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For the next five years, Syracuse University’s School of Education will partner with the Syracuse City School District and Lafayette Central School District to recruit students of color from SU for field placements as part of a new interdisciplinary program at SU.

The U.S. Department of Education provided a $1.14 million dollar grant to Sultan Kilinc, a co-principal investigator in the project, along with co-PI Yanhong Liu and PI Julia M. White, to work on the initiative Project IMPRESS. The project aims to prepare special education teachers across different disciplines within the School of Education.

“We want to prepare educators to have this equity-oriented… mindset, ” Kilinc said.

Project IMPRESS, which stands for Interdisciplinary Master’s Preparation of Urban and Rural Educators in Special Education and School Counseling, will create interdisciplinary experiences for graduate students in special education and counseling programs in the School of Education. The project will overlap both programs to create better collaboration between students in each of these fields, White said.

School of Education Interim Dean Kelly Chandler-Olcott said in an email that the project aligns with the school’s goal of diversity and inclusion in the profession and promoting interdisciplinary collaborations.

“It is also led by a team of top notch early- and mid-career faculty who represent SOE’s bright future,” she added in the email.

“We are piloting a couple of shared courses, an assessment course and a perspectives on disabilities course in the special ed master’s that only the IMPRESS counseling students will take with all special ed master’s students,” White said in an email. “They will have their own IMPRESS winterlude (course) and internship/student teaching seminars.”

White, who is also an associate professor in the School of Education’s department of teaching and leadership, said the majority of the funds will be utilized to support students in the program through providing tuition scholarships, program materials and professional development.

The master’s students participating in the initiative will have field placements in the two school districts.

“There’s a shortage of special ed teachers nationally all the time, so it’s a critical area of need,” White told The Daily Orange.

In 2020, 48 of 50 states reported a shortage of special education teachers to the government, according to NPR.

Both White and Liu said special education teachers lack the experience of counselors and vice versa. The professors believe the interdisciplinary nature of the program will complement the education of students in both degrees.

“It was really important for our special ed master students to learn more about social emotional learning and for the counseling students to learn more about special education in order to be more effective professionals,” White said.

Melissa Luke, a dean’s professor in the department of counseling & human services, was one of the first to learn of the project. Liu, who is an associate professor in the School of Education’s department of counseling and human services, said Luke connected her with White after learning of the project’s counseling component.

From beginning to end, Liu said the trio were so invested in the grant application that it took less than a month.

“We woke up writing the grant, it was quite intense,” she said.

Liu said this was her first time working on an inter-departmental grant and that she feels fortunate to have worked together with White and Kilinc on the project.

“I think the three of us shared a similar working approach in terms of efficiency and collaboration styles, so I think it was a really natural and organic process,” Liu said.

She hopes creating an awareness of the diverse set of competencies students will learn through the program will then help with recruitment. Kilinc said she also enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the project.

“We need to work together, we need to be creative, innovative, interdisciplinary, and create collaborative partnerships across programs to address those complex problems,” Kilinc said. “This is one of the reasons that I really liked this grant, because we are working together to address those needs.”

Published on August 31, 2022 at 11:57 pm