The College of Education endeavors to focus on partnerships, technology, and academic support as three initiatives with our partners. One of our partnership activities, called "Partnership Projects," is a way in which the college provides assistance to our partner school districts in meeting a need that they identify. Faculty from our college and other areas around the university are working with our partners on such issues as school violence, classroom assessment, program evaluation and accountability requirements, community surveying, elementary literacy, secondary science curriculum, and ESL/bilingual education.
The college has worked diligently to create technology enriched teaching environments that serve to provide opportunities for modeling and investigating ways in which to integrate technology into teaching and learning. Among our most recent endeavors has been to build an adaptive technology laboratory to prepare both preservice and inservice teachers to meet the unique needs of students. The focus on technology has expanded into faculty development for all new COE faculty who participate in a year-long seminar which includes ways to use technology within their coursework.
NIU has started a P-20 Initiative, which refers to the continuum of education- from preschool to graduate school- and promotes the idea that we are all connected, that it takes all of us working together to make significant changes in education. The NIU College of Education, together with the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Health and Human Sciences, Visual and Performing Arts, and Engineering and Engineering Technology, and with the support of the offices of the president and the provost, has made significant commitments to focusing our resources on meeting the needs of our educational partners. Through collaboration we believe we can make a difference in key areas of strength, which we have identified: