Growing up as one of nine children in a Hmong American household, Lisa Yang sometimes struggled to find her voice. Yet she knew she must in order to achieve her goal of becoming a teacher. Through her journey to discover her voice, she uncovered her calling: using the power of language to help others find their voice, too.
A second-year student in the Minnesota Grow Your Own Teachers (MNGOT) program, Yang is earning her master’s degree and teaching licensure in K-12 English as a Second Language (ESL). The MNGOT program allows current educators, including paraprofessionals, to earn their MEd and teaching license while collaborating with co-teachers to design and deliver lessons, work one-on-one with struggling learners, and assess student learning.
“I teach because I want better for my students,” Yang says. “I want my students to feel empowered by their education. As a child of immigrants, my parents have told me that education is power—power that can make a weak person strong; power that will give one a voice to be heard.”
Getting to this point has not come without challenges, though, which Yang describes as part of the process of finding herself. “As a woman from a culture that, traditionally, does not encourage women to speak, it has been personally important to find my voice. I believe this is something valuable for marginalized populations also. For that reason, I think it is necessary we teach our students how to use their voice to engage in the world, deal with conflict, and advocate for themselves and for change,” she says.
“I teach because I want better for my students. I want my students to feel empowered by their education.”
Yang’s ability to pursue her passion for teaching is thanks in part to the Mithun family, who share a deep commitment to education. Inspired by their mother Jacqueline’s experience as a teacher, sisters Jill Mithun and Susan Duncan started a scholarship in the college to support future educators and diversify the teacher workforce. For Yang, the impact has been far greater than just the financial support.
“It has provided me with more peace to do the work of my area of study—teaching—by growing a deeper sense of myself to better support my students,” she says.
Looking to the future, Yang plans to become an ESL teacher after completing her program. She may even become an author. No matter what she accomplishes, though, she is certain the path to finding her voice has been a catalyst for change.
“Throughout my graduate school journey, I’ve found that I’m capable of so much more so I’m excited for what’s next,” she says.
Story by Dirk Tedmon | Photos courtesy of Erica Loeks | Winter 2022
Support CEHD student scholarships at cehd.umn.edu/giving.
Contact us at 612-625-1310.
Providing culturally responsive care is Katy Armendariz’s (MSW ’09) mission, and it’s an intensely personal one. Her birth mother, homeless and suffering from an untreated mental condition, was unable to take care of her. Katy wound up shifted and shunted through an orphanage to a foster home to an all-white family. And in the process, her cultural and racial identity were lost.
“That’s what made me want to get into social work,” she says. “I realized my story was one of many in a child welfare system that was perpetuating these disparities.”
Her experience also inspired her to create Minnesota CarePartner, a mental health service that strives to meet the needs of children and families of color in a culturally responsive way.
“I wanted to combine my interest in business with social work to fulfill a personal passion of advocacy and activism at several levels of social work: macro, mezo, and micro,” Katy says.
She did not start the company right after graduation; instead she concentrated on getting her full licensure, working with group homes, adult mental health, and post-adoption social work, which she found especially rewarding. “That inspired me to focus on child welfare. Being that person who would do the searches for the birth parent,” she says. “Helping to connect people made me want to start at the beginning of child welfare, especially families of color.”
“We can improve healing of centuries of racial trauma. That’s the next step hopefully in the next two years.”
In 2013, Katy was ready to make that next step and founded Minnesota CarePartner. As it is intended to address disparities among people of color, it became obvious that services should be provided by the same since they naturally have the experiences and understanding necessary to offer effective cultural care.
“Every agency I went to was very oppressive around racism and had a lack of representation,” she says. “I intentionally created a company that would be different, founded and led by BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color], safe for BIPOC, and provided by BIPOC as much as possible.”
Matching clients with therapists with similar backgrounds has been a successful recipe, but it wasn’t always easy. “Starting a business from the ground up required a lot of hustle and working 12-hour days on top of my job,” Katy says. “There were a lot of growing pains, a lot of moving pieces, and a lot of balls in the air at all times.”
But what had started as a two-therapist operation has now become an effective business, with 65 staff members and Katy as CEO. “There’s a team now versus a bunch of random pieces,” Katy says. “So things are very stable now. It’s not a constant balancing act.”
Although her company has grown, Katy is not interested in having franchises or going corporate. “I don’t want to be at the mercy of a board of directors,” she says.
Instead, she hopes to turn Minnesota CarePartner into a nonprofit, as well as open a racial trauma clinic.
“It would address a huge gap in effective healing for a real phenomenon that has not been acknowledged due to white supremacy,” she says. “We can improve healing of centuries of racial trauma. That’s the next step hopefully in the next two years.”
Currently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn’t identify racial trauma as a diagnosis. This needs to change, Katy says. “The end goal would be to transform the way we think about mental health,” she says. “But it would be a starting point if we could have it formally recognized.”
Katy’s drive and determination leave little doubt that it will eventually happen. Her experience in the MSW program inspired her voice and activism and her focus on macro-level and systems-level change. “In an indirect way, it taught us valuable lessons in how to advocate for ourselves and for the broader BIPOC community,” she says.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of Greg Helgeson, Katy Armendariz | Winter 2022
In designing graduate student programs, CEHD engages partnerships where students can build professional skills and support local areas at the same time.
“Central to our work is a deep commitment to supporting student learning while engaging local communities,” says Marina Aleixo, director of international initiatives.
A perfect example of this is the Mary Tjosvold Graduate Fellowship in Community Development, known colloquially as the Mary T. Scholars program. Named after alumnus Mary Tjosvold, the program sends graduate students internationally to participate in six-week, community-based professional internships in the areas of health, social work, microfinance, agriculture, and education.
For a time, Tjosvold served as national chair of the American Refugee Committee and found herself in many of the world’s war-torn areas such as Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. While in Africa, she made a stop in Cameroon. “My day job is health care,” she says. “We have a lot of staff from Cameroon and they said ‘you should see our country.’ That started my relationship there.”
Over the next 15 years Tjosvold would help build a nursery and primary school, and support various NGOs in Cameroon. “I saw what a little bit of money and a little bit of experience can do to change people’s lives,” she says.
Later, she was asked to sit on the Dean’s Advisory Council at CEHD.
“We talked about international programs and how to get students to be more invested and engaged in the community,” Tjosvold remembers. “I said ‘I have a perfect idea. I could sponsor students to go to Cameroon.’”
Tjosvold could imagine a group of students living in Cameroon for a time and working with some of the local citizens and NGOs she knew. “Professors said this could work and within four months, students were on a plane.”
CEHD students and local residents celebrate sports day. In the middle is Queen Mary, a local community leader and one of CEHD’s global partners.
Between 2014 and 2017, CEHD sent 20 students to Bamenda, Cameroon, as Mary T. Scholars. One of those students was Tiffany Smith, who took part in the program in 2017. She is currently a sixth-year PhD student in comparative and international development education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. As international issues are so important to her work and life, Smith jumped at the opportunity when she first heard of the Mary T. Scholars program.
“I was excited about the fellowship because it fell on the 10th anniversary of my initial international experience—I studied abroad in South Africa in 2007,” she says. “Knowing that I wanted to conduct an international dissertation study, I saw this fellowship as a great opportunity to engage with teachers in Bamenda and to take note of some of the needs they faced in their educational systems.”
