2010: Thinking Outside of the Box: New Center Another Sign Of School’s Focus on Innovation

The School of Education continues to grow, introduce new programs and events, and, most notably, take big leaps into enterprises few schools of education are willing to try. Case in point: the School launches a new center that will seek to create partnerships and leverage the talent and expertise of the university to create new, cutting-edge programs, services and products for the K-12 marketplace.

Milestones & Achievements

• School launches entrepreneurial center EdForward: The Center for Innovation in Education
• Sandi Redenbach (BA ;72, Credential ;73) and Ken Gelatt (BS ‘67, Credential ‘68) are first alumni to include the School in their estate plans
• Rick Fowler, president and CEO of the Community College Foundation, named chair of the School’s Board of Advisors
• Mary Catherine Swanson (Credential ‘67), founder of AVID, receives California Aggie Alumni Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award
• School presents Distinguished Alumni awards to Lisa Dunbar (BA ‘80, Credential ‘81) and Wesley Sever (EdD ‘09); Nancy Gutierrez (Credential ‘02) receives Rising Star alumni award
• Caroline Turner (BA ‘67, MA ‘70) receives the 2009 Scholars of Color in Education Distinguished Career Contribution and the Dr. Carlos J. Vallejo Memorial Award for Lifetime Scholarship from the American Educational Research Association
• The Campaign for UC Davis goes public; the School of Education is at $6.8 million towards its $16 million goal.
• Professors Paul Heckman and Jamal Abedi receive $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct major study on formative assessment of mathematics
• Professor Thomas Timar teaches a program he designed comparing the Cuban educational system with the American system for a quarter in Cuba
• CRESS Center launches first annual Equity Summit and first annual Youth Media Forum for Social Change

“Education as a whole is at a crossroads. Budget crises at every level call for creative thinking about how to make good work sustainable. Business and government leaders are looking to K-12 and higher education to prepare students for the 21st century. The School already has a reputation for thinking out of the box and creating programs and services that are responsive to a variety of needs in the region and beyond. For these and other reasons, the School is uniquely suited to launch EdForward.”
          – Traci Schmidt, director of EdForward