Dear COE community,

This message should have gone out last week, when I heard the news of another tragic and unnecessary loss of life in the most recent school shooting. But honestly, I was struggling. How do I write “another” message on such a horrendous topic?

The latest school shooting corresponded to my children’s first day of school (and likely your kids’ or students’ first day in the classroom). This event shook me to my core. I clung to my 5^th and 7^th grade children last Wednesday night and wouldn’t let them go.  And now…one week later, and on this 23^rd anniversary of 9/11, I find myself struggling. I have a visceral response when I think about sending out yet another email about another tragedy. It’s just so much. Too much.

But this message is different.

Our return to the Fall quarter and to the school year is colored by the grief of another school shooting, uncertainties surrounding the national presidential election, and so much more. I’ve struggled with how to channel my grief, my anger, and my fear. Our college feels this pain in a unique way. Not only do we experience these tragedies alongside a traumatized nation, but we also experience these tragedies from a unique professional perspective.

As I step into the grief as both parent and dean and use its momentum to lean further into the solutions and levers at our disposal, I wanted to share some of the specific values that took shape for me in light of this most recent event. 

Ownership and solution-focused: I choose to enter this year embracing the solutions-side of this issue. As we watch national leaders volley to point fingers and distance themselves from ownership around the big issues that plague our nation, I would like to be among those who courageously raise their hands to acknowledge our place in this fight.

As colleges of education, we do not have the luxury of distancing ourselves from this terrible phenomenon. As preparers of the educators each of whom must take some action either in response to these in-school events or to prevent them (the educators who populate school buildings, district buildings, think tanks, non-profits, departments of education, and who occupy the highest political offices as candidates and spouses), we can no longer afford to count ourselves among the bystanders in this issue.

This is our fight.

Colleges of education like ours, in partnership with those we have trained previously, and those we are currently training, have a role in generating solutions for this issue. While legislative solutions are necessary, and we are each obligated as citizens and as institutions to push for legislative solutions that serve to remove the threats of gun violence from our schools (without adding new dangers that we are ill-prepared to face), we must also accept that accurate and hard-hitting legislation on this issue has been slow-moving, that the solutions to date have been insufficient, and that at the end of the day, any solutions that are proposed, will require competent implementers to put it into action to achieve success.

This is us. 

Action focused: I also enter this year with my focus on action rather than on unifying us around a single approach. As a community of educators, I am confident that we are unified in our shared desire for safe schools for our families, friends, students, and colleagues. But I am no longer convinced that we must wait until we are united around a single lever to take action. Instead, I see value in not letting this topic lie fallow while we rally around a single solution between events, and sadly, we are between events. Each of us as educators, as faculty, and as future educators, can incorporate this reality into our practices courageously.

I’m hoping we can courageously examine the levers at our disposal and begin to push on them based on our expertise, our experience, our research, and our passions towards that shared goal of school safety. Whether these levers influence: Youth mental health in schools, social emotional learning, parenting / parental supervision, social media, loneliness, video-games, legislation, metal detectors, phones in schools, diversity, inclusion, or something else, there is information already available that we as scholars have access to for implementation, that we as researchers can use to advance prior knowledge into action, and that we as instructors can use to prepare future educators. There is no need to wait.

Action generates action.

I offer these reactions out of my own grief, in my own frustration, and from my multiple perspectives as leader, parent, educator, and concerned citizen. I support you in your own unique reactions and encourage you and all of us to heal in grace so that we have the professional strength, tools, and approaches that will get us through the year ahead and allow us to feel efficacious in addressing this issue in our schools. I’ve added some resources below and encourage you to share others with your colleagues and friends.

Please take care of yourselves and check-in on each other regularly. I stand with you in this fight. I am ready to move with you in action.

Resources:

• Counseling Resources: For support in processing, please reach out. We know that in order to join the fight, take action, and move our levers, we also need a strength that steels and readies us while we take back our schools.
• Curricular Resources:  As we prepare our educators to step into classrooms in 2024 and beyond, please share any curricular content you have with your colleagues and your students to identify strategies that our future educators should be familiar with. While K12 schools prepare and develop strategies, we recognize that many will be looking to us to share the resources that support solutions.
• Us: I will be raising this issue with my fellow deans of colleges of education around the nation.