Smith helped organize a teacher training workshop where she provided resources to promote active engagement in the classroom. “The highlight was seeing many of the teachers moving and dancing around the room and shifting between the large sticky notes posted on the walls as they wrote answers to various questions,” she says. “Another highlight was participating in a discussion with various leaders in the community. We thought we’d be discussing education in general but the event resulted in passionate discourse about the politics in Bamenda.”
Smith’s experience was to be the last for CEHD students, as unrest in Cameroon came to a head in the fall of 2017. “The Ambazonia War in the region made it unsafe to continue the program, although we continue in contact with our local partners providing support and resources,” Aleixo says. “When it became clear Bamenda was no longer an option, we explored other opportunities to continue the fellowship.”
Ka Vang and Center for Girls staff visit a Hmong family in a remote northern village. Vang translated between the Center for Girls staff and the family. The group visited the family to drop off milk for the mother and her child and to check on her wellbeing.
Mary Tjosvold takes part in a drum circle in Kampala, Uganda, in 2019.
Ka Vang (left) takes part in a community event in Chiang Khong in 2019. Various community organizations in Northern Thailand came together to plant 1,000 trees to push for environmental sustainability.
The program found new life in Thailand and, later, Uganda. Department of Family Social Science Professor Catherine Solheim had been collaborating with local partners in Thailand for nearly 30 years, and Tjosvold had established relationships in Uganda through her role as a board member of the Center for Victims of Torture. “It made sense for us to build on these existing relationships and use the fellowship as an opportunity to sustain and grow our exchange of knowledge, resources, and expertise,” Aleixo says.
Ka Vang, MEd ’20, went to Thailand in 2019 and worked with the Center for Girls Foundation in the Chiang Rai Province. “They host workshops where they bring together women in the town and village and teach them how to fight for their rights,” Vang says. “It was great to be a part of that and contribute to the things they’re doing for northern Thailand.”
Vang says she is appreciative of the experience because it allowed her to challenge herself and reflect on her life and her place and purpose for being there. Many of these thoughts inform her current work as an academic advisor at UMD for its Upward Bound Vision Quest program. “I connect my culture roots with a lot of work I do, so when I was doing the Mary T. program, I reflected on my Hmong culture and history and reflected on my job,” she says, adding that this self-knowledge better equips her to understand and help the students she works with on a daily basis.
“This program shaped a lot of my cultural identity,” she says. “I am very appreciative of all the people involved in it and able to make it happen. I hope it continues to happen.”
Tjosvold hopes it does too. “My vision is that the scholarship continues to grow and perpetuate,” she says.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of International Initiatives, Marina Aleixo, Tiffany Smith, and Ka Vang | Winter 2022
Its mission is to advance brain health from the earliest stages of development across the lifespan, and to support each person’s journey as a valued community member.
“MIDB is home to University of Minnesota researchers, educators, M Health Fairview care providers, policy experts, and community members who are working side by side to better understand how young brains develop and how we can pool resources, intellect, and our motivations to improve brain health across the lifespan for families right here in Minnesota,” says Damien Fair, Redleaf Endowed Director of MIDB and a professor in the Institute of Child Development (ICD) and the U of M Medical School. “Our bold aspiration is that our curious, inspired, and strategic collaboration will allow us to better understand how to provide an optimal environment for all of our youth to maximize brain health so that every child is set up for success.”
The mission of MIDB aims to:
–Lead in research and innovation to understand how a child’s rapidly developing brain grows and thrives.
–Educate and provide opportunities for scholars across intersecting disciplines to maximize each individual’s brain health in early childhood and adolescence.
–Collaborate and engage communities to quickly advance and apply findings to improve the health of local and global communities, working in partnership to ensure that social supports are available across the lifespan.
–Merge research with M Health Fairview clinical care to improve patient and families’ experiences.
“MIDB is unique in that it is not dedicated to any one neurobehavioral disorder as most other centers are, but instead seeks to discover basic processes by which the brain develops. Through that approach, we can understand the root causes of many neurobehavioral disorders that affect our state’s children,” says Michael Georgieff, co-director of MIDB, professor at ICD and the U of M Medical School, and a neonatologist at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital. “With support from our funders and collaborators, MIDB provides a one-stop setting for children and families by housing researchers, health care providers, educators, and advocates together in one location where they can enhance each other’s knowledge with the goal of improving our children’s future. We are excited for MIDB to support Minnesotans in a setting that is convenient, welcoming, and serene.”
ICI’s new space
Contributing to the new era of collaboration, the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) relocated to the MIDB building, bringing in more than 35 years of disability research, advocacy, and education/training.
“As an organization, we actually outgrew our space in Pattee Hall in the early 1990s. Having a fully accessible space that encourages collaboration with colleagues and lets us welcome community partners is the culmination of our collective work over decades to make life better for people with disabilities through our research and its influence on changing policy and practice,” says ICI Director Amy Hewitt about the move.
Named in recognition of a gift from Minnesota Masonic Charities, MIDB offers collaborative interdisciplinary research, early neurobehavioral and mental health assessment, innovative targeted interventions, informed policy-making, compassionate advocacy, and community engagement and education.
While ICI and the other occupants of the MIDB building will retain their existing names, organizational structures, and research interests, their proximity in the space is designed to foster new collaborations, share resources, and spur new research and service delivery approaches.
“Access is a hallmark of equity and inclusion, not only regarding access to space, but to resources, opportunities, information, and discoveries,” says CEHD Dean Michael Rodriguez. “ICI has long led the way in creating access, and through enhancing collaborations with the Medical School, we will expand that legacy with new energy in MIDB.”
One collaboration already underway is the MIDB TeleOutreach Center, directed by ICI’s Jessica Simacek and Adele Dimian, associate director. The center was created under a philanthropic gift from the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, providing research, training, and technical assistance through innovative and secure technology to address barriers to care for children, youth, families, and professionals. Under a new $600,000, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, researchers from ICI and the Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics will conduct a large-scale, randomized control trial assessing intervention and diagnostic services delivered via the TeleOutreach Center to families awaiting formal autism spectrum disorder evaluation or intervention.
“The TeleOutreach Center is one of the early, exciting collaborations within MIDB,” says Simacek. “The physical space and technology are scaled up from what we have previously used to do this type of work, and it is already allowing us to welcome more trainees, fellows, students, community collaborators, and, ultimately, families, to be connected and engaged, regardless of where they are located.”
Jennifer Hall-Lande, who leads ICI’s work in autism prevalence data and early intervention, serves on the MIDB executive council, along with Hewitt.
“I’ve been waiting my entire career for an opportunity like this to leverage the strengths of the social model of disability with the clinical side,” she says. “Disability is a natural part of the human condition, and I bring that perspective to my clinical work. It’s up to us to take this opportunity and learn from each other and grow and innovate.”
Hewitt agrees. “Viewing disability as a unique difference rather than a problem to be solved is a foundational aspect of ICI,” she says. “Our approach to supporting people with developmental and neurodevelopmental disabilities throughout their lives will inform the work of MIDB and create more inclusive communities for many years to come.”
