What do a teacher invited to brief Congress, a former Kansas governor, a wheelchair tennis champ and an NFL executive have in common? Read on for the answer.
From its beginning in 1895, the educational preparation of teachers was an emphasis at WSU’s original predecessor. Back then, Fairmount College’s pedagogy section offered four classes: history of education, philosophy of education, school administration, and medieval and modern theories of education.
Since then, the WSU College of Education’s array of courses, programs and degrees has exploded, and the college and its faculty have prepared thousands of students for careers in teaching, school administration, counseling, school psychology, sport management, athletic training and exercise science.
Research, too, has expanded exponentially. Associate professor Jeremy Patterson and assistant professor Jibo He of WSU’s Human Performance Lab, for instance, created the Heart R8 app, which allows any webcam-enabled computer, tablet or smartphone to measure heart rate.
To cite just one more example of the innovative work coming out of Wichita State’s COEd, Mike Rogers, chair of human performance studies, professor and director of the Center for Physical Activity and Aging, co-authored two exercise studies whose findings he shared in August at the Performance Health Scientific Advisory Committee meeting in Moscow, Russia.
Alumni, as well as faculty, are demonstrating “academic innovation in living and learning,” as Shirley Lefever-Davis phrases it in her online Dean’s Welcome. Take these Shockers as examples: Patrice Duncan ’11 is a third-year elementary teacher for USD 259, which hired 153 WSU graduates for the 2013 school year – that’s 38 percent of all new teachers. In June, Duncan traveled to Washington, D.C., where she briefed Congress on the Teacher Quality Partnership program.
Mark Parkinson ’80, the 45th governor of Kansas, serves as president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.
Nick Taylor ’04/05/07 is a three-time Paralympics gold medalist in doubles wheelchair tennis, and Mickey Loomis ’82 is executive vice president/general manager of the New Orleans Saints.
Here, then, is the answer to that opening question: They’re all graduates of Wichita State’s COEd.
