eddie comeaux

"Teaching from Home: Online Learning for Student Success During Challenging Times"

juliep — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:20:37 +0000

"Teaching from Home: Online Learning for Student Success During Challenging Times" juliep Thu, 07/23/2020 - 09:20 More News July 23, 2020

With the recent announcement of schools throughout the region starting online in the Fall, educators are, once again, implementing distance learning. To support our alumni and community partners in taking their classrooms virtual, UC Riverside Graduate School of Education is hosting a Zoom conversation with Interim Dean Louie Rodriguez and GSOE faculty centered on effective online teaching strategies on Thursday, July 30 at 3pm.

The event, which marks the first in the new "GSOE in the Community" series, aims to begin a conversation on practical strategies for online teaching between GSOE faculty and community members. Our goal is to provide as many practical responses as possible to help facilitate student and teacher success.

"Teaching from Home: Online Learning for Student Success During Challenging Times"
Thursday, July 30, 3pm - 4pm
REGISTER HERE

Some of the topics that will be addressed:

What active learning methods can be applied to an online format?
What are some of the best ways to engage students in STEM content areas?
What should my expectations be in an online teaching format?
What equity concerns should educators be considering in the context of a pandemic and ongoing challenges with race, racism, and systemic inequality?

**The webinar will be hosted in Zoom. You're invited to submit questions ahead of time when you register.**

FEATURED PANELISTS

Interim Dean Louie Rodriguez

Dr. Louie F. Rodríguez is an educator, researcher, author, professor, and speaker in the field of urban education. He is the current Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Education at UCR, the Bank of America Chair in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Practice, and the founding director of the Center for Educational Transformation. His research examines issues in Latina/o/x education, participatory action research, and educational equity. Dr. Rodriguez is the author of nearly 50 publications, and has received numerous honors including the American Education Research Association (AERA) Hispanic Research Issues SIG Award for Research in Elementary, Secondary, and Postsecondary Education in 2019, and Outstanding Latino Faculty by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) in 2015.

Dr. Kinnari Atit
Assistant Professor, UCR GSOE

Dr. Kinnari Atit is an assistant professor in educational psychology. Her research aims to increase access and broaden participation in STEM by focusing her work on two areas: 1) supporting and developing K-16 students’ and educators’ skills relevant to STEM teaching and learning, and 2) promoting STEM learning through engagement in multimedia learning platforms. She is the principal investigator on a grant from the California Department of Education titled Supporting Student Learning about Molecular Structures from Simulations. For this project, she leads a research team that will design and determine effective online formative assessments and the associated feedback for online simulations presenting fundamental introductory chemistry concepts. Additionally, she is the co-principal investigator on a Plant Biology Learning Objectives, Outreach Materials & Education grant which aims to measure the efficacy of a one-year outreach program that brings NGSS-aligned plant sciences activities to local middle school classrooms.

Dr. Eddie Comeaux
Associate Professor, UCR GSOE

Dr. Eddie Comeaux is an associate professor of higher education, and founder and executive director of the Center for Athletes’ Rights and Equity (CARE) at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests are located in the broad field of higher education and include racial equity and policy issues. Dr. Comeaux has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other academic publications and reports. He has also published five books, including his most recent book: High Achieving African American Students and the College Choice Process: Applying Critical Race Theory (Routledge, 2020). For his scholarly work, Dr. Comeaux received the Outstanding Contribution Award from AERA’s Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group (SIG), and the Dr. Carlos J. Vallejo Memorial Award for Exemplary Scholarship from AERA’s Multicultural/Multiethnic Education SIG.

Dr. Cathy Lussier
Assistant Professor, UCR GSOE

Dr. Cathy Lussier, an assistant professor of teaching, has been the director of two U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences grants (one focused on problem-solving interventions using working memory in mathematics, the other on literacy and cognition for Spanish-speaking English Learners). Prior to that, she co-directed The Copernicus Project, a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Post-Secondary Education five-year grant aimed at STEM teacher development and making science more accessible to underrepresented high school and community college students. She is also the co-principal investigator of the NSF Noyce Scholars program, the faculty co-director of the Cal Teach Science Math Initiative (SMI), and the faculty team leader for the NASA Minority Education Institute (NASA MEI). Additionally, she has worked for several years with her colleagues at NASA-JPL to provide K-12 student and STEM training and teacher development workshops throughout southern California.

Q&A with Eddie Comeaux

juliep — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:34:47 +0000

Q&A with Eddie Comeaux juliep Fri, 02/14/2020 - 09:34 More News JD Warren February 13, 2020

UC Riverside Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Eddie Comeaux served as co-chair of the university-wide task force studying whether to recommend keeping or eliminating standardized tests as a factor in admissions decisions. This past week, the task force concluded its year-plus study by recommending the University of California continue using the SATs, at least for now. The findings will now be reviewed by a faculty senate committee, after which the recommendation will be forwarded to President Janet Napolitano. Napolitano will then decide whether to back the recommendation, which she will forward to the UC Regents for a vote.

Did you have a sense the world would be watching your recommendations, and that they could become a template for the rest of the country?
What typically happens in California are the signs to come on a national level. We are a bellwether for the nation. We’re a big university system. No other university system is like us. When you’re talking about UCLA, with more than 130,000 applications in every admissions cycle, if we make a decision, it’s going to have a national impact.

Of the task force discussions, you were quoted in an L.A. Times article as saying: “It wasn’t kumbaya in the room."

This was a political document; it was a political argument. It was pretty intense. Some folks on the outside would perceive it as fighting, but that’s how policy works. You have to figure out how to compromise. There are a lot of people with a vested interest, and this is their life’s work. When they found out there was some value (to SATs), they had a hard time swallowing that.

Has “kill the SATs” been a sort of fever? Is that dangerous?

Yes. The test is not perfect. We propose new assessments in the recommendations, something more inclusive. But that’s about nine years out, probably more. So for now, as long as we’re not using the test aggressively, and we’re contextualizing the scores, it may do harm, but not to the extent of the perceptions people have. People believe the test is solely driving admissions decisions when that is absolutely not the case.

Do the committee’s recommendations mirror your own feelings?

There is nothing that we laid out that I don’t agree with. There is some value to SATs, particularly when we look at scores in context. We can’t create a new assessment overnight. For us to vote for a new assessment now would have been kicking the can down the road.

What has the reception been to the recommendations?

Internally, they’ve been well received. They felt the analysis was really strong. There was a lot that went into this. I feel good about it. Did we go far enough? We can debate that. But we painted a picture people will have a hard time disrupting.

Since the task force recommendation was issued this past week, some members are now suggesting a deadline should be set for eliminating the SATs. Where do you weigh in?

I have a problem with eliminating a test when we don’t have anything to back it up. It’s more complex than this. Then we only have one cognitive measure left, which is GPA. Then we are dealing with grade inflation, which is advantaging more affluent communities because their parents are pushing for extra credit and the highest possible grade where others may not have the social capital to understand A- from B-. To eliminate SATs and move to only GPA just perpetuates the problem.

Do you have a sense of whether the regents will adopt your recommendation?

Some regents have been saying publicly they want to do away with the test scores, so I have a sense of what they may do. Some of them want to get rid of it. I don’t know where the president stands. I know where the provost, Michael Brown, stands. He said publicly he wants to get rid of it. I don’t know if that’s any signal of where the president and regents may vote.

Would you be surprised if they don’t follow the recommendation?

Based on what I’ve been hearing, I would not be surprised.