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- Dr. Ed Steiner
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Ed Steiner
ES: Right. As long as you kept doing well, the funding remained. And the At-Risk Institute is still continuing its excellent work today.
LB: There were a number of buildings that were constructed. I know you were instrumental in the ERCCD building, seeing that through. Was that a challenge?
ES: Very much so. I think we worked on that for 10 years. When it comes to buildings even getting on the list to be able to have a building and then of course all you have to do to raise funds to make it come true, it takes a long time. The ERCCD was about a 10 year project. There were a lot of challenges in that because we wanted to set up a system for bringing in children of students primarily, and then also having some children of faculty members and staff of the University. The time when the ERCCD building was completed and programs begun would have been about 1990. I’m not real certain about that date, but I just remembered that it took a long time working on it. Ron Linder was really a moving force to get information together and preparing guidelines for running a center, so we were finally were able to open and have had good years ever since.
LB: Yes, going strong. Well, Pizzo Elementary was a different concept of having a public elementary school on a university campus. That, too, I think was a different kind of challenge.
ES: Well, it was. That it was, because there was the issue of the space on the campus. There are so many worthwhile projects that it’s hard to get a project approved. The Pizzo Elementary School would require a substantial amount of the University’s property. Of course for an elementary school, you need several acres. It took a long time to make that decision. When approval was finally granted, Pizzo was the first public school of its type on a university campus in the U.S. The school district and the University joined forces to establish and build a local school district school on the University’s property. The school still enjoys a very close relationship between the Hillsborough County School District and USF.
Then, there is also the USF Charter School, which was built between Pizzo Elementary School and the ERCCD. For its first few years, the Charter School was housed in the Museum of Science and Industry, right across Fowler Avenue. It took several years for the new building to become a reality. Now, it is in a very nice location and is well- equipped, including good up to date technology. Those are three long term projects that took place during those years, 1990 to 2005, and now we can see a lot of good coming from those accomplishments.
LB: Now there are other kinds of outreach to the community, of course from the very beginning in the College of Education with our early internships with students and so forth, but then the professional development school concept came along and in a sense we were already doing much of that. I think we formalized it with particular schools in Pasco County.
ES: The College of Education at USF has always put high priority on having close, professional relationship with local schools. That includes early experiences in the school for our students. There have always been a variety of ways that faculty have interacted directly with the schools with classroom teachers, with the students, with administrators. The professional development school movement came along. It was a more formalized way of establishing a strong connection between a school and the College. There are written agreements between the school district and the University, when a school is selected to be one of the professional development schools. It is a little bit stronger relationship since there is an agreement that specifies what each party will do. We’ve had things like classes held in the school and on-site in the school for the teachers. We also had it at King High School. We had class for students and one of the classes that we conducted there in the first year or two was the instructional technology introductory course. That was required for all education majors. Students that were in high school at the time, I think they were seniors in high school that were planning to go into education and become teachers could take that class and get college credit for it right there while they are there at the high school. That’s just an example of one thing that could be done when you focus and concentrate your effort in a particular place and identify specific needs of the school. University faculty members participate and help to address those needs. It is very labor intensive and it takes a lot of resources because one or more faculty members have to devote a considerable amount of time to being on site in the school.
LB: And also be on campus to conduct research?
ES: And be on campus, that’s right. They have to meet the requirements for promotion and tenure. It can really be a challenge for the faculty to do that.
LB: Now I’m going back from the professional development era to teacher education centers. It seems though we had teacher education activities or connections with schools to do workshops and so forth before we heard about teacher education centers, but then the legislature came along and formalized the process.