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- Dr. Michael Curtis
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Michael Curtis
LT: I know one of your interests was the School Psychology Program. What was the status of that program when you arrived, and has there been a progression into the development of that program since you came?
MC: Actually when I came, one of the encouraging things to me and one of the reasons that I was interested in this department chair position was that the core of the program seemed to me to have a lot of potential. There were some faculty members with a lot of energy who were very actively involved in our profession. However, there also were many what we would call hybrid faculty members. There were, I shouldn’t say many, faculty here who had their backgrounds and degrees in areas other than school psychology, but who had some attachment to the School Psychology Program and had in fact gotten the program off the ground. Glenn Geiger, I believe, started the School Psychology Program here. Then other people like Jim Barnard became actively involved and really were responsible for bringing that program along. George Batsche, who came in with a degree and background as a school psychologist and who had been involved in our national organization, added a lot of impetus to moving the program forward. As you can see, that was a very small faculty for what we would see in a clinically intensive program.
Today, we have seven faculty members in the program, all of whom have degrees in school psychology, all of whom have very strong publishing records, and are very actively involved with our students as well as with the local schools. So the program just changed by leaps and bounds. Today, I think by any measure, if you interview faculty in other institutions and ask them to identify the top programs in the country South Florida would be on the list. So I think it’s really recognized around the country as one of the top programs in our field, and it always feels good to be a faculty member in a recognized program.
LT: Well, I know you must be very proud of that.
MC: They are really an enjoyable group to work with. I think we have the same feeling about our students. I’ve always said that the quality of a program is not in how many publications its faculty put out, but what happens to your students when they leave. We’ve gotten to a point where we have students who are themselves very well-respected professionals. They’re in some very important positions and that’s probably one of the best reflections on the program.
LT: Since you’ve come here, what do you think stands out about the College of Education?
MC: To me the College of Education, in some respects, reflects the transition of the University. When I came in 1993, the College was largely what I would see as a teaching institution. As we have already talked about, we had a bimodal faculty in terms of age with most having been here for many, many years. Then, of course, as the University started moving toward becoming research institution, you started to see some of those same discussions within the College of Education. I think the College is going through some interesting transitions itself in terms of leadership. It seems that within the last few years, we have started to move forward as a college. I think one of the changes really necessary to move forward, whereas before we had a confederation of many academic units, I think in some respects now there at least seems to be some effort and interest in identifying commonality. What is it that we can do together in terms of moving this academic unit along? But I still see within the College those sometimes confusing developments with this transition of the University. How do we become a Research I college while at the same time worrying about how many student credit hours are generated? I think that creates some tension within as well. We still have a ways to go in becoming a cohesive unit.
LT: I recall one time we had a dean in the College of Education who used to say that FTE meant full-time employment.
MC: Full-time employment, right.
LT: You talked about the dynamic within the College. What’s your perception of the relationship of the College of Education to the rest of the University?
MC: I don’t have nearly the history here that you do, but it is my impression that prior to my arrival 12 years ago, the College of Education was well-respected in the University. It certainly has been one of the most productive colleges within the framework of the things that were valued by the University at that time. It seems to me it did what the University wanted it to do. I think that today the College is responding again in the efforts to fit into the University’s goal to move to a Research I basis, and I think we had a few years prior to this where that was a less certain direction. I’m not sure that the College was necessarily fitting into the agenda of where the University was going quite as well as it is now. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the College should not also be an influence for whether or not that is the right direction.