Orlean Beeson School of Education

Go to Departments and Program Offerings

Administration

J. Howard Finch, Interim Dean; Professor
Monique G. Witherspoon, Assistant Dean; Associate Professor, Educational Leadership

Mission

The Orlean Beeson School of Education enriches the community and empowers its students to educate, lead, and serve.

Values

Educate with Purpose | Motivate Christian Service | Partner for Mutual Benefit | Foster Innovation | Walk with Integrity | Encourage Life-long Learning | Respect Everyone

Overall Measures

Each aspect of this plan includes detailed means by which we will track progress toward our goals, but our key overall measures of success array under four key categories:

• Educate - Measured through our success rates with credentials, certifications, and licensures;
• Scholarship - Measured through our innovative scholarly and applied contributions to the professions;
• Service - Measured through our contributions locally and globally; and
• Leadership - Measured through our positive impact on communities we serve.

Strategies

Fulfilling our mission calls upon us to achieve across all of the School’s activities.  To accomplish this our strategies focus on key elements of the mission: our mutual calling to empower, to educate, and to serve. 

Empower

The Orlean Beeson School of Education delivers positive relationships, mentoring, and high-quality teaching within a Christian environment among students, faculty, and staff in order to empower and equip diverse leaders.  This innovative environment is nourished by collaboration and dissemination of applied research experience and the advancement of our academic disciplines and the professions.  To empower our community we will:

• Attract and retain high-quality, diverse faculty and staff;
• Onboard and mentor new faculty to help them effectively integrate into our community;
• Embrace effective models of teaching and learning that promote the professional development of students, administration and faculty;
• Provide funding for professional development and scholarship;
• Offer support for research-active faculty including course release and assistance in the pursuit of grant support;
• Establish a scholarly writing center for the School of Education with research mentors for faculty seeking to bolster their research;
• Implement scholarly brown bag lunch-n-learns for faculty;
• Provide travel funds for faculty and student presentations; and
• Focus fundraising efforts on specific high priority projects, including scholarships, academic programs, places and spaces and a solid foundation.

Educate

The Orlean Beeson School of Education develops competent leaders through academic programs that are student-centered, relevant, and designed to ensure success through a commitment of support.  To support this effective, nurturing approach to education we will:

• Develop and execute a comprehensive recruitment strategy for all Orlean Beeson School of Education programs;
• Design high-quality experiential learning experiences and diverse clinical placements that are guided by close faculty mentoring for both undergraduate and graduate students;
• Establish a school wide system for tracking field experience and internship data and utilize those data to ensure continuous improvement;
• Provide opportunities to collect, review, analyze, synthesize, and incorporate student and stakeholder feedback to ensure continuous improvement of programs;
• Systematically collect, analyze, and disseminate data to continuously improve our curricula and pedagogical approaches;
• Build capacity among faculty and staff to prepare students to become leaders in their fields; and
• Increase research opportunities to impact student learning.

Serve

The Orlean Beeson School of Education develops and nurtures beneficial partnerships that advance student-centered service and scholarship.  We also nurture collaboration within the School to streamline internal processes and procedures.  To promote this culture of service within and beyond the School we will:

• Promote an environment that is conducive to developing high-quality leaders in teaching, learning, scholarship. and service;
• Maintain strong relationships with community partners and agencies;
• Develop, nurture and formalize effective, mutually beneficial partnerships that enhance education;
• Nurture life-long relationships and career development for alumni;
• Manage our facilities to ensure that our environment facilitates effective learning;
• Developing and maintaining effective administrative procedures and policies to support faculty and students; and 
• Organize, plan, and provide support for faculty, staff and students that ensure seamless daily operations.

Departments and Program Offerings