–Janet Stewart
Located on East River Parkway near the University’s Twin Cities campus, the 10.2-acre property includes a two-level building with a research center, clinic, and support area, as well as a community center and an attached parking lot. MIDB provides one location to connect world-renowned experts across the disciplines of neuroscience, brain imaging, bioengineering, genomics, pediatrics, psychology, psychiatry, disabilities, child health care policy, and developmental brain health across the lifespan. It is a one-stop destination where diverse expertise comes together to accelerate discovery and improve brain health throughout life.
Damien Fair, co-director of MIDB
Michael Georgieff, co-director of MIDB
Institute on Community Integration Director Amy Hewitt
“We want MIDB to be a place where we think about how we can provide support to a child—whether it’s an infant or a 3-year-old we’re assessing for a developmental disability—and their family so that when this person is an adult, they have a great life,” says Institute on Community Integration Director Amy Hewitt. The institute’s work in applied community research, tele-outreach, interdisciplinary training, and community outreach is a valuable asset for MIDB.
Led by CEHD and the University’s Medical School, MIDB aims to address access to care and the hurdles individuals and their families encounter when seeking medical, educational, and community-based resources and support.
The development of MIDB, a first-of-its-kind institute in the country, was made possible by a $35 million naming gift from Minnesota Masonic Charities, $15 million from the Lynne & Andrew Redleaf Foundation (which also gave $6.5 million to related initiatives in psychiatry and child development), as well as generous investments by the Otto Bremer Trust, Blythe Brenden-Mann Foundation, and Drs. Gail A. Bernstein and Thomas J. Davis Trust.
“The Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain is another example of how we can unite the incredible expertise of the University with the capacity of Minnesota Masonry to benefit our entire state and, indeed, the world,” says Eric Neetenbeek, president and CEO of Minnesota Masonic Charities.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of Pete McCauley | Winter 2022
TRIO programs at the U of M began in 1966 with TRIO Upward Bound, a program for underrepresented high school students that offers academic and other support for college-bound students. TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) followed in 1976 and provides academic, financial, personal, and leadership support to low-income students, first-generation students (neither parent has a four-year degree), and students with disabilities from across the Twin Cities campus. In 1991, longtime TRIO directors Bruce and Sharyn Schelske secured funding for the TRIO McNair Scholars Program, which prepares underrepresented students for graduate study through research and mentorship opportunities.
TRIO programs formally became housed in CEHD in 2005, and the TRIO SSS program largely contributes to making CEHD one of the most diverse undergraduate colleges at the U of M, with more than 30 percent of Fall 2021 CEHD first-year students identifying as first-generation.
And now more than 50 years later, all three TRIO programs’ directors and staff are continuing their core missions, while also adapting to the changing needs of their students and the world around them.
TRIO Upward Bound—Helping high school students reach their full potential
As the only TRIO program at the U of M that serves high school students, Upward Bound stands out for its impact on the greater Minneapolis community, as it serves students from four Minneapolis high schools. It’s also unique in that it brings students to campus.
“Students are able to come each week and begin to feel as if they belong by learning to navigate a large campus, taking public transportation, and engaging with other students not from their high school,” says Tricia Wilkinson, director of TRIO Upward Bound.
Upward Bound is the longest running TRIO program at the U of M and also one of the longest running nationally. Wilkinson says by having students participate all four years, it builds a real sense of community.
“We not only get to know them during academic classes, activities, and field trips, but also we get to know their families by communicating consistently. Relationships with each other as well as with staff are important factors to retention and student success,” Wilkinson says.
TRIO Upward Bound students at a community BBQ, including class of 2022-24, bridge class, and summer staffSophomore and junior students taking the annual Mock ACT testingTricia Wilkinson, director, TRIO Upward BoundThe Bridge class of 2021 triumphs after a kayaking community building event, July 2021
Alumni of TRIO Upward Bound are a testament to how the program works, and every year a group of seniors end up attending the U of M Twin Cities, with some enrolling in CEHD. One of those alums is Sarah Yang, who majored in youth studies in CEHD and now works as an Upward Bound advisor and project coordinator. She’s also currently pursuing her graduate degree in CEHD in youth development leadership.
“During my time in TRIO Upward Bound, I met lifelong friends, gained social skills—now I feel like I talk too much!—and found my passion in working with youth,” says Yang.
TRIO Student Support Services—aiding U of M students through holistic, individualized advising
TRIO SSS has been at the U of M for 45 years and as an advising office for first-generation, low-income, or students with disabilities, it has pivoted multiple times to meet the needs of its students. TRIO SSS students are admitted to the program at the same time they are admitted to the U of M and advisors have a low student-to-advisor ratio and are trained to offer financial literacy, career counseling, and mental health advocacy. Beginning in fall of 2021, the program expanded from a two-year model to a four-year model, meaning students have their TRIO advisor throughout their college career.
“We know the needs of first-generation college students don’t end after they declare a major,” says Director Minerva Muñoz. “Now we will get to work collaboratively with CEHD departments on how to better address the needs of our students in their programs to graduate in a timely fashion and maximize opportunities that prepare our students to transition out of college and onto their post-graduation journeys.”
The advisors teach a one-credit course, Identity, Culture, and College Success, and meet with instructors of first-year courses to ensure wraparound support and proactive interventions. They have also worked with departments across the U of M to develop and instruct integrated learning courses, which are paired with difficult introductory courses that can serve as gateways to in-demand majors.
Minerva Muñoz, director, TRIO Student Support Services2021 College Day event, TRIO SSS breakout session, for students navigating the start of their college journeyTRIO SSS bowling event for 2nd year students in August 2021TRIO SSS professional team at the TRIO SSS Community Day event for new 1st year students in August 2021
TRIO SSS alumna Cheniqua Johnson credits the program with connecting her to the many opportunities she was able to take advantage of while a student at the U of M. Johnson, a 2017 family social science alum, is a relationship manager for the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and has been active in state politics. She was recently elected to the leadership team of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, and in 2018 was the youngest DFL-endorsed woman and one of the first women of color to run in her Southwest Minnesota district.
“TRIO Student Support Services saw the potential in me that I now see in myself. Every year, TRIO helped me open doors, build relationships, and reach goals that I didn’t even know were possible. It was the highlight of my college experience,” Johnson says.
In addition to the new four-year model, TRIO SSS will begin to work with CEHD transfer students and partner with CEHD Global Initiatives to launch a study abroad experience specifically for TRIO SSS students. Muñoz is excited for these new opportunities, while also recognizing the continual impact of the pandemic and struggles for students who hold multiple marginalized identities.
“Our population is diverse, and most students share similar lived experiences. Within our program, students are provided a safer space to transition into college, and we foster a culture of belonging,” she says.
This is why we give
Bruce and Sharyn Schelske
Bruce and Sharyn Schelske’s involvement with the TRIO programs goes all the way back to their time as undergraduates. “People always ask us if we met in TRIO, but no, we knew each other already,” Sharyn says.
The couple started working with the Upward Bound program in 1968. Both were in the College of Liberal Arts; Sharyn was working on her degree in English and Spanish and Bruce was in the sociology program. After they graduated in 1969 and 1970, respectively, they applied for full-time positions in Upward Bound and were hired.
