The Buffalo State College Teacher Education Unit manages and coordinates the planning, delivery, and operation of education programs through the office of the Associate Vice President for Teacher Education and the Dean of the School of Education—Dr. Ronald S. Rochon—who is advised by the Teacher Education Council (TEC). In his unique position as both AVP and dean, Dr. Rochon provides leadership and a central point of coordination for all education-related programs and activities on campus. Guidance and recommendations are reviewed and proposed by the Teacher Education Council (TEC), which is comprised of representatives from each education program’s academic department. The TEC is responsible for ensuring necessary and productive dialogue between and among the professional education faculty across the entire college; facilitating the assessment, evaluation, and development of teacher education curricula; and communicating recommendations for teacher education program improvements to appropriate campus personnel, including the college’s chief teacher education officer, Dean Rochon. TEC representatives take issues and topics to their individual faculty, seeking input from related faculty, community partners, and candidates working directly with programs.
The supervision of the TEC is often supplemented by appropriate subcommittee involvement. The TEC has five subcommittees: unit assessment, program assessment, faculty development, policy review, and field/clinical experience (PDS). Teacher Education Council (TEC) subcommittees are charged with reviewing and making recommendations regarding different aspects of candidate clinical/field placements. The Program Subcommittee has as its main goal to explore instruments and methods to gather and report candidate performance evidence. Topics of discussion include consistency across programs, relationships of instruments to unit guidelines such as the conceptual framework or strategic plan, links to specialty program standards, and faculty strategies for using data to make program-level decisions. The focus of the Program Subcommittee work is to ensure program content maximizes teacher candidate proficiencies.
The TEC Unit Assessment Subcommittee works to identify and expand unit measures across multiple domains to reflect consistency, fairness, and accuracy as well as provide relevant, appropriate information to guide teacher education unit level decision-making. The committee examines and discusses types of instruments, methods of data aggregation, format of reports, unit needs for additional evidence, and faculty support roles in unit assessment. The focus is to ensure quality collection and reporting needed to inform continuing unit growth.
The TEC Program Subcommittee explores instruments and methods to gather and report candidate performance evidence. Topics of discussion include consistency across programs, relationships of instruments to unit guidelines such as the conceptual framework or strategic plan, links to specialty program standards, and faculty strategies for using data to make program-level decisions. Committee focus is to ensure program content maximizes teacher candidate proficiencies.
The Field/Clinical Experience (PDS) Subcommittee examines collaborative relationships with community partners and share student service and learning activities and responsibilities and discuss methods for widening the circle of communication with community partners including cooperating teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, and even P-12 candidates, types of assignments, evaluation of candidate field performance, training for clinical staff, measuring impact of candidate experiences on P-12 students, etc. This committee’s focus is to collaborate efforts and ensure high quality interactions at every level of field experience.
The TEC Faculty Development Subcommittee examines and progress an agenda to support education faculty professional development needs. This subcommittee examines support resources, program collaboration, faculty needs, methods of identification, prioritization and subsequent evaluation toward tenure and promotion, proposals for training, etc. With this, the committee helps the unit focus on scaffolding new, untenured faculty and also value and promote continuing faculty.
Each TEC subcommittee provides a committee report at the monthly TEC committee meetings, in addition to bringing to full TEC discussion decision-making issues ranging from assessment to policy.