Penn State College of Education

The College of Education is one of 15 colleges at The Pennsylvania State University, located in University Park, Pennsylvania. It houses the departments of Curriculum and Instruction, Education Policy Studies, Learning and Performance Systems, and Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education. Almost 2,300 undergraduate students, and nearly 1,000 graduate students are enrolled in its 7 undergraduate and 16 graduate degree programs. The college is housed in four buildings: Chambers, Rackley, Keller, and CEDAR Buildings.
The workforce Education and Development program originated in 1920 in the School of Engineering and was called the Department of Industrial Education.
The College of Education is home to many academic journals, research centers and institutes, student organizations, and other academic programs.
The college has an endowment worth more than $41.2 million. Undergraduate students receive more than $1.89 million in College and University scholarships each year. The college received $8 million in research grants and contracts in 2012-13.
The mission of the College of Education is "to deepen and extend knowledge about the formation and utilization of human capabilities."
University president John Martin Thomas created the School of Education on June 11, 1923, with Will G. Chambers as its first dean. At that time, it consisted of five departments — Home Economics, Education and Psychology, Agricultural Education, Industrial Education, and Nature Study — and had 359 students enrolled that first year. The first graduate programs began in 1930, and by 1938, the School of Education was the second largest college at the university. The American Indian Leadership Program began in 1971, as one of the first programs in the nation of its kind. David H. Monk was appointed as the dean of the College of Education in 1999. That same year, the College of Education offered its first World Campus master's program. The American Journal of Education came to the College in 2004.
The College of Education has a number of programs that promote education in various settings.
The American Indian Leadership Program (AILP) is a graduate fellowship program for American Indians and Alaska Natives that has as its purpose "the training of qualified leaders for service to Indian nations." Begun in 1970, the AILP is the longest running program of its kind. It has graduated more than 200 students over its 40 years.
Professional Development Schools (PDS) is a yearlong internship program in connection with the State College Area School District. Education students are matched with teacher mentors to gain classroom experience as they teach together throughout a school year. This program has been recognized with many awards, including the 2009 National Association for Professional Development Schools Award for Exemplary Professional Development School Achievement.
The Cedar Clinic is a counseling service available to all Penn State students for personal and educational concerns. The Cedar Clinic is run by the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education. In addition to providing unlimited free counseling services to the student body, the Cedar clinic also allows graduate students in counselor education to gain supervised clinical experience.
The Humphrey Fellowship Program at Penn State is a year-long, non-degree academic program for mid-career professionals that seeks to develop leadership in education. Named for former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, this program is funded by the U.S. Department of State. Penn State is one of 13 participating universities.
The Center for Science and the Schools (CSATS) is a center housed in the College of Education that aims to strengthen science education throughout Pennsylvania. CSATS links Penn State researchers to K-12 schools and helps them to develop and test teaching strategies that will improve education in the sciences. The CSATS Curriculum Center makes over 2000 titles of science teaching materials available to teachers.
Lifelink is a joint program between Penn State and the State College Area School District for college-aged SCASD students with disabilities. The program is intended to provide a transition from high school to adult life. These students attend college-level classes of their choosing at Penn State. They are accompanied by Penn State student mentors, who help them with classwork and spend time with them.
The Penn State College of Education offers students an opportunity to teach in a foreign country with its student teaching abroad program. The short term student teaching abroad option allows students to do both a traditional student teaching placement in Pennsylvania followed by an international placement in one of 16 countries: Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, England, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Turkey, or Wales. Students spend 12 weeks in Pennsylvania and then travel to their host nation school for five to eight weeks.
Penn State's Dickinson School of Law and the College of Education combine to offer a combined degree in law and education. Relatively few schools offer joint degree programs with law and education. Penn State's program ranks among the nation's best.
The college is home to a number of research centers and institutes, including the following:
College of Education faculty have editorial responsibilities for more than 30 major journals in education, including the following:
In 2013, the U.S. News & World Report ranked the College of Education as a whole at 33rd in the nation. All of the College of Education's graduate programs appear ranked in the top 20 of their respective areas. These program rankings are as follows:
The College of Education has approximately 56,000 alumni, many of whom are members of the College of Education Alumni Society.