College of Human Environmental Sciences unites nationally recognized centers

Friday, May 21, 2010

The College of Human Environmental Sciences has announced plans to relocate the Rise School of Stillwater to facilities on the Oklahoma State University campus. The move will integrate the Rise Program into the Human Development and Family Science Department’ s Center for Early Childhood Teaching and Learning which also houses the Cleo L. Craig Foundation Child Development Laboratory (CDL). The unified program will be open to children from 12 months through 5 years of age in the fall of 2010.

Stephan Wilson, dean of the college, says the move will provide more appropriate classrooms for the students in the Rise Program and expand the services of the current center to be a unified, more inclusive environment. The classrooms also serve as teaching laboratories for OSU early childhood education as well as research facilities for a variety of programs across the campus.

“The current laboratory in the center has a rich heritage of over 85 years and is a nationally recognized center for early childhood teaching, research, and outreach,” Wilson said. “Incorporating the Rise program into this premier facility will enhance the educational experience for future early childhood educators. The experience they gain will benefit the children of Oklahoma and beyond.”

The current space will double from two classrooms to four world-class early childhood teaching laboratory classrooms. Each of the classrooms will be staffed with certified teachers and teaching assistants. Music, speech, occupational and physical therapies will be provided for those children who need these services. In addition, OSU students majoring in early childhood education will be in the classrooms each semester as part of their professional practicum.

“We see this as a win-win for the ECE program and the Rise School as well as our myriad campus and community partners,” Wilson said. “The original Rise facility limited enrollment to 18 students half of whom were children with special needs. The new classrooms will be state-of-the-art design, and the larger space will allow for a total of 66 children. This will increase our capacity for inclusion of children living with developmental disabilities to 33.”

“The move will expand our capacity to provide services to the community, enlarge experiences for emerging professionals, increase the numbers of students and their families available for research projects, and deliver the land-grant mission of OSU for teaching, research, and outreach” Wilson said.

Sue Williams, Human Development and Family Sciences Department head, said integrating the two laboratories will provide important hands-on internship and observation opportunities for college students majoring in early childhood education, which will better prepare them to teach in Oklahoma classrooms.

“Students who participate in the teacher-preparation program will learn to match children’s needs with appropriate instructional methods according to each child’s intellectual and physical development,” Williams said. “When these students become teachers in Oklahoma’s pre-schools and elementary schools, their experience with the Rise Program will have a multiplier effect and benefit hundreds of special needs children throughout the state. Further, the many ways in which children develop beyond their learning are more completely present in this new environment – physical, social, emotional, aesthetic, cultural.”

Wilson pointed out the new lab’s proximity to the other research and teaching interests of the college such as interior design, the Center for Family Services, and childhood obesity prevention will enhance experiential learning experiences for other CHES students. He said having the unified programs on campus is likely to make them attractive to other areas of study such as engineering, elementary education, speech pathology, and art that have limited opportunities to facilities and programs the unified labs will provide.

“With better access for the rest of the campus for research and discovery, as well as outreach and service, the lab will be much more than a place focused solely on early childhood learning,” Wilson said.

The CDL is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and meets the criteria for a Three-Star Facility rating from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

The enrollment process for the unified program begins with a completed application that will place the child on a waiting list. Current students began enrolling in March. Available spaces are then filled with children from the waiting list. Parents may begin the application process by contacting the CECTL at 405-744-5730 from 8:30-4:30 Monday thru Friday.