The School of Education is taking on two new roles that will help establish UC Davis as a leader in educational policy and help improve doctoral education across the country.

The school, transformed from a division into a full school last July, has become a partner with UC Berkeley and Stanford University in the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), and one of its leading faculty members, Patricia Gándara, will serve as co-director of the respected policy research center.

And the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has invited the school to participate with 53 schools and departments at 33 other universities in a research project to improve doctoral education in several disciplines, including education. The school will work with the campus’s Graduate Group in Education to re-examine the Doctor of Philosophy program in education and share its redesign as a model.

“These projects exemplify how the school will help improve educational policy and practice through research, engagement and partnerships,” said Dean Harold Levine. “They are extraordinary recognition of our work and our potential as a new and growing school, and they validate the work of so many to establish the school.”

“We’re a different kind of education school,” Levine added. “The integration of research, practice and policy to improve teaching and learning is fundamental.”

Becoming a partner in the PACE policy research center highlights the emerging importance of policy to the school’s research and teaching, Levine said. The partnership, he added, is a building block for an institute on educational policy, law and government that the school plans to establish.

“We are striving to enhance the role of local and state educational leaders and practitioners in educational policy through their involvement with UC Davis, the proposed institute and PACE,” Levine said.

Gándara said that bringing the PACE policy research center to UC Davis represents a unique opportunity to capitalize on the strengths of the school and to form partnerships with other policy groups. “I anticipate that the whole state will be well-served by this new relationship,” she said.

Founded in 1983 as a cooperative venture between the schools of education at Berkeley and Stanford, the center informs education policy debate by providing research data and analysis for California policy-makers, educational professionals and the general public.

As a partner, the UC Davis school will oversee a small group of analysts, its faculty members will conduct research and its representatives will help disseminate research findings to lawmakers and others.

One of the center’s other co-directors, Michael Kirst of Stanford, said Gándara will bring to the center a new capacity to work on policies regarding English language learners and issues related to students’ transition from K-12 to post-secondary education.

Gándara’s research concerns school reform, access to higher education and language policy. With an extensive background in educational policy, she currently serves as the associate director for UC’s Linguistic Minority Research Institute and on the board of directors of WestEd, one of the nation’s Regional Educational Laboratories.

In the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, Levine said, UC Davis will participate in national discourse among leading schools of education about what doctoral education should look like. “For UC Davis, that includes how to prepare students to contribute to the scholarly community and beyond,” he added.

The school is among 15 departments and schools examining doctoral programs in education. The Carnegie initiative is also examining doctoral education in chemistry, English and mathematics and later will call for proposals in history and the neurosciences. The University of Southern California is the only other California institution chosen to participate in the project.

“We embarked on this project because we felt that this is a propitious time to study new opportunities and responsibilities resulting from evolution of the disciplines as well as general changes in education and society,” said George Walker, a Carnegie senior scholar and head of the initiative.

The schools and departments involved in the Carnegie initiative will analyze all aspects of their selected doctoral programs to create experiments in design and demonstrate best practices.

Levine said UC Davis’ participation comes at an opportune time when the school is setting out to re-examine its own Ph.D. in education. The program currently enrolls about eight to 10 new students a year, and Levine wants to quadruple its numbers by 2007-08 as part of the new school’s expansion.

The school will work closely with representatives from the campus’s Graduate Group in Education, which oversees the Ph.D. in education.

“Everything is on the table,” said Tom Sallee, chair of the 36-member Graduate Group. “We’re trying to decide what our graduates should look like,” he added. “What are the skills, knowledge and attitudes we want a graduate to have?”

Levine and Sallee said some of the questions to be considered, include:

• Is there a core curriculum that should be taught? How broad or how deep should it be?

• What kind of mentoring experience should doctoral students receive and how best can it be provided?

• How can the program help its students understand the policy implications of their research and train them to communicate their research in a political environment?

To stimulate thinking and discussion about the doctoral program, Levine proposes to hold regular meetings and retreats, present guest lectures by scholars in the field and review best practices at other institutions.

By this spring, Sallee said, he is planning to present program options to the Graduate Group for further discussion; Levine said that, with faculty approval, he hopes to implement the revamped program by fall of 2004.

In addition to Levine and Sallee, the campus leadership team for the Carnegie project includes Sharon Dugdale, a professor and the education school’s associate dean for academic programs; professors Sandy Murphy and Jon Wagner of education; Mary Schleppegrell, an associate professor of linguistics and Graduate Group member; Larry Horvath, head of the Education Graduate Student Association; and Katie Bruna and Pam Castori, both graduates of the doctoral program.