For the next four decades, the Schelskes worked tirelessly to bring TRIO to where it is today. They became co-directors of Upward Bound in 1978 and served in that capacity until 1991 when Bruce became director of TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) and Sharyn took the helm of the McNair Scholars. They had earlier assisted in writing the first successful University TRIO SSS grant and co-authored the McNair Scholars grant.
Although they retired in 2012, they continue to find ways to give back to the programs they find so dear. Initially, they set up the Bruce and Sharyn Schelske Fund that offers discretionary support to TRIO. “It’s a modest endowment that provides money to support TRIO enrichment activities that the programs may not otherwise be able to fund,” Bruce says. As an example, money from this fund could help pay for students’ passports so they could engage in study abroad or pay costs of leadership experiences.
More recently, the couple has committed to establish a TRIO Director Fund to augment the money the U.S. Department of Education and the college provide for the salaries of the program directors.
The Schelskes have received state, regional, and national accolades in their decades-long support of TRIO, including a UMN President’s Outstanding Service Award for Bruce in 2005 and another for Sharyn in 2006. However, their biggest reward is the impact the TRIO programs make.
“Witnessing what students can accomplish when given the opportunity continues to inspire and motivate us to find more support for the programs and never stop working for equal opportunity,” Sharyn says.
TRIO McNair Scholars—Diversifying the next generation of scholars and industry leaders
As director of TRIO McNair, Anthony Albecker has a deep commitment to the program’s mission. A former TRIO student who began volunteering with the program in 2004, Albecker knows firsthand how much TRIO can shape a student’s future. An example is all of the McNair staff are former McNair scholars, a testament to the program’s influence on students’ professional paths.
“How do we think more creatively of how we use our models to be able to enhance where CEHD is going? We know that there’s an increased need for people with advanced degrees in teaching and social work, for example,” Albecker says. “And we’re in a position in CEHD to fill these roles where representation also matters. The McNair program has been showing for 30 years that we can make it happen.”
On average, more than 65 percent of U of M McNair scholars enroll in graduate programs, and a significant portion of them end up staying at the U of M Twin Cities. In recent years, CEHD has had the largest number of McNair scholars admitted to graduate programs, with strong representation in social work; organizational leadership, policy, and development; and educational psychology. Albecker notes that scholars are enrolling and completing doctorates at a rate 12-fold over the national average.
Albecker also credits the important contributions of CEHD faculty, who serve as mentors for McNair scholars’ research projects. Many have participated for multiple years and formed lasting relationships with their students. Beth Lewis, director of the School of Kinesiology, and Tabitha Grier-Reed, associate dean for faculty, are both McNair Scholar alums.
“They exemplify what McNair is about—preparing future faculty who become leaders who seek to teach and lead transformation in their academic fields,” says Albecker.
Anthony Albecker, director, McNair Scholars program2018 McNair Scholars Cohort at the 2019 McNair Scholars Research Symposium2021 McNair Scholars CohortAnna Heinz, 2019 McNair Scholar presenting at the 2019 McNair Scholars Research Symposium
Family social science undergraduate student Sher Moua worked with faculty mentor Associate Professor Zha Blong Xiong in Summer 2021.
“Working with my faculty mentor was an exciting and scary experience because I had no research experience prior to McNair; therefore, I felt the need to meet every deadline I had, even if it was an unfinished draft of a major section. Participating in the McNair program gave me the opportunity to build my leadership skills and community within the cohort,” Moua says.
As undergraduate students’ needs have evolved, the McNair team is trying to be responsive to what students want as they prepare for graduate school, especially as students navigate the uncertainties and impact of the pandemic on their post-graduation plans.
“TRIO programs are central and core to the mission of what we need to do in CEHD to solve the problems of social injustice and being responsive to the critical needs of today,” Albecker says.
Story by Christina Clarkson | Photos courtesy of TJ Turner, Tricia Wilkinson, Minerva Munoz, TRIO Student Support Services, TRIO McNair Scholars | Winter 2022
When it comes to increasing diversity in the field of psychology, three heads are definitely better than one. This is best illustrated by Tri-Psych, a partnership among CEHD’s Department of Educational Psychology and Institute of Child Development (ICD), and the U of M’s Department of Psychology.
The effort was the brainchild of the chairs of the three departments several years ago. Megan Gunnar of ICD, Geoff Maruyama of educational psychology, and Jeff Simpson of psychology were trying to find a way to support underrepresented students in psychology. “They thought combining efforts across the three departments’ diversity committees would increase engagement in diversity-focused efforts and build community for our students,” says Kristen McMaster, the current chair of educational psychology.
At its inception, Tri-Psych had three areas of focus. First, identify faculty, particularly those who study diversity, across the three programs to serve on a sort of council to support students from underrepresented groups. Second, combine graduate students from underrepresented groups from all three programs to provide a broader support group for graduate students. Third, provide guidance to the undergraduate students in the three departments to support those who are underrepresented.
Connecting graduate students through Tri-Psych
“The importance came from the fact that, separately, each of our programs was still growing its diverse student population,” says ICD Director Kathleen Thomas. “Tri-Psych allows students to connect with peers in psychology fields at the University, even if they have a different home department.” She says Tri-Psych is an opportunity for students across the programs to be connected and have a broad area of support.
“The program has funded multiple student initiatives to help connect graduate students across the three departments, and has successfully supported recruitment of undergrads from underrepresented groups into our graduate programs,” McMaster says.
Some of these initiatives include the Tri-Psych Diversity Award, which funds collaborative student proposals that build community across the three units; the Next Gen Psych Scholars Program, a student mentoring group for undergraduates interested in applying to graduate school; and the Diversity Science in Psychology Reading Group.
Visioned by Professor Rich Lee in the Psychology department, the reading group is co-led by Psychology Associate Professor Moin Syed and ICD Associate Professor Gail Ferguson. “The group is still relatively new and serves graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the psychology department and ICD who want to read, discuss, and learn more about conducting psychological research that attends to the principles of diversity science,” says Ferguson, chair of ICD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and now the current chair of Tri-Psych.
Increasing diversity in psychology students
Another component of Tri-Psych’s outreach is the Diversity in Psychology Program, which is an investment in inclusion almost a year before new graduate students arrive to begin their studies. Through the program, prospective students are invited to campus to see what U of M’s psychology departments, and graduate training in psychology generally, have to offer.
“The Diversity in Psychology Program is designed for individuals who are historically underrepresented in psychology graduate programs and who are interested in learning about graduate education in psychology,” says McMaster.
“Greater diversity allows us to be more creative in our science…”
The annual event is hosted by the Department of Psychology with support from ICD and the Department of Educational Psychology. It includes a coordinated set of formal and informal experiences designed to familiarize participants with strategies for constructing successful graduate school applications and opportunities to learn more about available programs and the experience of graduate education.
“These events are incredibly important for the future of our research and practice in schools,” says Jessie Kember, a lecturer in educational psychology and chair of the department’s faculty diversity committee. “School psychology as a field is very ethnically and racially homogenous.”
As an example, White practitioners make up about 86 percent of the profession, which is a stark contrast to the students they serve. “We really need to invest in opportunities to recruit and retain students from racially and ethnically minoritized groups to help drive our field forward, especially considering the impact that our field can hold in efforts grounded in social justice, advocacy, and antiracism,” Kember says.
Experiencing Tri-Psych as a Diversity in Psychology student
The Diversity in Psychology Program is what brought Romulus Castelo to CEHD. Currently a third-year PhD student in ICD, he studies cognitive skills called executive functions in preschoolers. He participated in the Diversity in Psychology Program in the fall of 2018, right before the PhD application cycle. “I found it really helpful because I was able to meet potential faculty members to work with and just get a better feel for the program,” he says. “It was also a good opportunity to chat with grad students and ask questions about the program, grad student life, and research.”
Castelo liked the program so much that he not only applied to the PhD program, he served as the ICD grad student representative the following year to meet with other prospective students.
Thuy Nguyen planned to apply to the U of M for graduate school. When she heard about and was accepted into the Diversity in Psychology Program, she was able to visit the U. “The program gave me the information I needed to feel slightly more confident in applying to doctoral programs in general,” she says. “I do not think I would have chosen to apply to my current program without visiting because it very much felt like an unattainable program. Also, I was not quite sure about moving from the East Coast to the Midwest. My visit gave me my first glimpse of Minneapolis and helped me to push myself to apply to a competitive program.”
Third-year ICD PhD student Romulus Castelo says the Diversity in Psychology Program helped him decide on the U for his studies.
Currently, she’s a doctoral student in the school psychology program in the Department of Educational Psychology where she studies equitable education focusing on marginalized students’ experiences within schools. Her goal is to become a professor.
Promoting equity and diversity in psychology
And the goal of Tri-Psych, according to everyone involved, is to continue to promote equity and diversity. “Greater diversity allows us to be more creative in our science, and when we are more representative of the multicultural country in which we live, it better equips us to partner with communities in research, intervention, and outreach,” Ferguson says.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of Tri-Psych Partnership | Winter 2022
Young Scientists program participants from Avalon School visit the Institute of Child Development in March 2020. ICD PhD students pictured include Andrei Semenov (top row, left) and Destany Calma-Birling (front row, right).
As Institute of Child Development (ICD) Professor Melissa Koenig tells the story, the program came about for two reasons. Having just returned energized from a sabbatical in 2017, she and her son began mentoring a fourth-grade student from North Minneapolis. As they became more involved in his life, Koenig became involved in his school, Ascension Catholic Academy. When Ascension teachers and staff found out that Koenig studied child development at the U of M, they asked her if there were any programs or initiatives for Ascension students.
At the same time, graduate students in ICD were expressing interest in ways that they might work with communities themselves. “They wanted community engagement opportunities that extended beyond any person’s research lab,” Koenig says. “It occurred to me that there might be something we could offer to Ascension and that became the Young Scientists program.”
Young Scientists is an engagement program where doctoral students from ICD, psychology, educational psychology, and undergraduates from neuroscience all partner to mentor middle and secondary school students as they develop a research project in the field of developmental psychology. “What makes our program unique is we didn’t want to provide instruction or tell them what to do,” Koenig says. “We wanted to give them the tools of scientific inquiry and support them in asking an original question and designing a study to answer that question.”
Koenig worked with then-doctoral student Annelise Pesch to launch the program with Ascension in the fall of 2019. In what Koenig describes as a happy accident, she attended a scientific meeting in Baltimore with the Society of Research in Child Development. “We knew that there was going to be an upcoming meeting scheduled to take place in Minneapolis in the spring of 2020,” she says. “Our goal was that whatever engagement we did with Ascension students, it could culminate in a scientific presentation at this meeting. It would give them a full-blown experience of walking the path of a young scientist.”
“I think it was a fun experience to work with younger scientists and get them interested.”
Pesch, who received her PhD in 2020 and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Temple University, says the program was a perfect way to interact with a younger generation to spark interest in developmental science.
“It’s been such a pleasure to work with the students, to see how excited they are about developmental science and to hear their amazing and thoughtful research ideas,” she says. “As a first-generation college student, I was introduced to developmental psychology by a college mentor of mine, and I love that the Young Scientists program provides an opportunity to engage and mentor youth in developmental science as early as middle school.”
One of Pesch’s fellow mentors was Andrei Semenov, currently a post-doc researcher in ICD studying executive function brain-based skills that control self-regulation. He had been working on a project with Avalon Charter School, a high school in St. Paul, when Young Scientists was being established and thought the program would be a good fit there as well.
“So when we started, we split the program up into Ascension Catholic Academy and Avalon,” he says. Semenov and a fellow grad student adapted an intro to child psychology college course to present to the high school students and worked with them on designing their experimental projects. One student created a survey to assess the attitudes of truancy among students of her age across multiple schools in the area. She wanted to know if students have different attitudes toward truancy depending on how large their school is. “Large schools might have more acceptable views of truancy because it’s easier to get lost among all the students,” Semenov says. “Small schools would be the opposite.”
The student found the reverse of her prediction. It turned out students in smaller schools had more lenient views on truancy. Regardless, with her findings complete, she created a digital presentation that she showed at a virtual symposium hosted by the Society for Research in Child Development.
“She and the other students who participated got a good taste of what it takes to put out something as simple as a survey and the logistics of contacting schools and managing data after it was collected,” Semenov says. “I think it was a fun experience to work with younger scientists and get them interested. At that age, I wasn’t thinking about child development as part of the sciences.”
Young students get real-world experience on what it takes to design an experimental project.
Carrie Bakken, a program coordinator/advisor at Avalon, says the Young Scientists program provides valuable real-world research experience. “Our students often use community experts from the field, but the collaboration with the University of Minnesota provided our students with ongoing mentorship and an opportunity to present at a professional conference,” she says. “Avalon teachers would not be able to duplicate this graduate-level experience for our students.”
What does the future hold for Young Scientists? First off, it includes more scholars at Ascension and Avalon designing and doing their own research projects in 2021-22. Seth Thompson, director of outreach for the College of Biological Sciences, plans to shadow the program this year in the hopes of possibly developing a parallel program in another field. Koenig and Thompson are both members of the NODE, a new group at the U of M that is working to make community engagement more accessible. With the support of the NODE, Koenig can imagine the Young Scientist program reaching into more schools, because at its core, Young Scientists is really about community engagement work. “It’s about people who have their ears to the wall of a community in order to meet their needs,” she says.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of ICD | Winter 2022
Ten years ago, CEHD and the Seoul National University of Education (SNUE) in South Korea tried out a new program. SNUE was interested in sending teacher candidates to the United States for professional development. That initial trial run turned out to be a great success and spun off into a decade-long partnership between CEHD and SNUE with multiple programs.
“We thought it was a great opportunity,” says Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development Associate Professor Christopher Johnstone. Johnstone was CEHD’s director of international initiatives and relations at the time and was instrumental in getting the initial project, the Global Teacher Education Program (GTEP), off the ground. “The idea would be for SNUE students to come for about a month to get a couple of weeks of classroom-based higher education lessons and then spend time in Twin Cities’ area schools,” he says.
The program was unique in that it was not focused on English language development, which many U.S. programs for international students are, but rather on enhancing teaching skills and exposure to innovative teaching theories and methods. “This turned out to be a very successful model and we have hosted hundreds of SNUE students in the past 10 years,” says International Initiatives Program Director Marina Aleixo, who helped design the original curriculum and now facilitates the program.
