Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Surrendra Singh
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Surrendra Singh
LB: As I recall volunteering in the school today is very commonplace, IT was a fairly far out concept that people who were not teachers would actually go in and tutor, and these were our students going in as I recall that had not graduated yet but were education majors. Or perhaps other student from the University that went into school. Is that correct?
SS: Yes, that is correct. IT had students from our College as well as from other colleges. It was truly an interdisciplinary student body. We were very proud that the program provided an awesome amount of service in the community. Students learn from the experience and develop skills and competencies in areas such as how to interview, how to establish rapport, how to develop case studies and so on and so forth. The skills learned from community service transformed into their college learning experience. This was really an exciting project, and I agree with you that this was one of our initial pioneering works in the community on behalf of the University.
LB: Were there other programs that developed subsequently in the Department of Special Education you were involved in or the gifted program you helped to start?
SS: The Special Education Program at USF started as we discussed earlier with EPDA grants and later grants were obtained from BEH (Bureau for Education of the Handicapped). These grants helped in developing training programs at the master’s level. Initially, the gifted program was developed by Marv Gold and Len Lucito. Dorothy Sisk provided an enormous amount of leadership. I became involved in 1967 and developed projects. Dorothy Sisk and I worked as co-directors of several projects in developing the master’s degree program. Then we developed SLD (Specific Learning Disabilities) Master’s Program. I was fortunate to be part of some these programs from their initial developmental stages. Then Carolyn Lavely came. Bob Dwyer had the Mental Retardation Program in place to which Carolyn Lavely and Jim Bernard subsequently provided leadership. Herbert Boyd provided significant leadership in the evolution of the Emotional and Behavior Disorder Program. After developing master’s degree programs, we developed an Ed.S. program, which was followed by a Ph.D. program. I was fortunate and honored to have coordinated the doctoral program from 1982-1986.
The current special education programs are the products of earlier foundations set during ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. Currently, some programs are on the back burner. However, they are still in the University catalogue. And as I had said earlier the programs on back burners are returning, such as gifted program. I would hope that other programs will also be made active. We were indeed futuristic.
LB: I’m thinking particularly of the SLD (Specific Learning Disabilities) Program. The term had recently (in the ‘60s) been accepted and the grant programs that you were involved were the early programs that developed teachers for SLD I would think.
SS: That’s right. We were providing national leadership in methodology from here. We had several workshops and conferences.