What led you to Oregon State University, and how long have you worked for the College of Education?
I joined the College of Education in June 2021. Before moving to Oregon three years ago, I worked as an advisor for several years at another university like Oregon State and missed it. I enjoy the setting, values and energy of a large, public land-grant university. Education has always been an area of passion for me as well (my mother was a teacher), so when this job opportunity came up it felt like the perfect combination of where I wanted to be (OSU) and what I love to do (advising).
Tell me about your position including what you do day-to-day and what makes your job interesting?
As the Head Advisor, I work individually with students interested in becoming a teacher to help them navigate college and achieve their goals. In addition to this, I also develop processes, systems, and supports that improve the educational experience for all students. A typical day for me may include one-on-one student appointments, discussions with advisors across campus around ongoing issues and developing solutions, engaging in critical conversations with colleagues around how to address biases and systematic barriers that directly impact our students, putting together resources or tools to help students get into their desired Education program, and of course, lots of emails! I also get to work with our student ambassadors to plan community events and provide peer support for their fellow students.
What is your favorite part about your job?
The best part of my day is meeting with students. When a student reaches out or comes to see me because they are confused and frustrated and they leave with a clear direction and hope for the future, it provides purpose and meaning to all the work I do.
What do you like to do in your free time, outside of work?
Outside of work I spend a lot of time with my two kiddos (ages 8 and 3) and my husband. It’s never a dull moment in our house! I also enjoy going to the beach, reading, hiking/being outdoors, playing sports, horseback riding, watching Netflix, and taking naps.
CORVALLIS, OR— Oregon State University’s College of Education invites community members to attend the Pecha Kucha event held on Thursday, February 10, 2022, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Horizon Room. College of Education faculty and students will present their research and innovations in the classroom, in the traditional Pecha Kucha format.
A Pecha Kucha is a fun and dynamic way to present an idea or a topic. Japanese for “chit chat,” Pecha Kucha started in Japan in 2003 and has now spread across the globe. It consists of 20 slides with each slide shown for 20 seconds only. Set on an automatic timer, each presentation lasts exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
The event will feature Cory Buxton, presenting Language, Culture and Knowledge-Building Through Science; Kathryn McIntosh, presenting Critical Race Feminism, Social Justice, and Mindfulness; Tenisha Tevis, presenting How I Affect Space; Ryan Reece, presenting I Wonder, What is Nature?; Melinda Knapp, presenting Opportunities and Challenges in Learning to Teach Mathematics; Shawn Rowe, presenting There and Back Again: Lessons from O Olhar do Visitante; Unique Page, presenting Is Our Language Color Coded? The Origin Story of my Dissertation; Cass Dykeman, presenting Moving Toward the End: Examining Suicide Through the Lens of Natural Language Processing; and Amanda Kibler, presenting Who is in the Room Matters: Reflections on Multilingual Language Development Inside and Outside the Classroom.
The event will be in-person and available virtually over Zoom. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendees. Individuals attending the event in person will be required to show proof of vaccination and adhere to Oregon State University’s COVID guidelines. Food and drink will be provided for attendees as well. For more information and to register for the event, visit https://beav.es/w3v. For questions related to the event, please contact John Scholl at dean_coed@oregonstate.edu.
Dr. Becky Crandall is an Adult and Higher Education Professor of Practice at the College of Education, CrossFit enthusiast, and Portland Thorns fan.
What led you to Oregon State University, and how long have you worked for the College of Education?
“I was excited to join the College of Education in June 2021. Three things drew me to Oregon State University: the amazing people who comprise the OSU community, the ways in which the position and the College’s values align with what I believe to be my life’s purpose, and Oregon as a place where I had wanted to plant my life.”
Dr. Becky Crandall (left) with Dean Susan Gardner; Dr. Tenisha Tevis, Assistant Professor of AHE; President Becky Johnson and her wife, Laurie Elkins.
What kind of research do you do? Can you give us the “elevator pitch” of a current or recent project?
“My scholarly approaches are hallmarked by a commitment to equity and supporting student populations such as intercollegiate athletes, LGBTQ+ students, and graduate students in higher education and student affairs programs. For example, two colleagues and I recently had a manuscript accepted that highlights senior student affairs officers’ perspectives of social justice education within higher education graduate preparation programs. Other colleagues and I are currently developing a study that will explore the experiences of LGBTQ+ student-athletes at religious institutions. For the past five years, I have also engaged in campus climate assessment projects alongside my colleagues at Rankin and Associates Consulting, LLC, a company that aids educational institutions in making data-informed decisions toward maximizing equity.”