Helping facilitate the program on SNUE’s end was Kyung-Sung Kim, who was the dean of international affairs and in charge of official relations with other universities. Later, he served as president of SNUE from 2015 to 2019. “The main value of this partnership is the extension of the global mind about the mutual understanding of different cultures for University of Minnesota and SNUE students. Usually, the lack of that could make some trouble socially,” he says, adding that he is pleased the partnership has lasted so long. “Ten years is a long time to be sustained in a rapidly changing world, but we’ve tried our best to continue this partnership,” he says.
SNUE Professor Jungmin Kwon came to Minnesota with GTEP students in January 2017 and said that learning about different school systems helped them look at the Korean system from a more critical point of view. “By that I mean Korean elementary school curriculum is quite rigid because it is controlled by the federal government. They were able to try out different things that they could not try in Korea, which helped them gain a wider perspective on education and learning.” And as students, they learned a lot about campus life and American culture in general.
CEHD student Nancy Chang taking in a calligraphy class at SNUE, in 2016.
Kwon says she also gained valuable insights from the experience. “I learned the importance of school’s space design,” she says. “And how the design of the space and curriculum affect each other.”
SNUE student Insil Jeon already had an interest in how education systems operate in different countries, so she was excited when she discovered GTEP in 2013. “I thought it would be interesting to consider the comparison between the U.S. and South Korea,” she says. “I wanted the chance to apply the pedagogical skills I had attained through SNUE’s teacher training program and continue my professional development with the assistance of the GTEP program.”
During the first part of the program, she learned about the American education systems, including literacy education, ESL/EFL pedagogical approaches, and private versus public school systems. “The second half of the program included being placed in an elementary school in Minneapolis where I observed actual American classrooms and got to see the implementation of those approaches I had learned throughout the first half of the program,” she says. “I also organized and taught three of my own lessons, which were interdisciplinary, involving music and history.”
Jeon is now a PhD student at CEHD, studying immigrant and refugee student education in South Korea. She also is a research assistant for the Office of International Initiatives, investigating the long-term effectiveness of GTEP by communicating with past participants who are now mostly in-service teachers in the Seoul area.
As the GTEP program proved to be successful, SNUE and CEHD looked for more opportunities to collaborate and build a more reciprocal partnership. “We expanded our relationship to include a year-long SNUE student exchange and a U of M study abroad in Seoul,” Aleixo says.
The study abroad program, launched in 2014, is called Taste of South Korea: Culture, Language, and Education. “The program is managed by SNUE and all workshops and teaching in Korea are led by SNUE faculty and staff,” Aleixo says.
In this three-week course, small groups of U of M students stay at the SNUE campus and learn about different aspects of Korean culture, particularly the historical background of the educational system and its impact on current social, political, and educational policies.
As a CEHD student, Grace Nelson enrolled in the program in 2015 and says she was amazed by all the things she learned. “They taught us how the education system worked and it gave me a really interesting perspective about education in America versus education in Korea,” she says. “Actually, what it led me to do was become a teacher here in South Korea. I am currently teaching and living in Daejeon, South Korea. SNUE and the Taste of Korea program just kind of sparked that interest.”
“SNUE and CEHD are both educational leaders and have much to learn from each other.”
Jungmin Lee, now a senior at SNUE, was a volunteer who helped the Minnesota students with their schedules and showed them around Seoul to try to make their stay more comfortable. “I got close with the students during the program and decided to apply for the exchange program to continue the relationship,” Lee says.
She was an exchange student January to December 2019 in Minnesota. “Spending a year on my own in a foreign country was intimidating at first, but I found out I could do much more than I thought I was capable of,” Lee says. “I was amazed at the scope and variety of courses that the U offered, ranging from American politics to scuba diving. I deliberately took courses that were outside of my major, like global studies, public speaking, self-defense, and so on. Such a wide spectrum of courses offered by the U was an opportunity for me to examine different views and develop a wider perspective.”
She says her stay in Minnesota was punctuated with unexpected challenges, like trying and failing to cook some of her favorite Korean dishes, worrying about where to live when her lease ended, and missing her family and friends a Pacific Ocean away. “At the same time, I got to make new friends who genuinely cared for me,” she says. Lee says she is grateful for all the relationships and memories she made during her program, a common refrain from most everyone who has been a part of the decade-long CEHD-SNUE relationship.
“The strength and sustainability of this partnership lies on respect, trust, and balanced reciprocity,” explains Aleixo. “SNUE and CEHD are both educational leaders and have much to learn from each other. This collaboration provides a space for knowledge exchange and intellectual growth.”
Indeed, the partnership is an integral part of CEHD’s internationalization efforts. “The decade-long relationship with SNUE highlights the potential of international partnerships to integrate into our college, University, and local community,” says Aleixo.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of Marina Aleixo, International Initiatives | Fall 2021
He was once described as an educational activist in a bow tie. It’s a fairly apt portrait of William Earl “Bill” Gardner, who balanced professionalism with the determination and drive to institute change wherever he found it necessary.
Gardner, who died on February 16, 2020, at the age of 91, served as dean of the College of Education from 1977 to 1991. But his influence extends far beyond the University campus and its extended community. He was also a recognized national and international leader in education.
During his tenure as dean, he led important transformations in the work of the college in the recruitment and preparation of teachers; the development of research partnerships to improve schools; and national and international strategies to improve the preparation, standards, and practices of teaching, and the creation of the college’s development program.
“Dean Gardner strongly believed, based upon sound and extensive evidence, that good and committed teachers are the key to better student learning and more effective schools,” says Robert Bruininks, former dean of the college and University president.
Indeed, when asked about his most noteworthy achievements as dean, Gardner had said, “I think that the conversion of the teacher education programs from four to five years would be the activity of which I am most proud. The proposal…was stimulated by the need to differentiate the college’s teacher licensure programs from other colleges and universities in Minnesota.” He went on to say that the fifth-year programs had several advantages: they are attractive to capable students who are willing to make a substantial commitment to teaching, they enable students to spend a long time in school internships to increase their experience, and they are popular with officials in the schools that hire new teachers.
Gardner was born October 11, 1928, in Hopkins, Minnesota. He earned BS and MA degrees in education/social sciences and a PHD in education/American history, all from the University of Minnesota. His professional life focused on learning, teaching, and administering. He taught at schools in Balaton, Rockford, and New Ulm before teaching for seven years at the University of Minnesota High School, during which time he received his masters and doctoral degrees. He joined the College of Education faculty in 1961. Prior to becoming dean, he taught social studies and served as a Department of Curriculum and Instruction chair and assistant and associate dean.
Education meant a lot to Gardner. Even after he stepped down as dean, he always carried in his wallet a partial quote from Lee Iacocca that he handwrote: “In a ‘truly’ [completely] rational society, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest would have to settle for something less…” The rest of the quote, assumes Gardner’s wife and partner, Crystal Meriwether, was lost on the way. It reads “…because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.”
Education activist
Gardner’s tenure as dean were tumultuous years for teacher education and education in general as attacks on their quality were regularly released. Gardner was an education activist during those years as a critic, reformer, and supporter of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which had been created in 1954 to evaluate programs across the nation that met national standards for quality. As the University of Minnesota was a member of the national organization of public and land grant universities (now APLU), Gardner was engaged in discussions about the value of national accreditation that arose in 1976 when APLU created a group to review its concerns about NCATE.
At a time when teacher education accreditation was under assault, he led an effort that “righted” the enterprise and helped shape NCATE for the following two decades. Gardner helped to find balance between the interests of institutions and those of several dozen subject matter groups with often different agendas.
“His great skill in bringing diverse interests to a common agenda and doing it in ways that everyone celebrated was widely embraced,” says David Imig and Donna Gollnick, former leaders of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education.
Recognition of his leadership led to his nomination and election to chair the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) for 1987-88. During his term, Gardner helped to strengthen AACTE with the elementary-secondary community, leading to a series of ongoing conversations about ways that schools of education could better relate to local school districts and schools. He also initiated efforts to extend the reach of AACTE to the full community of schools and colleges of education and was a constant source for wisdom and advice for AACTE during his full term as dean at Minnesota and beyond. Gardner’s footprint also extended internationally to the International Council for the Education of Teachers (ICET) during a critical time in that organization’s history.
You are invited…
A Legacy Reception to celebrate the professional accomplishments and memory of Dean William E. Gardner will be held at Burton Hall in the Atrium on Sunday, October 17, from 1 to 3 p.m. with a program at 2 p.m. To RSVP, visit z.umn.edu/71ix.
“He was a force in ICET and helped to influence its direction in the 1970s and 80s,” says Imig. “He was well respected internationally and ministers of education and deans of education from many countries sought his counsel on matters pertaining to educator preparation.”
Relationships established within ICET enabled Gardner to later lead an outreach to the prestigious national universities in Japan which was the foundation for efforts that led in 1990 to the first Japan-U.S. Teacher Education Consortium (JUSTEC), which continues today.
Gardner was a strong leader in building the college’s international connections, education programs, and partnerships. Along with Japan, he forged agreements with universities in China, Israel, England, and Thailand, including opportunities for study involving faculty and student partnerships and exchanges.
“These efforts increased the number of international students in graduate and professional programs and helped to foster many longstanding, joint research partnerships,” says Bruininks.
Gardner built a particularly special relationship with Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) in Thailand after it hosted an ICET event in 1984. He attended the event, chairing a session on the international dimension of education. “The university, school educators, and teachers learned from him the importance of international and global education, which during that time was a very new concept,” says Professor Wichit Srisa-an, STOU founding president and U of M PhD alum.
Gardner also was the first to promote collaboration on doctoral studies between the two institutions. “STOU was very fortunate to receive the doctoral scholarships and study visits to the University of Minnesota,” says Professor Somwung Pitiyanuwat, also a U of M alum. “Professor Gardner will be long remembered among Thai students, friends, and alumni of the University of Minnesota.”
Enter CAREI
Gardner’s leadership in education extended to enhancing the college’s research capacity to improve education and related services more broadly for children, youth, and adults. This commitment was reflected in the design and support of college-wide centers, including the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) in 1986, still functioning today.
In 1986-87 Gardner convened a group of educators and faculty to design a collaborative venture within the College of Education that would create ongoing interactions between college faculty and school district personnel. It would also provide an overarching structure for four existing outreach units: The Exchange (including the Teacher Center), the Global Education Program, the MN Principals’ Assessment Center, and, at first, the Education Policy Fellowship Program. Ultimately named CAREI, the new center had a three-fold purpose:
Provide incentives and assistance for cooperative school-based research and policy studies;
Disseminate new and existing research to educators who could use it to improve practice; and
Make it easier for schools and the college to connect for assistance, research, and discussion.
Fred Hayen, Director of the Teacher Center, and Lloyd Nielsen, former Mounds View superintendent, served as interim directors for the first year, and 44 districts initially signed on to participate in CAREI. Dr. Jean King, following a national search, was appointed to the directorship of CAREI in the late 1980s.
Gardner meets with Dean Eugene “Gene” Eubanks of the University of Kansas, Kansas City. The two were in several organizations together, particularly AACTE, where both served as president of the organization. Right: Gardner attends the College of Education’s 75th anniversary in 1980. Professor Sunny Hanson is at right.
“As the center evolved, it engaged in a variety of activities,” says King. “Some involved getting outside funding to study issues affecting Minnesota’s schools, such as outcome-based education. Others provided research resources to schools to work collaboratively with University faculty.”
For several years, CAREI grants, which were small collaborative research grants, funded research co-engaging a college faculty member with school colleagues. Dissemination of existing research was a consistent priority, including literature searches, technical assistance, professional development, and topical seminars. The CAREI Assembly brought together—and continues to bring together—representatives from member districts twice a year to discuss developing concerns and frame potential research projects. CAREI also provided college faculty assistance in locating research sites.
The fact that CAREI exists 31 years later suggests its viability, and its impact is reflected in its ongoing projects and many research reports archived in the University’s Digital Library collection. In reflecting on her many years as director, King notes that “Bill Gardner was the reason I moved to Minnesota 31 years ago, and for this I am eternally grateful. My mentor at Cornell sent me the job description for the CAREI director position with a note that said, ‘This is the perfect job for you.’ He was right.”
She says Gardner’s vision reflected his respect for school-based practitioners and the importance of meaningful exchange between people who worked in the College of Education and those who worked in Minnesota’s school districts.
Dean Gardner helps himself to some cake at the College of Education’s 75th anniversary in 1980.
“This was exactly the work I wanted to do, given my commitment to high-quality educational research that might potentially help improve schools,” she says. “CAREI was the college’s collaboration with school administrators and teachers around Minnesota. Dean Gardner understood that, by working together, the college could affect long-term change, a shared goal of this promising partnership. I always enjoyed working with him—the Dean knew how to listen, was kind, and had a sense of humor that routinely helped me through many long meetings. How lucky I was to have been hired as CAREI’s first director!”
Focus on diversity
Dean Gardner’s commitment to improving teaching and schools also recognized the critical importance of increasing the diversity of teachers and educational leaders. One of the most significant expressions of this commitment was the creation of the Common Ground Consortium (CGC) in 1989, with significant collaboration with Dr. Josie Johnson, former University Regent, associate vice president for equity and diversity, and a faculty member in the college. The CGC was a collaboration involving the College of Education and nine Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), supported by eight years of continuous funding by the Bush Foundation and the college. The nine HBCUs included Alcorn State University, Elizabeth City State University, Fisk University, Grambling State University, Morgan State University (later replaced by Albany State University), Morris Brown College, Tuskegee University, Wiley College, and Xavier University. Still going strong to this day, CGC admits four to five students each year with scholarship support into graduate leadership programs across the college.
Johnson notes that “the CGC is extraordinarily successful. Its retention and graduation rates for enrolled students is extremely high (above 90 percent) and many graduates attain positions in Minnesota schools and colleges and universities. It forges strong partnerships advancing diversity in educational professions through vibrant partnerships involving nationally recognized HBCUs, the University of Minnesota, and Minnesota school systems.”
