Robert Floden is dean of MSU's renowned College of Education and a university distinguished professor.
What makes and keeps our College of Education so renowned around the world?
“It's the people who work there,” says Floden. “It's the faculty and the reputation. And they get out and about and meet with other colleagues around the world, around the country, around Michigan. And whenever they do, people are impressed with the quality of the people here. And then it's our graduates who go out and the people who finish their PhDs who go out and get jobs in other universities. They get jobs in school districts. They get jobs in state government. They get jobs in the research shops.
“And people say, ‘Wow, these are really terrific people that you're producing there.’
“Our mission is to prepare a range of different people who work in education and in some of the health professions. A lot of our people will work in the education sector, from preschool to elementary and secondary school to universities. And then our Department of Kinesiology prepares undergraduates who are going to work in a variety of health-related professions like occupational therapy and physical therapy. And some work as trainers.”
Floden says the college’s teacher preparation program “has been one of our shining lights for many, many years. The US News and World Report rankings, which we take with a grain of salt, say that in elementary and secondary teacher education, we've been number one ever since they started doing this 25 years ago. We've been doing this for a long time, and it's that program as well as the other ones we do where we're particularly well known and well regarded because we combine excellent connections to the field of practice with the high quality research that our faculty do.”
Floden says “the value that citizens see in education seems to be not quite as high as it has been in the past. You see that in funding for K-12 schools and higher education. And that's somewhat of a reflection of people not putting teachers as much on the pedestal as they used to in the past. It's also maybe not a change, but a continuing issue for us, is making sure that the people that we're preparing, particularly the people that we're preparing to teach, know how to connect with the communities of the students that they're working with. And right now, the number of foreign born people living in the United States is at the highest percentage that it's ever been, I think. And so one of the challenges for teachers is learning how to make connections with the work, the places where students live and the communities that they come from.”
Challenges for all of higher education?
“It's a challenging time for getting support for research. The government funding for research hasn't kept pace with inflation. And as we get into new areas, say, such as the treatment of students with autism and other intellectual disabilities, it's important to find ways to provide the support that we need to hire the graduate students that are going to help our faculty do that work. And I'll just say the current situation with trying to figure out what our role should be with regard to international scholars. It's a fraught time, and the national mood sometimes poses some challenges for us.
“I'd like to say a little bit about what an outstanding and unusual place Michigan State is for work that's improving the learning in STEM education; science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We have, perhaps, a unique situation here where we have a very strong bench of people doing work on education in the College of Natural Science that combine and work closely with the people doing work on STEM education in the College of Education. And that makes us a leading area in that regard. We prepare both teachers and scholars, and we do groundbreaking research that's used around the world.
“We have a close connection with our Michigan Department of Education. We have a group called EPIC - the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative - that's working together with the Michigan Department of Education to become the go-to group for evaluating the impact of education policies in Michigan. Most recently, getting grants from the federal government to study the new third grade reading initiative.
“It's a place that's outstanding in the quality of the work that it does and the connections it makes between scholarship, policy and practice in education and health.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.