What made you decide to engage in that kind of research/work?
close to two decades of postsecondary leadership experience, I consider myself a “scholar-practitioner.” In many ways, that work, namely the inequities I saw manifest at the various institutions at which I served, prompted me to engage in this kind of scholarship.”
Dr. Becky Crandall enjoys dirt biking in her free time.
What is your favorite part about your job?
“I love getting to engage with and learn from my colleagues and the wonderful AHE students!”
What do you like to do in your free time, outside of work?
“In my free time, I enjoy CrossFit, cheering on the Portland Thorns, and spending quality time with my close friends.”
Dr. Becky Crandall enjoys CrossFit in her free time.
If you are interested in being featured in a “Get to Know” faculty feature story, contact maia.farris@oregonstate.edu.
Dr. Elliott reports that this body of work provides evidence that detracked systems can support all learners and tracked systems negatively impact learners’ mathematical long term success because the system emphasizes acceleration over deep learning of concepts. Acceleration means that students often don’t engage in problem-solving of ill-structured problems that are seen as essential for STEM degrees and cultivating productive mathematical reasoning. Tracked educational systems create courses where students in “low track” courses repeat content year after year without evidence that these opportunities lead to academic success. Many of these students become adults who have developed math anxiety and are community members who exclaim that they are not a “math-person!” What that means for Oregon is economic loss, some estimate in the billions of dollars, lack of mathematical literacy essential for workforce development, and community members who don’t have access to quantitative reasoning to make sense of the complex problems facing us today. Dr. Elliott’s research investigates mathematics leadership development to reduce racial and educational injustice and to advance ambitious and anti-bias mathematics instruction. Read Elliott’s published letter below.
“More than 25 years of peer-reviewed research supports Corvallis School District’s mathematics instruction efforts.
Research documents the pedagogical practices needed to build a detracked educational system and support each and every student to be challenged mathematically. Tracking’s negative impact on learners’ long-term mathematical understanding and enrollment in advanced mathematics courses has long been documented.
Employing the pedagogical skills well supported by research, detracked classrooms do not reduce the opportunity for in-depth learning of mathematics; in fact, they increase it and attend to the disproportionate effects of tracking on students of color, including girls of color. This is why every professional mathematical and statistical organization supports detracking K-12 mathematics.
In a 2015 report, a third to half of Oregon’s students entering college were enrolled in a developmental math course (middle or high school mathematics content). We need a mathematics education system where every student can solve complex real-world problems in a data-rich world. We know the pedagogical strategies needed to support thriving in mathematics and creating opportunities for supported learning in a detracked system.
Corvallis administrators must provide the professional development, time, and ongoing support essential for every teacher to take up the pedagogical practices needed so that every student may engage in challenging and exciting mathematics. I am confident that the Corvallis middle school teachers have the skill and knowledge to do so! Do we as a community have the will to hold up a mirror and address the systemic racism that permeates our educational system?
“Mike O’Malley is the entire reason why I’m in education right now,” Garcia says. “I dedicate my award to Mike’s memory. Everything I do as a teacher is based on his example.”
Garcia was first introduced to O’Malley when he came to Oregon State in 2014. After receiving his master’s degree in American history from Western Oregon University, Garcia simultaneously earned his teaching license from Oregon State. Garcia was enrolled in both the ELA/Social Studies and English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs.
He now teaches Advanced Placement U.S. history and AP psychology at Franklin High School in Portland.
When Garcia graduated from Western Oregon University, he hoped to work at the U.S. State Department in the field of U.S./Latin American relations. He felt that if he worked hard enough, he could make history.
Garcia did go on to make history, just not in the way he thought he would.
From Dread to Gratitude
Education wasn’t Garcia’s initial career choice. After graduating from Western Oregon University his stepmother, an elementary school principal, along with his mother, a middle school English teacher, suggested Garcia go into teaching.
“At first, I was a little hesitant, because it’s a hard job,” he says.
Garcia experienced the lows early on. As a student-teacher, he was placed with a bilingual social studies teacher, at a school that ranked low in technology and had a 93% poverty rate.
Garcia recalls one of the most pivotal moments as a student-teacher being a day at school when his students erupted in aggression, yelling and throwing garbage at him.
Garcia came to dread the idea of being a teacher, thinking he wasn’t made for the job. But after an invitation to coffee with O’Malley, things changed.
“He talked me off the proverbial ledge and convinced me that things would get better,” Garcia says. “Every day I’m in the classroom I’m thankful Mike convinced me to stay.”