Increasing fundraising
A final, very transformative change during Gardner’s term was the strengthening of the college’s development program to increase engagement of graduates and the amount of private fundraising contributions. He hired the college’s first full-time development officer. While dean, funds were donated to support five honorary professorships, the Coffman Scholarship Fund was enhanced to support students in licensure and graduate programs, and increased funds were raised for many other initiatives, including the funding of students with financial need. Gardner planted the seeds of this critical source of private support for the college nearly 35 years ago. As the University completes a major 10-year campaign, the College of Education has raised about $120 million in support of its academic mission, and today manages a $71 million endowment.
Top left: Gardner at a 1992 event in Thailand. Top right: Gardner presents a peace pipe he purchased in Pipestone, Minnesota, to the Japanese at the inaugural Japan-U.S. Teacher Education Consortium in 1990. Bottom left: Gardner catching up on some paperwork. Bottom right: At the 1989 commencement with Dr. Crystal Meriwether, the president of the College of Education Alumni Society, and wife.
Gardner served as dean of the College of Education for 15 years, following many years of service as a member of the faculty and as assistant and associate dean. It was a transformative period in the life of the college, and he left a lasting legacy of achievements and contributions in his chosen academic home and on his profession. Celebrate his service and consider a contribution to a cause he cherished most of all, the support of students pursuing careers in teaching, especially first-generation students and students of color. Contributions can be made to the William E. Gardner Scholarship, payable to the University of Minnesota Foundation fund #23439, mailed to UMF, PO Box 860266, Minneapolis, MN 55486-0266. Or, give online at give.umn.edu/giveto/gardner.
Story by Kevin Moe | Photos courtesy of Mary Fenwick, University of MN Libraries, University Archives, Crystal Meriwether | Fall 2021
Several friends and colleagues contributed to this tribute: David Imig and Donna Gollnick of the NCATE; Crystal Meriwether (spouse and University graduate); Josie Johnson, Robert Bruininks, Dale Lange, Allen Glenn, and Jean King, (former college and University colleagues).
Certain people we meet in our careers leave an indelible impression. For Emeritus Professor Frank Wood—and many others across CEHD, the University, and state of Minnesota, Frank Wilderson is that colleague.
“Frank was the first Black tenure-track professor at the University. He pioneered in places where people were all-too-ready to see him not succeed. There was pretty overt racism on this campus in the 1950s and 1960s. He did a good job, and did so with real courage, grace, and modesty,” Wood remembers.
Establishing teaching licensures for EBD and the IEP
In 1962, Wilderson earned his PhD in educational psychology at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, where he had been working on a grant to support children with reading difficulties. He and Dr. John L. Johnson—then a doctoral student at Michigan State University—also started Michigan’s first-ever Council for Exceptional Children Division focused on children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD).
After his graduation from the University of Michigan, Wilderson joined the University of Minnesota’s (then) College of Education as an assistant professor of educational psychology. At the time, Minnesota had just passed legislation to help fund licenses for teachers of children with EBD. Wood was a doctoral student working on the training program, and as part of the program, was teaching the first special education class for children with EBD in Minneapolis schools.
Working together on the training program and sharing an office in Pattee Hall, Wilderson and Wood became fast friends.
Not long after he started at the U, Wilderson was called by the College of Education’s Dean’s Office to run the Urban Education Program. Funded by the Office of Teacher Education (OTE), the program trained existing elementary education teachers in disciplinary techniques for students with EBD.
During this time, Wilderson and Wood, now a tenure-track professor himself, continued to work together. The professors ran a psychoeducational clinic in Pattee Hall. There, they worked with parents, students, and teachers on an early Minnesota version of what would become the Individualized Education Plan (IEP), which special education teachers use to support students to this day.
Looking back, Wood describes Wilderson’s mark on the field of special education.
“He always was a clinician in addition to teaching and research,” Wood says. “That research and practice brought him to the U. Frank was the leader. He was the person who really developed the EBD program.”
Founding the African American Studies Department
His psychology and education background may have brought him to the U, but the longer Wilderson stayed, the more he was called to lead.
On January 14, 1969, he helped make history. About 70 Black students on the Afro-American Action Committee (AAAC) took over the University of Minnesota’s bursar’s and records office in Morrill Hall. They were protesting hostile treatment of Black students on campus and demanding an African American studies department. This protest is now known as the “Morrill Hall takeover.”*
“He did a good job, and did so with real courage, grace, and modesty.”
The AAAC students called Wilderson to help communicate their list of demands to the President’s Office.
“They had a list of about 20 different demands,” Wilderson recalls. “I told them, ‘The president and vice president are going to take one or two of them, and that will be it. Pull out a few of your highest priority demands. If it looks realistic, that gives them some serious things to consider.’”
Ultimately, the University accepted the students’ demands, the occupation ended, and with Wilderson leading the charge, the African American Studies Department was established by fall. He once again was called to chair the committee that worked to create this new department.
Wilderson recalls looking forward to finishing up his position in the Dean’s Office when, once again, he was called to service. The Office for Student Affairs contacted Wilderson and encouraged him to apply to its VP position. He did and was quickly selected for the role.
For 14 years, Wilderson served as vice president for student affairs, where he oversaw and supported programs and students across the University. At one point, his role temporarily expanded to include oversight of the Athletics Department, as well as the University Police Department.
Advocating for mental health and equity in Minnesota
According to Wood, after his VP role ended, Wilderson continued to find ways to serve his community by supporting those with mental health issues and advocating for equity, often together with his wife, Dr. Ida-Lorraine Wilderson, an administrator in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
He returned to the Special Education Program in the Department of Educational Psychology for 10 years after his VP role with Student Affairs ended, serving as Program Coordinator during that time.
Outside Wilderson’s work at the U, he kept busy as a clinical psychologist. He founded and was chief psychologist for a number of programs.
Wilderson frequently worked with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, as well as with rehabilitation centers, including Turning Point—which has a mission to serve the African American community in Minnesota, beginning with chemical health. In addition, he served as a trustee on the board of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. There, he served as chair of the Graduate School of Addiction Studies.
Leaving a legacy of service
After 37 years at the University of Minnesota, Wilderson retired in 1999, leaving a legacy of service to the University and his community.
Frank B. Wilderson, Jr. was the first Black tenure-track professor at the University of Minnesota.
“I never could understand how Frank could keep it all balanced, and maybe he didn’t,” Wood says. “He made amazing contributions, particularly because he was called on all of the time. He wasn’t interested in promoting his own name, but working on what needed to be done.”
Dr. Wilderson’s wife, Ida-Lorraine, passed away in 2019. Today, Frank B. Wilderson, Jr. lives in Minneapolis, along with his daughter, Fawn, who is a special education teacher with the St. Louis Park Public Schools.
Story by Sarah Jergenson | Photos courtesy of Bonni Allen, University of Minnesota Libraries, University Archives | Fall 2021
Lisa Yang 
Katy Armendariz (MSW '09) 
A sack game was part of sports day at a local Bamenda community school in 2017 
Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB) 
Tricia Wilkinson, Minerva Muñoz, and Anthony Albecker 
Young Scientists program participants from Avalon School visit the Institute of Child Development in March 2020. ICD PhD students pictured include Andrei Semenov (top row, left) and Destany Calma-Birling (front row, right). 
A group of 2019 SNUE students at Breck School with Peg Bailey, Breck School Lower School principal, on a school tour. 
Dean William Gardner 
Frank B. Wilderson, Jr. 