Being the Difference in a Struggling Milwaukee: 2013 Diversity Gala

Each year, the Graduate Student Organization of the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology department hosts a celebration of sorts.

Their annual Diversity Gala aims to bring together CECP faculty, students, alumni and community members to celebrate the profession and raise money for counseling scholarships for students of color.

This year’s gala takes place on Saturday, May 4, 2013 beginning at 6:00 p.m. The event will feature hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and a cash bar. And everyone is invited.

“The Diversity Gala is such an important event because it highlights the department’s commitment to social justice and diversity,” says Dave Doucette, CECP master’s student in clinical mental health counseling. “As mental health professionals, we have discovered the significance of advocacy work and awareness of multicultural issues that might arise while working our clients, whether they are students in a high school or individuals battling substance use.”

“Our department recognizes the need to enroll and train individuals who identify as an ethnic or racial minority to diversify not only the department, but the Marquette community and overall helping field,” Doucette continues.

The Diversity Gala serves as a philanthropic effort to highlight, celebrate, and raise awareness to these issues, especially the continual fundraising for the Diversity Scholarship, awarded to an incoming or current CECP graduate student that identifies as an ethnic or racial minority.  This Diversity Scholarship is intended to reflect and support the value of students who are actively promoting diversity and social justice within the CECP department and will continue to do so within the mental health field.

In 2011, newly admitted master’s student Affi Okokon received the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology Diversity Scholarship award.

“The Diversity Gala was the first interaction that I had with the students and faculty of Marquette’s CECP department, and it was a wonderful way to be introduced to the counseling program,” Okokon recalls. “The whole gala itself was a very festive and exciting experience, and I really enjoyed listening to the keynote speaker.

“As an African American female, it was uplifting to know that I was starting a counseling program that had a strong emphasis on acknowledging and celebrating diversity in the Milwaukee community. After attending the gala and meeting influential faculty members, students, and community leaders, I left with a feeling of empowerment and reassurance that Marquette’s CECP department was where I belonged. The Diversity Gala is a wonderful event, and I have continued to attend every year that I have been a student in the counseling program.”

But, the gala is about more than scholarship funding.  Each year, the graduate student organization also brings in a well-respected keynote speaker that actively interacts with and engages the audience in issues of advocacy, social justice, and diversity.

For 2013, the keynote is Ron Kuramoto, Director and Facilitator for Future Milwaukee. As a facilitator and consultant, Kuramoto’s clients have included People of Color Conferences for the National Association of Independent Schools, the Institute of Diversity Education and Leadership (IDEAL) Milwaukee of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Community Transformation Project of Marquette University, the Leadership Southern California program as well as contracted programs for the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, Cardinal Stritch University, and the University of Southern California.

This portion of the event allows all attendees to reflect on and pay particular attention to their own attitudes and glean useful knowledge that can be applied in every day life.

In other words, this interaction with the keynote speaker empowers all individuals to more deeply consider how they can become advocates for social justice and diversity in their everyday lives.  This sense of inspiration can unite the audience and larger community as a whole.

For more information about the 2013 Diversity Gala, including how to buy tickets, visit the College of Education web site.

Take Action: What it Means to Be the Difference

Nearly 500 Marquette University graduates were recognized at Marquette University’s Mid-Year Commencement on Sunday, Dec. 16, at the U.S. Cellular Arena.

The program included a keynote address by Dr. Lisa Hanson, associate professor of nursing, remarks from Marquette President Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., and featured student speaker Meghan Bachtel, a December Graduate from the College of Education.

Meghan’s message did not fall on deaf ears — in a time when the nation is struggling to make sense of tragedy, and educators everywhere are working tirelessly to make a difference in the lives of our nation’s children — she spoke to every one of us, urging us to take action.

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Faculty and administrators, family and friends, my fellow graduates and I thank you for being here today. Without your help and support, we would not be walking across this stage, and we are thrilled that you are here to celebrate with us the culmination of our college experience.

As a French major, I really connected with the words of famed French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who once said, pardon my French: “L’homme n’est pointfait pour méditer, mais pour agir” or humanity was not only created to ponder, but rather to act.

While at Marquette, we’ve all been encouraged to think critically and challenge our own worldviews. This is particularly poignant considering the unique Marquette experience of studying at a Jesuit university in the middle of such a diverse city as Milwaukee.  Instead of trying to shield us from the problems that are inherent within such a large and diverse city, Marquette encourages us to interact with and discover different worldviews in a real and impactful way.

One such example occurred my freshman year. I started out my undergraduate career as a Theatre Arts and French double major, but I found myself gravitating to the One On One Mentoring program through the YMCA. I lived in Straz Tower, and there was a group of middle-schoolers who came to a large meeting room in the basement every Monday afternoon to improve their reading and math skills. It was a fairly straightforward program with lesson plans designed to work on certain skills, but the relationship I developed with my mentee, Ciara, has forever changed both of our lives.

I remember when I first met her and she told me that her life’s ambition was to take care of the children that she would inevitably have before she was ready. She had several family members that were teenaged mothers, so she had already accepted that fate for herself at age 11. Through our three years of working together, I helped her to set the bar a little higher for herself. She also brought out more humility and honesty in me. Our experiences together made me realize how much I wanted and needed to be a teacher so that I could continue reaching out and helping others.

I have remembered those experiences throughout my student teaching, especially if I’ve seen any of my students being put down or silenced. I’d like all of you to take a moment and think about a time in your life where you felt that your voice went unheard. Were you ever bullied, pressured, threatened or somehow otherwise convinced to be silent, even when it hurt more not to speak?