Garcia says he realized the significance O’Malley’s mentorship and teaching philosophy had on him after O’Malley’s death.
“Mike O’Malley did the heavy lifting over one of the worst chapters of my life,” he says. “Meeting Mike was my axial moment.”
Garcia also attributes his strengths as an educator to his stepmother for teaching him practicality, and his biological mother who taught him creativity. One of the most valuable lessons he learned from them was the idea that he must attend to a student’s needs before he can teach them. He does this every day, providing snacks and resources in his classroom.
Creating “well-informed citizens”
Franklin High School has a diverse student population, and Garcia’s classroom incorporates practical learning experiences into his teaching. Students explore a wide range of history topics, and they can participate in culturally diverse activities.
Before he was a teacher, during his time at Oregon State, Garcia designed museum exhibits, and that experience lives on in his classroom. He’s made graduate-level education available to traditionally underserved students with the opportunity to research and build their own exhibit on a historical narrative of their choosing. The exhibits are installed on campus and open to the public in the spring.
“I wish Mike O’Malley could see what has happened here because at Franklin, at one time we had more AP U.S. history classes than we did standard,” he says.
Garcia hopes to make AP U.S. history classes available to a wider variety of demographics, because of how important he believes history is to his students’ education.
“I firmly believe that history needs to have a higher priority,” he says. “My goal is to make students well-informed citizens.
“One of the things I feel very passionate about as an instructor is helping kids find their full potential. It’s all about reaching students where they are and helping them go in the direction they want to go.”
As Oregon History Teacher of the Year, Garcia says he hopes to see his methods of education be adopted nationwide.
“This award gives me the legitimacy and ethos to make that happen,” he says. “It gives me the opportunity and authority to try to bring about significant change in the field of social studies and history. And to continue the journey on which Mike started me on. I hope to do for others what he did for me.”
From his time at Oregon State to his career at Franklin High School, Garcia says he takes pride in the work he’s done and the experiences he’s had.
“Every person in the College of Education played a really supportive role in helping me reorganize and reorient the trajectory of my life. Oregon State helped me find focus and made it all possible.”
The History Teacher of the Year Award is given by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to teachers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories. As Oregon’s honoree, Garcia received a $1,000 prize, an archive of American history books and Gilder Lehrman educational materials. Garcia will be recognized at an award ceremony in the spring.
Mike O’Malley’s legacy and memory lives on in the College of Education and in the many lives he touched. A memorial plaque is hung on the first floor of Furman Hall and a collection of memorial pieces can be viewed in this blog post.
The Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy is presented annually to honor an outstanding article in literacy research published in a refereed journal in the previous calendar year. Amanda Kibler (Professor in the OSU College of Education) and her co-authors, Judy Paulick, Natalia Palacios and Tatiana Hill received the award for their recent research article, Shared Book Reading and Bilingual Decoding in Latinx Immigrant Homes, published in the Journal of Literacy Research. This ethnographic study identified recurring literacy practices in which mothers, older siblings, and younger children participated during shared reading in the home. The researchers found that families engaged in context-sensitive and cooperative shared reading practices around decoding that the authors describe as “transcultural decoding.” These findings highlight decoding as a cultural and social practice rather than simply a technical skill, and one to which immigrant families bring significant and varied expertise.
This award was presented at the LRA conference in Atlanta, GA on December 2, 2021.
Award details:
The Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy is presented in memory of Professor Arthur N. Applebee (University at Albany – SUNY Distinguished), internationally renowned for his seminal scholarship in the fields of literacy and language learning.
Author bios:
Amanda K. Kibler is a professor at Oregon State University’s College of Education. Her research focuses on the interactional and ecological contexts through which multilingual children and adolescents develop language and literacy expertise, as well as the ways teachers understand these processes.
Judy Paulick is an assistant professor of elementary education at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on supporting preservice and in-service teachers to engage in solidarity with culturally and linguistically marginalized families and to use what they learn from families to inform culturally sustaining classroom literacy practices.
Natalia Palacios is an associate professor of Education in the Educational Psychology – Applied Developmental Sciences program at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. Her research explores the familial and instructional process that support children’s academic and socio-emotional development during the transition to school and the early elementary period, with an emphasis on families and children from minoritized backgrounds.
Tatiana Hill is Evaluation Analyst on the Strategic Information and Planning Team at the First 5 Contra Costa Children and Families Commission in Contra Costa County, California. She currently focuses on research and evaluation of local early childhood and family-serving programs and systems, with a culturally responsive and equitable evaluation lens.
