School of Education Receives Distinctions
Three honors awarded
by Jenna Neil
The School of Education (SED) recently received several recognitions and approvals.
The Master of Arts in school counseling has received full state approval until June 30, 2019. Bradly Hinman, assistant professor and school counseling program coordinator, along with Karen Benjamin, accreditation coordinator for the Department of Graduate Psychology & Counseling, spent many hours working on the approval documents. Over the course of about a year, they prepared application submissions, wrote several revisions, and attended many meetings with state officials.
“All universities in the state who offer school counseling programs had to reapply this year,” said James Jeffery, dean of the School of Education. “Our counseling program was the first one to submit the original application, well before the deadline.”
This is one of the ways the SED proves they have a good program, staff and faculty. Their approval letter commended the program for having a strong heritage of developing quality counselors.
“I know this took a lot of hard work and effort as well as graduates that reflect the quality of the education they received,” says Ray Ostrander, professor of teacher education. “Congratulations to one and all: teachers, staff and report writers. You make the SED not only proud but look most excellent as well.”
The program also received recognition for their science division.
“We’ve received word,” said Jeffery, “that our secondary education program in integrated science has received full national recognition from the National Science Teachers Association. This means that graduates in this field are authorized to teach these three science areas in Grades 6–12.”
Because the School of Education is fully accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), graduating teachers can apply for teaching licenses in 47 states.
In order to be issued a state teaching license in Michigan, elementary and secondary education students need to take a state exam. The Michigan Department of Education recently shared data that shows where different universities scored between August 2013 and July 2014.
“Andrews students are at the top,” says Jeffery. “The students must pass these exams to be issued a Michigan state teaching license and our elementary and secondary education majors had the highest pass rate of any other college or university in Michigan.
The average pass rate of Andrews elementary and secondary education graduates was 95.8 percent. There was also a 100 percent pass rate on content exams in English, reading, history, chemistry, secondary mathematics, Spanish, elementary education, English as a second language, language arts (elementary), integrated science (elementary), visual arts education and music education.
To learn more about the School of Education and its programs visit andrews.edu/sed.
