CEPS Program Newsletter #031 – July 2, 2013
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Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, Loyola University Chicago
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Greetings CEPS Students and Alumni-
Happy summer! To those of you who are new students receiving this for the first time, welcome! During the semester we send out this departmental e-newsletter about every two weeks; during the summer it comes out much more sporadically. Below, please find information on * a Resident Assistant opportunity available through Loyola [B.1.] * info on the 2014 AERA Annual Conference whose proposal deadline comes up at the end of this month [C.1.]. If you are interested in submitting to AERA and are not sure which Division or Special Interest Group (SIG) you’d like to submit to, please feel free to contact any CEPS faculty for advice. * Below you’ll also find a request for teachers to submit pieces to a forthcoming book on education reform [C.2.] — please feel free to forward this announcement to friends and colleagues. If you learn of events or opportunities that can be shared via this newsletter please email them to me.
~Prof. Noah W. Sobe, CEPS Graduate Program Director
CEPS Program Newsletter #031 – July 2, 2013
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Table of Contents:
A. CEPS PROGRAM AREA NEWS
1. CEPS Students are Exempt from Loyola’s RCRS requirement
2. Graduating CEPS Students, Stay in Touch! (LinkedIn, Alumni listserv)
3. Save the date for the CEPS Fall Potluck – Sunday afternoon, September 15th
B. LOYOLA OPPORTUNITIES
1. Resident Assistant Sought for International House
C. CALLS FOR PAPERS AND UPCOMING CONFERENCES
1. Call for Papers, AERA Annual Conference, April 3-7, 2014 (Philadelphia, PA). Deadline: July 22, 2013.
2. Call for Contributions, edited volume on Teacher Stories About Education Reform. Deadline: July 15, 2013.
D. JOBS, INTERNSHIPS, AND VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
1. Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (Educational Policy)
2. Forum Internship Connection on LinkedIn
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A. CEPS PROGRAM AREA NEWS
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A.1. All CEPS Students are Exempt from the University’s RCRS Course Requirement. Some CEPS Students may have recently received a general email broadcast from the Graduate School with information about some upcoming RCRS (Responsible Conduct in Research and Scholarship) courses. We have managed to have the RMTD 400 (Master’s level) and the RMTD 420+421 (Doctoral level) courses count as satisfying the RCRS requirement. Our feeling was that nearly all of the RCRS course would be redundant to you; however, if additional familiarity with the norms of ethical scholarship is of interest to you please feel free to sign up for the UNIV 370 course (at no cost). Info at: http://www.luc.edu/ors/RCRHome.shtml
A.2. All graduating students (and current students!) please make sure to sign up for the CEPS group on LinkedIn “Loyola University Chicago CEPS Students and Alumni” Group on LinkedIn. The hope is that this will provide a useful forum for current students and graduates to stay in touch with one another and to exchange resources and interact with one another. We have set this up as a members-only group and Molly McSweeney, a 2012 CEPS MA grad, is serving as the moderator of the group. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account they are easy and free to set up — then, you can send a request to join the group via LinkedIn or you can “connect” with Molly directly on the site and follow-up by sending her a note on LinkedIn saying you’d like to be added to the group. If you are graduating this May please make sure to also sign up for the CEPS Friends / Alumni listserv since you’ll no longer receive this electronic newsletter to your Loyola student email account. Signup info at: http://lists.luc.edu/listinfo/ceps-alumni
A.3. Save the date: in the afternoon on Sunday September 15th we’ll be having our annual department start-of-semester potluck picnic. More details as the event gets closer.
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B. LOYOLA OPPORTUNITY
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B.1. Resident Assistant for “International House” Student Residence Building — Loyola’s Chicago Center Program is seeking a qualified undergraduate or graduate student to work as a Resident Assistant in a newly renovated off-campus student housing building. This newly renovated building will house mostly international students and as such has been nicknamed the “International House”. The Resident Assistant will live in the building and serve two key functions during the school year. The primary responsibility of the RA is to act as a resource person for the students living in the building. This means everything from helping to enforce the rules of the building, helping answer questions (international students have a lot of questions!), helping with roommate conflict resolution, and other related tasks. This will involve having posted “on duty” hours (approximately 12 hours a week) where the RA is expected to be in the building and available to help the students. The second key function of the RA is to develop some student programming for the residents of the building. The RA is expected to work in conjunction with the Chicago Center Program Director to host at least one event per month in which all the residents of the building would be invited and a small budget will be provided to pay for these events. The Resident Assistant will be compensated with a fully furnished room in this new residence building from the beginning of August 2013 through the end of May 2014. Additional compensation will include a declining balance meal plan and a stipend paid out each semester. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and resume to Jason Obin, Director of the Chicago Center Program, at jobin@luc.edu.
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C. CALLS FOR PAPERS AND UPCOMING CONFERENCES
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C.1. Plan now to attend the American Educational Research Association’s 2014 annual conference in Philadelphia. The conference will be April 3 through April 7 and submissions can be made from June 1 through July 22. More information can be found at http://www.aera.net/Admin/2014AnnualMeetingTheme/tabid/14871/Default.aspx
C.2. Call for Contributions, Brett Murphy an 11th grade U.S. History Teacher in Brooklyn, NY is putting together an edited volume on Teacher Stories About Education Reform. –> In the past decade, alarms have been ringing about the need to improve public education in the United States and, in particular, “fix” city schools. With its roots in the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001, the furor over transforming urban districts has taken on a life of its own. Accountability, choice, and control, the reform movement has argued, are the key ideas that can solve social inequity and ensure that every child can learn and succeed. Much of the information on the progress of these new policies has come from politicians, journalists, and even filmmakers on the left and right who have framed these specific changes as the start of an important movement towards a quantitatively better education system. Absent from the dialogue – and from the knowledge that everyday Americans have about what’s going on – are the qualitative experiences of what’s actually happening inside of city classrooms. This edited volume will be a collection of essays by teachers working in urban districts for the general public that provide firsthand accounts of how these reforms are being experienced and what it means for the children growing up in our nation’s cities. The book is organized around the recurring buzz words that the education reform movement has used to define their policies: accountability, quality, evaluation, choice, and equity. Each of these will be a chapter that includes an introduction by the editor covering related policies implemented in urban districts, including the stated goals of policy makers for creating these reforms. This short introduction will be followed by the stories of teachers that demonstrate how these reforms play out on a daily basis, according to the following plan: Chapter 2. Accountability: Standards and high stakes testing; Chapter 3. Quality: Measuring a teacher’s worth, tenure, and turnover; Chapter 4. Evaluation: School grades and closures; Chapter 5. Choice: Charter schools, co-locations, and the small school movement; Chapter 6. Equity: What it really means to educate every child well; Chapter 7. Epilogue – 21st century skills: Reframing the vision – how teachers imagine education reform. The editor will do a follow up interview with each contributor about their vision for what would work in public education to complete the epilogue. Please send abstracts to edreformteachertalk@gmail.com by July 15, 2013, including which chapter you think your story best relates to. Deadline for pieces, which should range from 4-15 pages, will be September 15, 2013.
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D. JOBS, INTERNSHIPS, AND VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
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D.1. The American Enterprise Institute seeks a full-time research fellow to work in the area of education policy. The primary responsibility of this position is to autonomously manage and execute research projects on a variety of topics in postsecondary education, including: access and affordability; student success; financial aid reform; productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship; transparency and accountability; and career and technical education. Tasks also include writing, editing, conference planning, and public speaking. The research fellow will work closely with the resident scholar in higher education policy on a number of research projects. The fellow will also be expected to conduct and publish independent scholarly research. A master’s degree is required, PhD in public policy, political science, or economics preferred. The ideal candidate will have 3-4 years of writing and research experience in education policy. Qualified applicants should submit an online application to www.aei.org/jobs, complete with their resume, cover letter, academic transcripts, and 500 word-writing sample on any topic.
D.2. The Forum Internship Connection on LinkedIn was created to connect education abroad offices and organizations seeking interns with students and recent graduates seeking internships. This subgroup is an online venue for Forum member institutions and organizations to post information on internship opportunities in the education abroad field. It is also a place for students and recent graduates to learn of current internship opportunities in the field and to connect with potential employers. Students from any institution are welcome to join; however, the use of this group to recruit interns is restricted to staff from Forum member institutions. More information can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Forum-Internship-Connection-4964653/about.
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