The OSU College of Education is pleased to announce that we have again received two partner pathway “Grow Your Own” grants from the Oregon Educator Advancement Council for the second year of the program. These grants, totaling nearly $700,000 in year one and $700,000 in year two, enable OSU to build and strengthen partnerships with local community colleges and school districts in order to diversify the teacher workforce and address teacher shortages by attracting and retaining candidates from local communities. We are excited to be continuing this work and look forward to potential additional funding over the next few years.
When Dr. Elaine Copeland finished her dissertation at Oregon State University, her father took it up and down the road to show every neighbor and person he could find. She was the first Black female to complete a Ph.D. in Counseling at Oregon State University.
Copeland went on to become the Associate Dean and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois, and the President of Clinton College, among many other things. She attributes many of these opportunities to her success in the Counseling program at Oregon State’s College of Education.
“I’ve been able to do a lot of things I don’t think I would have been able to do without my advanced degree,” Copeland says.
Copeland graduated from Oregon State in 1974 with a Ph.D. in Counseling alongside her late husband Robert Copeland.
Copeland says she was fascinated by Oregon and its differences from South Carolina where she grew up.
She and her family were one of five Black families in Corvallis, and her husband Robert was one of two Black students in the Science Education Program.
“We became much more aware of the need for diversity, and how to work across lines with a number of different people.”
Copeland’s experience working with diverse populations was informed by her position at the Educational Opportunities Program.
“I worked with the students in the Educational Opportunities Program, and even though I was always culturally sensitive, I became much more aware of the racial and ethnic diversity of the country.”
Working for the Educational Opportunities Program gave Copeland an opportunity to support Oregon State students, which she continues to do today.
“I like to see people that I think I might have touched somewhere along the way go on and do great things,” she says.
Copeland continues to touch the lives of students by donating to the College of Education.
“I will continue to give as long as I’m living. I realize that much of what I was able to accomplish was because I did have my Ph.D.” she says. “Oregon State was good for the both of us.”
For Dr. Cass Dykeman, becoming a professor was not only a dream of his, but something he says he was destined to do. Many generations ago, in 1542, a family member of his was a professor at Oxford University and ever since then there’s been more than he can count.
“It’s just the family gig,” Dykeman says.
Dykeman is a full Professor of Counseling in Oregon State University’s College of Education. He is a third-generation Oregonian on his father’s side and a fourth-generation Oregonian on his mother’s side. More notably, he’s anticipating moving to the top spot for the most completed dissertations of all time at Oregon State.
“The number of people I’ve been able to help obtain a doctorate at OSU is my biggest accomplishment. The joy of it is that those people will go out and train others, so the influence you have in the field is exponential through your doctorate students,” Dykeman says. “It’s been fun to watch them achieve their dreams.”
His research is focused on Corpus Linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, Bayesian Statistics, and online teaching and counseling methods. His primary focus is on how anxiety and depression impact learning. Dykeman says his fields of study have had a positive impact on his ability to teach his students.
A subfield of linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, looks at how English is used in academia and research. Dykeman teaches this to his doctoral students, as it’s something that isn’t taught in their undergraduate or master’s programs.
“None of my students grew up speaking English for Academic Purposes; if they did it’d be really weird. It’s something they have to learn, something they don’t know,” he says. “My research and research interests have changed how I teach writing because I now approach teaching my students how to write, as how you would approach teaching a foreign language.”
Dykeman’s past research includes the study of psychotherapy outcomes using single-subject design, an experimental research method. Looking toward the future, he is interested in the use of robotics and artificial intelligence in counseling.
“There’s far more need for counseling than there are human beings that we can train,” he says. “So creating robots that could take in text about anxiety or depression and learn from that and respond to the human beings along certain algorithms, could be of help with mental health issues independent of human interaction.”
He hopes that’s something he can pursue before retirement.
Throughout his years of work at Oregon State, Dykeman’s genuine love for teaching is what makes his job remarkable. He says starting with students who don’t believe they can do something, and helping them become accomplished in that, is the best part of being a professor.
“That’s the genuine joy. Helping them overcome their fears and doubts about what they can achieve,” he says.
Looking for contract work as a Web Designer/Developer?
OSU College of Education is seeking proposals for the redesign and redevelopment of the College of Education’s (CoEd) online web presence. We seek a Web Designer/Developer who is familiar with Drupal 7 and/or is familiar with web development and implementation for marketing purposes. The project is estimated to take up to 12 months in duration. To apply, please view the form and proposal request below. Submit materials to maia.farris@oregonstate.edu by September 30, 2021.
