10 Jul2020
By Jerrica Thurman
AACTE Board members John Henning and Mary Murray recently met with me to discuss why leadership and building partnerships matter during times of crises. In the videos, Henning and Murray shared the following:
“A key rule of a leader during difficult times is to unify people and bring them together around the problem. By helping them move forward, things can get done rapidly, which is important when change is occurring quickly. With rapid change, it’s also important for leaders to stay organized,” said John Henning, dean of the school of education at Monmouth University. Henning is an experienced educational practitioner, researcher, and leader. His primary research interests include practice-based teacher education, teacher development, instructional decision-making, and classroom discourse. He is also an active scholar and researcher, with more than 50 publications. His fourth book, titled Building Mentoring Capacity in Teacher Education: A Guide to Clinically-Based Teacher Education, was released in 2019 by Routledge. He served for more than 20 years as a high school teacher. Henning obtained an M.Ed. in vocational education and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Kent State University in Ohio. He received a B.S. in general agriculture from The Penn State University.
07 Apr2020
AACTE Responds to Coronavirus
By Jerrica Thurman
In recent interviews, AACTE Director of Marketing and Communications Jerrica Thurman met with six members of the AACTE Board of Directors to discuss how they are managing their university’s response to COVID-19. The interview participants were Patricia Alvarez-McHatton, Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, Robert Floden, Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson, Carine Feyten, and Monika Shealey.
All participants were asked, what words of advice or lessons learned would you share with other university leaders or college deans about what you have experienced so far in your crisis response planning for the coronavirus? Here’s what they had to say:
Patricia Alvarez-McHatton
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley
“We have our academic affairs leadership team in which we bring all the chairs, directors, and deans together on a monthly basis. It just so happened, fortuitously, that our March meeting was scheduled prior to when this all began. We placed participants in heterogeneous groups and had them respond to five guiding questions about things to think about should this situation materialize as it has. I think it brought people together. It generated an awakening and understanding of the things that we need to think about. We were able to learn from each other. It became clear that first and foremost we need to empower and have faith in our faculty’s ability to do what needs to be done.
