Office of the Dean

A Message from Dean Renée A. Middleton

Renée A. Middleton
Dean

Greetings to students, alumni, school and community partners, parents and friends, and welcome to Ohio University’s College of Education website!

As you navigate through its pages, I hope you find this site useful and engaging. It opens a window to the exciting changes taking place in the College and gives you a picture of our outstanding students, faculty and staff.

OUR PROMISE: Performance, Progress, Prominence. This year’s theme conveys an important message about who we are and who we will become. By taking this as our theme, we are making a promise – to commit ourselves fully to upholding standards of excellence, sustaining our progress, and achieving greater prominence. The changing landscape of education locally, regionally, nationally and internationally presents us with many opportunities and challenges, and we are positioned to take a leadership role in promoting meaningful and socially responsible change.

Our proud 120-year history brings a collective responsibility to continue the College’s legacy of academic excellence in teaching, research and service-oriented outreach. To honor and extend our legacy, we commit ourselves to the following aims:

Public Education: To supply America’s children, adolescents, youth
and adults with the tools they need for a successful future;
Access: To ensure all segments of our society have, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “the right to rise up”;
Economic Advancement: To act as an engine for economic growth in our state’s emerging knowledge economy;
Scientific & Applied Research: To conduct studies that assess and seek solutions to societal problems that inhibit learning;
Citizenship Education: To strengthen our democracy by producing civically-engaged citizens;
Accountability & Leadership: To maintain the quality of our graduates and lead the way in education reform that meets our nation’s ever-evolving needs.

We prepare our students to be Talented, Responsible, Ethical Educators. We operate from a framework and commitment to serving society responsibly as change agents, meeting diverse human and social needs and showing a full commitment to lifelong learning.

Today, our programs seek to distinguish themselves by offering increasing Academic rigor, preparation in using Assessments and data to drive change, and Authentic professional internship experiences in low-resourced settings.

Increasing Academic Rigor has become a staple in our College. This year we welcomed our first Cutler scholar and the inaugural class of 16 Connavino Honors Track students, a testament to the direction our College is headed in the future.

Our continued and growing focus on Assessment prepares students to understand and utilize data to impact clients, communities, schools, and students. Authentic experiences in diverse, low-resourced settings, such as those offered through the Rural/Urban Collaborative, Professional Development Schools, and our Professional Internships in Teaching, Counseling, Higher Education, and Educational Studies are designed to prepare future leaders, educators and practitioners for the changing landscape of clinical practice and teaching.

Because our students are trained in low-resourced communities, they gain transferrable and marketable skills that prepare them to be highly effective in any teaching environment including rural, urban, and international job markets. Ohio University College of Education students add value to the classroom as a result of their experiences in our programs.

As dean, I pledge to empower our students to achieve greatness and to position our College to better serve our public purposes. We are poised for a new year of continued Performance, Progress and Prominence, and I am proud to be a part of the magnificent work our College does locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally!

Whether you are a prospective student, a current student, an alumnus, friend, or guest, I encourage you to explore our site and drop me a line. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Renée A. Middleton, Ph.D.
Dean

For more information, please contact:
Ohio University
College of Education
Office of the Dean
McCracken Hall 133
Athens, OH 45701-2979
740.593.9449