"The unit must have financial, human, and physical resources to maintain licensure programs, support teacher educators, provide administrative support, and meet all unit and program standards, including the ability to collect and analyze data for continuous improvement."

Resources to Maintain Licensure Programs

Financial. Over the last five years, the School of Urban Education has maintained its existing programs and grown its program offerings with budget allocations to the UED that have remained stable despite a declining student population at Metro State that is also widely experienced in teacher education units as well as colleges and universities throughout the state and country. According to the Minnesota State system “Cost Study” about instructional costs per full-year equivalent (FYE) of undergraduate students enrolled across institutions for teacher education programs, Metropolitan State has more financial resources per upper division enrollment in Education than all the other six Minnesota State institutions, and our resource allocation per graduate enrollment is near the median. 

The UED has also received several Collaborative Urban and Greater MN Educators of Color grants from PELSB over recent years to support the retention of most of our teacher candidates and their program completion. Furthemore, the UED received a generous donation from a private donor of $1 million to be used over four years, which is allowing the UED to hire our first Director of Recruitment, Retention and Induction and provide direct financial support to teacher candidates.

Human. UED has the minimum number of faculty to ensure consistent delivery and quality of its programs. The UED is composed of 7 full-time Resident Faculty members (at least one for each of its programs), 6 full-time staff, and a full-time dean. In addition, UED has some 30 part-time community faculty members who teach in UED’s various licensure programs, supervise student teachers, co-coordinate secondary education programs and advise secondary education candidates (since the Dean took leave from his faculty position in January 2022), and provide support for candidates’ success on MTLE exams along with the edTPA.

UED has had several successful searches since our last site visit to maintain our programs following retirements and departures for other professional reasons. Despite a projected multi-million dollar budget shortfall for FY23 and FY24 at the University, the UED was approved to search for and hire full-time faculty replacements for a retiring ESL faculty and program coordinator as well as a graduate program faculty member and coordinator (since the Dean had served in that graduate faculty role for many years prior to becoming dean in January 2022). In 2019, the UED hired a full-time SPED tenure-track teacher educator to launch the newly approved initial SPED-ABS licensure program following a veteran faculty member’s retirement. In fall 2019, the UED also hired a new academic advisor after one advisor retired and the other took a K12 school administrative position. In 2020 UED hired a full-time tenure-track Early Childhood Education faculty member after several failed searches and a fixed-term faculty member’s appointment ended.  In fall of 2022, a search will be conducted to replace our academic advisor who will not be returning to the UED in January 2023.

Table 29.1  UED FACULTY BY LICENSURE PROGRAM

UED also has a number of essential full-time staff to ensure consistent delivery and quality of its programs, including: 

Despite having more programs and partnerships but fewer faculty and staff due to decreased enrollment and tight University budgets since our last PELSB site visit in 2018, we have had administration support and completed three successful searches in 2022. We hired one new staff position and two faculty vacancies (due to retirement and transition to unit administration). In summer 2022, the UED hired its first Director of Recruitment, Retention and Induction made possible by a generous donor. UED also employs student workers who assist office staff, faculty and students when students with work-study funding seek to fill such openings.

The UED also maintains its programs thanks to the human resources of skilled professionals in various units throughout the University ranging from those in the Admissions and Graduation Offices, to those in the Registrar’s and Financial Aid offices, Career Services, and Library Services among many others. For example, the UED is provided technology support by the IT Help Desk and an on-site IT professional assigned to the Minneapolis campus.

Physical. UED is allocated technology-equipped classrooms each semester at its various campuses (i.e. Minneapolis, Midway, and St. Paul). All classrooms have standard instructional technology (i.e. computer, internet access, and monitor or projector). All faculty and staff have their own laptop or desktop computers, most have multiple monitors, and the UED has two multi-use printers/copiers/scanners. Annual budgets include purchasing physical supplies and materials as needed to run the unit and maintain its programs.

All UED faculty and staff have their own office or workspace together at Minneapolis College campus on the 2nd floor of Helland Center building (suites H2300 and H2400). This current space was remodeled in spring 2022 to accommodate the unit’s needs before the UED moved to Helland Center from the nearby Management Education Center (MEC). UED occupied offices in MEC since 2019 when moving back to our Minneapolis roots (2001-2010) after being located at the Midway campus since 2010. UED had to vacate MEC for needed HVAC updates and renovations pending passage of a bonding bill at the state Legislature.

Resources to Support Teacher Educators

Per contract, the University sets aside $1,450 for each Resident Faculty member each year to spend on professional development through 19B (contract) funds and Professional Development Grants [PDGs]. Faculty members can use the monies for a variety of purposes for professional development, including but not limited to:

• subscriptions to professional journals and book purchases;
• travel and lodging support for conference participation and presentations that enhance scholarly expertise and enable professional networking;
• pay for local, regional and national conference, workshop and professional meetings fees, particularly to present papers.

Annual UED budgets also include purchasing physical supplies and materials as needed to teach courses and do other work as teacher education faculty.

The Center for Online Learning at the University provides important resource support for all aspects of teaching online, and the IT Help Desk also provides trouble-shooting support to all faculty.  The Center for Faculty Development (CFD) regularly offers many programs and resources aimed at supporting teaching excellence, including culturally responsive and anti-racist pedagogies.

Resources Providing Administrative Support

The UED Dean, faculty, staff, and students have crucial administrative support provided by the UED Office Manager, Office Administrative Specialist-Intermediate, and student workers when work-study and student worker positions are successfully filled. These personnel provide invaluable assistance including but not limited to: maintaining and helping build the UED budget; making purchases; processing reimbursement requests; managing workloads; setting up contracts; keeping supplies stocked; receiving, responding to or forwarding front-line calls, emails and visits from prospective students, submitting course schedule change requests; current students and stakeholders; coding admissions decisions and sending admissions letters; accessing certain students’ records for faculty and staff who need assistance; keeping students’ files in order; scanning electronic files; entering data for the assessment system; making arrangements for unit-sponsored events; supporting search committees; and doing special projects as requested.

Resources to Meet All Unit and Program Standards, including Resources to Collect and Analyze Data for Continuous Improvement

In 2017, UED hired its first full time Coordinator of Assessment, Reporting and Accreditation in order to sustain compliance with increasing state and federal assessment system and compliance reporting demands, and this role has only solidified with time. The Coordinator is central to all efforts to meet unit and program standards, and does much of the “behind the scenes” technical work necessary to meet unit and program standards. Since 2011, the UED has contracted with TaskStream (now under the Watermark umbrella of assessment system tools) as the main resource for collecting and analyzing student progress data related to meeting licensure standards in coursework, field experiences and student teaching.

Faculty program coordinators have reassigned time from instructional duties to perform their coordinator duties which include working with the Assessment Coordinator on PERCA reporting, working to help recruit and retain diverse candidates, and projects related to unit approval reporting. This reassigned time was increased from 3cr in 2021-22 to 4cr per coordinator in 2022-23 given site visit preparations and PERCA reporting in fall of 2023 as well preparations for meeting the anticipated new Standards of Effective Practice.  All other staff are involved in one way or another helping UED meet  Board standards, reporting and site visit requirements to maintain unit approval.

The Office of Institutional Research provides important support resources to run complex queries of University data about students in the UED’s various programs related to our mission as well as the process of regularly collecting data to be analyzed by UED personnel and stakeholders for continuous improvement within our assessment system.