Center for Reading. In the 1960’s she wrote the Dick and Jane books. The Mansfield family still lives in the area in Athens County. Aunt Helen’s Treehouse, as it is called, is a very nice welcoming space for children to come into.
Appalachian Writing Project 2.0 – affiliated with the National Writing Project in Berkeley. We decided to do a series of professional development workshops for practicing teachers with a grant, Deeper Dive.
Writing Graphic Novels with Adolescent Learners – Camp to be held in July.
STAR Family Writing Project – this happened last year. The Star Center in Nelsonville is more like a rehabilitation center – mostly drug related. We work with incarcerated fathers. We hold a 90-minute workshop every week. There were seven fathers in each of the 3 rounds of workshops. This was to expose them to the richness of literacy to help their children. The outcome was for them to write a book that told their own story of which they then gave to their families.
OHIO Career Ready Campus – The SLC is an umbrella with many programs that fall under the umbrella, all grant funded. The OHIO Career Ready Campus is one of those programs where we work with adults to get their GED, workforce training, industry recognized certifications, credentials, etc. We went from about 90 adults in the beginning to now over 200 adults. This is funded by the �� Department of Higher Education, an Aspire Program. We have 2 part-time instructors, 1 full time instructor, a director and a data analyst.
Green Project Camp. This is for 4-6th graders and will be held this summer on how young children can become eco warriors. Thinking deeply about real-world issues and they will come up with a green project to take back to their schools.

Brothers RISE Update
The Brothers RISE students, Andre Martin, James Williams, Owen Vandivier, Moore Harper, Arthur Bargainer and Mekhi Evans, along with Advisors Marcquis Parham, Gerard Chukwu spoke with the group about their activities over the past year.
Owen Vandivier began by discussing the purpose of Brothers RISE to recruit, retain and graduate. Moore Harper went on to talk about the standards – 1) Maintain a 3.0 GPA required for teacher candidacy; 2) Abide by the �� student handbook; 3) Demonstrate integrity and be accountable; and 4) Regularly attend meetings.
They next provided a summary with photos of events over the past year:

Welcome lunch
Laser tag at Geneva Hills
Bi-weekly meetings
Black Alumni Reunion
ODE Excellence For All Summit
Undergraduate Admissions Multicultural Connections Events
Men of Color Summit
MLK Event
Table Manners/Etiquette Session
Brothers RISE �� Podcast
Brothers RISE Instagram
Mailing of packets to potential Brothers
Featured on Daytime Columbus and OEA Podcast

The Brothers then provided Service Awards to Interim Dean Sara Helfrich and Advisor Jason Rawls and Appreciation Awards to Brothers RISE Committee members Renée Middleton and Tracy Robinson.

RHT 1200 Food and Culture Student Presentations
This past spring, RHT 1200 Food and Culture class students were tasked with creating a research project based on this overarching theme, "The Colonization of Indigenous Food Systems from European and Hispanic Influences." This class is a cross pedagogy, BRICKS course that is taught in tandem to �� students and Universidad Autonoma de' Guadalajara students with respective faculty from both schools. Professor Flores (UAG) and Thom Stevenson, Associate Professor of Instruction (OHIO) connected 135 students between the two universities in a cross-cultural learning experience which culminated in 3 out of 9 teams being self-selected to present at the Sprin g2023 DCE meeting. This program is a dynamic partnership between AMPIE (Mexican Association for International Education) and the United States Embassy to Mexico which supports international education and academic exchanges in higher education. Students cooked Mexican cuisine from a cookbook all in Spanish, they learned traditional dances, and created lifelong new friendships through the use of Whatsapp, Teams, and Google. This work has been recognized at the international level and will continue every semester with each new group of students, learning and sharing food systems practices and knowledge gleaned from one another, while breaking down the barriers that exist, one learning outcome at a time.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:20 p.m. and lunch was served to the group in the demonstration kitchen, Patton 120.

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