Happy new year and welcome back to campus. I hope that spending time with friends and family has renewed your spirit and energized you to begin a productive 2017.
It seems fitting that during the first month of new year we are called upon to reflect and celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Fresh starts also are reminders that although we’ve made progress, there is still much work to be done to achieve his vision.
And we will do it together—by recommitting to carrying on his dream, his work, and his example of using the light of love to drive out the darkness of hate.
Our College’s commitment to creating access to education and outcomes that are equitable, fostering and nurturing diversity in all of its forms in some ways is business as usual for our faculty, students, and staff. But it’s not usual at all, is it? Not everywhere, and certainly, not for a great many of our citizens.
This is why our Center for Education in Small Urban Communities annually works with our local schools on the MLK Creative Expressions Competition. What does injustice mean? Have you ever stood up against injustice? These are the kinds of questions we have posed to local grade-school students who enter the competition, which takes place during the campus’s January 13-21 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration. I encourage you to discover more about our annual MLK writing event that stimulates a sense of justice and equality in our young people.
The College has long been a proponent of engaging faculty members and students with leading senior scholars nationwide, individuals whose expertise spans varied fields of scholarship. To broaden these efforts, we launched the Dean’s Diversity Lecture Series in 2016, which encourages ongoing introspection on timely issues of equity and diversity and offers a space for productive dialogue. Read more about this lecture series and consider attending our upcoming spring events.
Over the past several years, through the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA), Stafford Hood, the Sheila M. Miller Professor of Education, has established a national and international presence in educational research, evaluation, and assessment that shares crucial research with the assessment community.
Finally, U.S. News & World Report has released its annual list of the Best Online Programs, and for the second year in a row our graduate programs landed in the Top Ten. As reported in late 2016, we launched a new online Ed.D. program that allows students nationwide to receive an Illinois doctorate degree in education fully online. In keeping with the College’s focus on leading research and education on diversity and social justice, we offer an online Diversity & Equity in Education concentration of study that provides educators with the tools and methods to transform the learning environment and practice in P-16.
Wishing you peace and prosperity in the coming year.
With gratitude,
James D. Anderson, Ed.M. ’69 Ed., Ph.d. ’73 Ed.
Interim Dean and Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education
