Among the best
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Photography by Gary Lawson
OSU’s Occupational Education program, housed in the College of Education’s School
of Teaching and Curriculum Leadership, ranks among the nation’s best for its academic
quality and outstanding research.
The program has enjoyed a lengthy stay in the top 10 of U.S. News and World Report’s
ranking of Best Educational School Specialty Rankings in the Technical/Vocational
category. During the spring of 2010, the program achieved a benchmark, rising to sixth
place.
“The national ranking and other awards and honors are a reflection of the quality
of the occupational education program and the teaching and research efforts of our
faculty and students,” says C. Robert Davis, interim dean of the College of Education.
The program offers coursework appropriate for a wide range of students, including
educators from the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, CareerTech,
technical educators, personnel in higher education, career and occupational counselors,
adult trainers in business and industry and workforce development professionals from
all fields.
Faculty, students and alumni from the OCED program have been lauded for their research
and teaching efforts. Here are many of the past year’s highlights:
Associate Professor Lynna Ausburn is the recipient of the Regents Research Award,
and Mary Jo Self received OSU’s Regents Teaching Award in 2010.
The OCED virtual reality (VR) research program, led by Lynna Ausburn and adjunct instructor
Floyd Ausburn, has been accepted for membership in the GigaPan Education and Research
Program. The selection admits the program to an international consortium using an
exciting new virtual reality technology named GigaPan and puts OSU’s VR research in
an outstanding research community that includes such distinguished entities as Carnegie
Mellon University, NASA/Ames Research Center, University of Washington VR center,
the BBC and National Geographic.
Associate Professor Mary Jo Self is the past-president of the National Association
of Industrial Technical Teacher Educators. Self also directs a highly successful program
that increases retention of first-year career technology education teachers hired
directly from business and industry.
Associate Professor Belinda McCharen is the board chair for the National Occupational
Competency Institute, a testing organization that serves career and technical education
as well as business and industry.
Assistant Professor Ji Hoon Song received an international award from the Emerald/EFMD
2009 Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards — Highly Commended Research Award in the
field of Leadership and Organization Development. He also won the 2009 Outstanding
Dissertation Award from the University Council for Workforce and Human Resource Education,
and the Human Resource Development Review invited him to serve as a member of its
review team for theory and concept building research on the topics of learning organization
models and organizational learning theories.
The Association of Career and Technical Education, a large and influential organization
for career and technical education, named occupational education graduate Mark American
Horse Teacher of the Year. American Horse is a 2005 graduate of the master’s program
with plans to pursue a Ph.D.
Doctoral student Gary Dotterer has received one of only three Doctoral Research Dissemination
Awards from the National University Council for Workforce and Human Resource Education.
Dotterer also won the Graduate Student Research Award from the National Association
of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators.
The University Council for Workforce and Human Resource Education awarded recent doctoral
graduate Scott Williams the 2010 Outstanding Dissertation Award.
This article was featured in Education Magazine. View full publication below.