It is with both sadness and empowerment that I hit send.

Laura Lee

Dear COE Community,

This is a difficult time for many on campus. There has not been much messaging on our campus about the War in Gaza , and we sometimes struggle with finding the right words to express our commitment to each other.  As our campus takes measures to ensure everyone’s safety regarding the encampment at Memorial Quad, I was reminded through an exchange with a faculty member yesterday, that the ideas that are incubating in that space right now, though difficult, contain the very concepts that bring us together in our core mission here as a College of Education. We are united by our shared value of education.

The actions happening now on our campus are students experimenting with voice, engaging in dialogue, and exploring the dimensions of injustice. It is our job as faculty and staff to support our students in even these most complex of learning environments. Our role is to assist in creating spaces where new knowledge can occur as growth, and in a way that does not cause harm to a broader community of friends, colleagues, and allies. We assist in finding ways to hold what unites us when it is often more enticing to examine what keeps us apart. Not everyone feels safe at this moment, so fostering a community where our students and colleagues alike feel supported, valued, and cared for is critical to our COE community.

Again, I recall the exchange with the faculty member yesterday as I encourage us to view even this difficult time as an opportunity for us to sit among the students and focus on our shared values. Listening deeply to our students and being ready to support them as they explore the boundaries of their own learning is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our connection as a community. 

With gratitude,

Laura Lee

Dear COE Community,

When we messaged about the horrors and atrocities of the conflict between Hamas and Israel on October 9th, we didn’t have any idea what we would know a month later. Today is November 9^th and we know that the conflict has continued and we continue to learn on a daily basis of the ongoing impact of the destruction of life and humanity both in the region and closer to home.

There is so much to process when bearing witness to this particular issue because compassionate supporters grapple not only with the clear impact to humanity, but with their own fears of being seen as ignorant of these long-standing issues, saying the wrong thing, or feeling that showing compassion in any way requires taking a side or a stand. Yes. It helps to be informed. Do look for information from reputable sources and do find out the recent and historic struggles that communities experience across the globe, but we can’t use not knowing enough as an excuse not to feel, not to support, or not to bring our compassion to recognizing and mourning the innocent lives lost and lives destroyed.

We learned today that this terrible set of atrocities has now evolved closer-to-home in hateful speech and acts in our local community. These kinds of acts are unacceptable at any distance and are not welcome in our community.

While for many of us our day-to-day activities have had to continue in spite of this ongoing horror, there are large groups within our community who are struggling with each day and still need assurance that we care, we see, we know, and we feel these horrors at a human level. Please continue to support each other, your students, your colleagues, and your friends as we work our way through the original horror as well as the offshoots of the horror.

Please create spaces for compassion, support, and acknowledgement of the range of experience that this ongoing event has generated.

We know this message is going out on the eve of a long weekend, and we hope you make time to connect, learn, listen, and show compassion.

With gratitude and appreciation to our COE Community,

Laura Lee & Dianna

Dear COE Community,

Deidre Sandvick and I are thrilled to announce that following a competitive search, Esther Harclerode has been named as the College of Education’s next Director of Development. Esther will start in this new role on November 1, 2023.

Esther has been serving as a development officer at UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, rising from Program Manager to Director, over the past 9 years. During that time, she successfully achieved the Museum’s campaign goal, oversaw a huge increase in donations from the Shared Visions program, and closed a $3.4M gift that permanently endowed a curator position.

Personally, I am thrilled with this opportunity to work with Esther given her strong record of past accomplishments, her commitment to supporting our equity and inclusion mission in the COE, and the excitement she brings to our fundraising goals that will accelerate the impact of our academic and research excellence.

Welcome Esther and congratulations! We are excited that you’re joining our COE team.

Warmly,

Laura Lee & Deidre

Laura Lee McIntyre, Dean & Castle-McIntosh-Knight Professor, College of Education, Deidre Sandvick, Associate Vice President, Development

Dear COE Community,

Our hearts are heavy as we learn more about the horrors and atrocities of the active conflict between Hamas and Israel. For some, these acts of violence hit close to home. For others, this trauma is more removed but nevertheless devastating.

It is difficult for many of us to imagine the very specific type of trauma that results from sudden, widespread, and violent conflict that takes lives, destroys homes, and separates families. It is difficult to know what to do or say or how to support those who are experiencing it in a very real way from a distance, or to know what to do to be a part of something bigger — like making it stop.

As with the tragedies and atrocities we’ve witnessed before this one, our greatest tools during moments such as these are our community, our empathy, and our understanding for those nearby who have been affected from afar. If we feel helpless, worried, scared, devastated, guilty or any number of other valid but destabilizing emotions, then we know that those sentiments are exponential in those who can put a face to someone they are afraid for while it is occurring.

Today is a day to remember our patience, our empathy, our kind words, our understanding greetings, and our community presence. Today is a day to be the community that someone else may need.

Sending love and peace to all,

Laura Lee & Dianna, Office of the Dean

Dear COE community,

I am delighted to share that the College of Education has been awarded three new IHPS for the 2023-24 AY (see attached memo from the Provost). These new tenure track lines are in addition to any lines we don’t fill this year. Any unfilled lines will automatically carry over to next year!  The three new IHPs we have been awarded for the 2023-24 AY represent the most IHPs that the COE has been awarded in a single year since the centralization of tenure track hiring a few years back. I see our three new IHPs as a huge win for the COE but also a recognition of the importance of faculty governance, department leadership, and problem-solving and collaboration with the dean’s office. Huge thanks to all who contributed to this year’s IHP proposals!

The three lines we have been awarded are distributed across each department (one per department) and are strongly tied to our undergraduate programs in Education Foundations (EDF/EDST dept), Family and Human Services (FHS; CPHS dept), and Communication Disorders and Sciences (CDS; SPECS dept). Each line has been approved at the Assistant Professor rank. We submitted a fourth “bonus” IHP this round focusing on Climate Education, and unfortunately this one was not awarded. A brief description of the three funded lines can be found below.

• EDF Summary: This IHP focuses on recruiting a faculty member in the field of Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. This scholar will bring much-needed faculty leadership to the undergraduate program in Educational Foundations (EdF). This TTF member will also help develop revisions to the curriculum in response to new K-12 Oregon state mandates that require Oregon schools, and by extension teacher education programs, to include instruction in the areas of Ethnic Studies, Tribal History/Shared History, and Holocaust education. This proposed position is uniquely suited to respond to these new instructional standards and integrate this suite of cultural studies topics into the EdF curriculum. Additionally, the faculty member will contribute to the growth of the new Certificate in Educational Foundations – Secondary program that provides future secondary teachers with education coursework. This proposed hire will have an emerging record of educational research related to social and cultural studies that will compliment established areas of excellence in EDST.

• CDS Summary: In keeping with the College of Education’s (COE’s) mission as a “community of leading researchers and practitioners dedicated to transformational scholarship, integrated teaching, and collaborative practice designed to enhance individual lives and systems” the Communication Disorders and Sciences (CDS) program is seeking a tenure track faculty member to (1) teach and mentor students in the CDS undergraduate program, a cornerstone major at UO that prepares students to work in underserved areas of need, which is experiencing severe faculty shortages, and (2) fill a critical gap in studying educational practices consistent with the sociocultural paradigm shift in understanding language development from a neurodiverse perspective.

• FHS Summary: This IHP focuses on recruiting a TTF Assistant Professor of Inclusive Sport and Well-Being position to support the Family and Human Services (FHS) program within the Counseling Psychology and Human Services Department, and to bring a new line of research excellence that responds to student interest and empirically identified inequities in sport/physical activity and mental health among communities often excluded from this work (e.g., individuals with disabilities, student athletes). In sum, the individual in this position will train the next generation of community leaders in addressing complex physical activity/sport and mental well-being with innovative and applied solutions that promote health equity in community settings. This is an innovative and integrative area of potential growth for the university given the UO’s excellence in all three areas (sports, mental health, disability research), combined with the nationwide need for an increased workforce who understands and can provide mental health supports.

Stay tuned for a campus Around The O announcement tomorrow about the overall IHP process and outcomes. The full IHP will be available on Tuesday on the Office of the Provost website.

I’m excited to partner with you on tenure track faculty recruitment with an eye toward recruiting scholars to add to our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for our College. Please stay tuned for additional information from the Office of the Dean and Human Resources about inclusive excellence practices in hiring. Recruitment and retention of faculty colleagues is important and shared work across our entire community – in the COE, institution, and in our local communities.

I look forward to working with you!

Warmly, Laura Lee

Dear COE community,

I am humbled by the opportunity to lead our College of Education as we move into this next chapter. This is a special place full of wonderful faculty, staff, and students all committed to making a difference. Thank you to the hundreds of people who have reached out to express their enthusiasm and support of my dean appointment. I am overwhelmed by the show of support and am committed to work with you and for you on behalf of our college.

Although we have many things to celebrate in our college, we have work to do to improve our impact. Thank you for partnering with me and each other as we more forward.

It’s been quite a day! I wanted to get a message out to you before the end of the day. Looks like I just made it. Phew. 😊

Warmly, Laura Lee

March 3, 2022

Dear College of Education community,

As you know, this week the University celebrated the establishment of the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health, a remarkable new Portland-based institute that is designed to serve the behavioral health needs of K-12 students and create partnerships to support state-of-the-science prevention and intervention, research, and workforce development. This Institute is an incredible opportunity for our College of Education to be deeply involved expanding our service on behalf of Oregon children and youth. Provost Phillips asked Randy Kamphaus to serve as Acting Director of the Ballmer Institute and appointed me as Interim Dean of the College of Education. As you can imagine, it’s been a busy week! 

I want to take a moment to thank Randy Kamphaus for his leadership on behalf of the College of Education. Randy has served as dean since 2014. Under his leadership we have grown our faculty, expanded our research portfolio, recruited more students, grown our programs, and enhanced our focus on issues of equity and inclusion. I also wish to thank Julie Wren for her incredible service to the College of Education as Assistant Dean for Accreditation and Academic Operations and TSPC Liaison. Julie Wren has been named the Assistant Director of the Ballmer Institute and will bring a wealth of knowledge to that role that will benefit the Institute, our COE, the UO, and state. Congratulations to both Randy and Julie! We look forward to our work with you in your new roles! 

I’m honored to serve the college as interim dean and am humbled at the work before us. I am deeply committed to our college and know that the people – our faculty, staff, and students – are the heartbeat of our college. I wish to extend my gratitude to those of you who have supported me over the past 13+ years here and I look forward to expanding my work to include each one of you on this list.

I came to the University of Oregon in 2009 (prior to that I was a faculty member at Syracuse University in NY). I have served the institution in a variety of roles over the years, including program director of school psychology, department head of special education and clinical sciences, director of prevention science institute, and trustee of the university’s governance board. I’m passionate about my work with students and colleagues and know that we can do more when we have genuine partnerships and collaboration. My team and I focus our research on prevention and intervention of developmental, academic, and behavioral health problems in young children with or at-risk for disabilities using family-centered approaches. Through my work in early childhood and K-12 settings, I value strength-based strategies to promote positive outcomes for students, families, and educational professionals.

I’ll end on a personal note. I have many identities, but two that I hold dear to my heart are mom (to Liam & Ella – age 10 & 8 years) and wife (to Bill).

I love being at the College of Education and am thrilled serve you. I look forward to what’s ahead and am trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible!

Sincerely,

Laura Lee

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Laura Lee McIntyre, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Interim Dean & Castle-McIntosh-Knight Professor, College of Education
Pronouns: she/her