Campus Feature
BEING BOLD. THINKING HIGHER.
Special Education
With the encouragement of the local educational
community, Siena Heights University will offer
a special education bachelor’s degree program
beginning this fall.
Sally Rae, Director
of Teacher Education
at Siena Heights, said
the decision was
made to add special
education for the 2007-08 academic year after
extensive discussion with numerous local educational experts, including those from the Lenawee
Intermediate School District.
“We talked with special education experts and
found out how many students there are in Lenawee
County who have been diagnosed with a disability
of some kind,”Rae said. “We looked at the numbers, put a matrix together and found where the
holes were. We concluded the area of biggest need
in special education was in the field dealing with
students having learning disabilities.”
The 2006 LISD audit numbers showed 18,600
total students in the Lenawee County K-12 population, with 3,379 students identified as needing
special education. Those with learning disabilities
were the largest group in the population report,
with approximately 1,400 students. The State of
Michigan’s Office of Labor Market Information
indicates special education teaching positions in
Michigan will increase by nearly 20 percent over
the next year. Rae said Siena Heights will begin
with a bachelor’s degree level program, with a
learning disabilities concentration. While other
area universities offer special education programs,
some programs are only offered at the master’s degree level. Also, the decision to offer a LD endorsement will allow students more career flexibility.
“Special education is one of those ‘employable
majors’ Siena wants to build its academic reputation around,”said Siena Heights President Albert.
“Siena Heights is continually looking at new ways
to serve the community. We know of the demand
for more special education teachers, and we believe
our program can help meet that demand.”
Siena Heights has contracted Martha Carroll,
former chair of the special education program at
the University of Toledo, to design the program.
Rae cited two elements of the program that will
make it unique. First, a parent partnership course
will help student-teachers manage and communicate with parents. The other is a collaboration
piece that will have student-teachers learn about
working with those in the community, schools
and other services.
“We started from what the students needed, then
we developed courses around those needs,”Rae
said. “We then went to the state standards and
matched our courses up to the standards. Then,
if we were still missing something, we created a
course that met a standard. It would have been
very easy to look at programs already out there
that have state approval and say Why reinvent the
‘
wheel?’ But that makes it a cookie-cutter program
that is not unique. Our program is distinctive
and fits the needs of our local community and
our students.”
“Students spend a lot of money for us to work
with them for four-and-a-half or five years
throughout their education program,”Rae said.
“And if we don’t help them graduate with the
pieces it takes to teach, then we haven’t done our
job. We are excited to get going, and the feedback
from the local educational community has been
outstanding.”
Homeland Security / Emergency
Preparedness / Nuclear Power
Siena Heights University is partnering with federal, state and local officials to offer a trio of
new graduate programs focusing on making our
country safer and more secure. Siena Heights will
begin graduate leadership programs in Homeland
Security, Emergency Preparedness and Nuclear
Power Administration starting in the fall. According to Dean of the Graduate College C. Patrick
Palmer, the programs fit Siena Heights’mission
to make the world more competent, purposeful
and ethical.
“There is a very strong ethical component to the
programs,”said Palmer, a former consultant with
state and federal agencies, including the FBI.
“Homeland security is working to keep our country safe from outside threats. Emergency preparedness is dealing with those disasters, both manmade
and natural, that come our way. And nuclear
power is the most environmentally friendly energy
provider we can have.”
The Homeland Security program will be run
under the certification of the prestigious Naval
Postgraduate School.
Siena Heights is one
of approximately 20
institutions nationwide—and the only
one in Michigan—
to be accepted into the program, which is targeted
to individuals who have five or more years of
professional work experience in law enforcement
or criminal justice. Those pursuing careers in the
FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, immigration and
customs—even private security —are strong candidates for the Homeland Security concentration,
Palmer said. The program consists of 36 hours
—18 in Siena’s leadership core, and 18 hours of
technical courses that are the same as the Naval
Postgraduate School offers.
“Siena Heights has full access to their curriculum
and their virtual library,”Palmer said of the Naval
Postgraduate School affiliation. “I plan on hiring
the same professionals (as the Naval Postgraduate
School) to come in and teach (at Siena Heights).”
Emergency Preparedness was designed and developed with the assistance of state and local emergency management professionals, who indicated
there was a need
for such a program,
Palmer said. EP will
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