Stacy Duffield of North Dakota State Chosen for 2017 Pomeroy Award

 

AACTE’s Committee on Professional Preparation and Accountability has selected Stacy K. Duffield, professor in the College of Human Development and Education at North Dakota State University, to receive the 2018 AACTE Edward C. Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teacher Education. The award will be presented at the 70th AACTE Annual Meeting Closing Keynote session, March 3 in Baltimore, Maryland.The Pomeroy Award, named for longtime AACTE Executive Director Edward C. Pomeroy, is one of the Association’s highest honors, recognizing distinguished service either to the educator preparation community or to the development and promotion of outstanding practices in educator preparation at the collegiate, state, or national level. Duffield stands out in all of these categories.

In one of several letters of support submitted with Duffield’s nomination, Professor Alan Olson of Valley City State University, who is president-elect of the North Dakota Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (NDACTE), outlines some examples of her broad leadership and professional engagement. “Dr. Duffield has emerged as an outstanding collaborator while working with area P-12 partners, regional cooperatives, North Dakota’s State Longitudinal Data System team, and over 20 teacher education programs on a regular basis,” he writes. “[She] has been a unifying leader for the Network for Excellence in Teaching (NExT) Common Metrics group funded by the Bush Foundation in Minnesota. The 14 teacher preparation institutions in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota developed an entry, exit, first-year teacher, and supervisor survey that underwent externally evaluated psychometric analyses and were judged to be valid, reliable instruments. The high-quality instruments and data have been utilized for common language discussions among the institutions, and each individual institution has shared its data with PK-12 stakeholders for program improvement. At the time of this writing, the use of the assessment instruments has expanded to 61 teacher preparation institutions in five different states and two countries.”One of Duffield’s NExT colleagues, Jo Matson of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, notes in her letter that Duffield “has served as a model and mentor in providing expertise as well as in building a collaborative group of members that have typically been in competition as institutions of teacher education.”“Dr. Duffield is not only a scholar and an excellent teacher, but she is also an individual with an incredible work ethic, a collaborative spirit, and a passion for the pursuit of excellence,” reads another letter, from Executive Director Rebecca Pitkin of the North Dakota Education Standards and Practices Board. Pitkin also says Duffield is “an expert whose participation and recommendations for the continuous improvement of educator preparation programs at the national and state levels is sought after and respected.”

Indeed, Duffield has presented at many workshops and conferences of AACTE and other professional organizations; she will be presenting the Student Teacher Observation Tool along with colleagues at the upcoming AACTE Annual Meeting. She has also served as a site visitor for state and national accreditation teams and led a collaborative effort between the state’s Education Standards and Practices Board and NDACTE representatives to discuss effective strategies for institutions to transition from old to new accreditation standards. She teaches graduate and undergraduate middle-level and literacy education, has served as teacher education program coordinator since 2009, and was assessment and accreditation coordinator from 2007 to 2013.

“Dr. Stacy Duffield is an exemplary leader in the field of education,” said Margaret Fitzgerald, dean of the College of Human Development and Education at North Dakota State University. “She embraces the land-grant mission of the university through teaching, research, and outreach and has been a game changer in creating university partnerships that help teachers and school systems excel. She is highly regarded for her innovative efforts, her skills in measuring student and program learning outcomes, and her ability to conceptualize and execute programs that make a difference in students’ lives.”

Nominations for the Pomeroy Award are reviewed by the AACTE Committee on Professional Preparation and Accountability. AACTE issued a press release today announcing all of its 2018 award winners. For more information on AACTE’s awards program, visit http://aacte.org/professional-development-and-events/awards. Applications for next year’s awards open in June.

By:  Kristin McCabe, AACTE