I know I’ve experienced this in my life, and I have found that there is no feeling quite as daunting as the knowledge that you have a voice, but are unable to use that voice.

At Marquette, we have been encouraged to use our strengths to help give voices to those less fortunate than us through programs such as Hunger Clean-Up, Midnight Run, Mardi Gras, MAP, and Sexual Violence Awareness Week, to name a few. As Marquette Alumni, we need to continue using the voices and resources available to us to affect positive change in others’ lives. We are all leaders in our own fields coming from an academic institution such as ours, and it is because of our excellence that we have been called to serve.

A twenty-first century person of action looks a lot different than what an eighteenth-century Rousseau could even dream of. The world is becoming smaller and smaller through the Internet and other technology, which drives home the ever-growing importance of global awareness. The information age in which we live makes it pretty easy to sit back and ponder the implications of the many issues that face today’s society. Rousseau asks us to move beyond that pondering, and as Marquette graduates, I am fully confident in our abilities to act for the betterment of our world.

As a soon-to-be alumna from the College of Education, I will use my working knowledge of the world and our place in it to increase awareness amongst our youth, who, after all, will be America’s future movers and shakers. I will not be able to succeed in this task without the engineers who will have designed and built the computers and buildings necessary for my classes to even take place. They will, in turn, need the help of the future doctors and nurses whenever they become ill. No matter what college from which we graduate, or which career path we ultimately take, we all will rely on and benefit from the gifts and accomplishments of our fellow graduates.

As individuals, our potential to bring about global consciousness and affect change is limited. But together, over these past four years, we have grown to be apart of the Marquette family, which spans from the East Coast to the West Coast, and across the globe. As a part of that Marquette family, we can make a meaningful difference in our world.

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Meghan Bachtel is currently student teaching at Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha, where she will continue to teach in a substitute role for the spring semester.  Next fall she will return to the high school she attended in Akron, OH where she will be employed as a full-time French teacher.  Of special note, Meghan is the first student with an education major to be chosen as commencement speaker since we became the College of Education in 2008.  

Dr. Eugene Garcia to Speak on Bilingual Education at Marquette University

You are cordially invited to join the College of Education at Marquette University for the 2011 Tommy G. Thompson Lecture, featuring Dr. Eugene García, one of the nation’s most eminent researchers in the teaching of language and bilingual language development.

Dr. Eugene García
Language, Bilingualism, Cognition and Learning in Early Childhood

Thursday, October 6, 2011
Monaghan Ballroom, Alumni Memorial Union
Marquette University Campus
4:30 p.m.
Book signing and reception to follow
RSVP Online

More Information:   As the United States continues to address issues of  linguistic and cultural diversity as well as the educational gap, it is important that we consider the ways in which we approach our educational efforts.  In his lecture, to be held on Thursday, October 6^th at 4:30 p.m., Dr García  will address the nature of achievement gaps in recent research and education considerations at the school site level as well as considerations on how it affects higher education faculty and their preparation of future teachers.

Dr García has published extensively in the area of language teaching and bilingual development and served as a Senior Officer and Director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs in the U.S. Department of Education from 1993-1995. He currently chairs the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the Mailman Family Foundation. Dr. García has been honored by AERA, SRCD, NAEYC, ASCD and AAHHE for his research contributions and in May, 2011 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Erikson Institute, Chicago, in recognition of his contributions to the area of Child Development.  His current research, focusing on effective schooling for linguistically and culturally diverse student populations, is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

Participate in School Supply Drive for Milwaukee Kids

My name is Marlena Eanes, and I am a student in the College of Education, majoring in secondary education and mathematics. I am working with Dez Stamps a political science major at Marquette. We are hosting a school supply drive for Milwaukee kids in and around the Marquette area and New Beginnings Are Possible.

New Beginnings Are Possible  is a community center located on 37^th and Fond du Lac that centers on a Youth center and outreach to St. Charles Youth and Family Services. The center’s mission is to provide at-risk youth in Milwaukee with the moral foundation needed to make healthy choices to become contributing members of the community with the motto, “It is easier to build a child than to restore an adult.”

I became interested in this center after learning about the partnership they have with the Black Student Council at Marquette. The center is in need of youth reading materials and chairs. My goal is to collect enough school supplies to distribute to 100+ school aged children and to raise $500 for the center. This summer will be spent collecting and organizing the school supplies with a distribution held at New Beginnings Are Possible during the last week of August.

Since I began at Marquette, I have worked with Upward Bound Math and Science, Bridging the Gap and Summit Educational association as a tutor, counselor and mentor for children between second grade and seniors in high school. I am organizing this drive because after my work with each organization, I noticed that many of the students I mentored were not adequately prepared for school because they could not afford the materials. As a future educator, this was extremely disheartening because I understand the importance of having the proper materials to excel in the classroom.

You can help us by providing funds in the form of cash, check or money order or by donating school supplies and services.    Please contact me if you are interested in making a donation:  maeanes09@gmail.com or by phone at  630-803-2288

Thank you in advance for your support.

The Time To Support MPS Leaders is NOW

By Bill Henk – True leaders aspire to make significant differences in the entities they oversee.  Our somewhat new Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent, Dr. Gregory Thornton, certainly does.

And he has indeed made some noteworthy differences.

Since Dr. Thornton’s arrival eight months ago, the district has begun the kind of transformation that gives me genuine hope for the future.   It started by the superintendent surrounding himself with an outstanding leadership team including Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Heidi Ramirez.  I am not kidding when I tell you that in my estimation they qualify as two of the most impressive urban educators I’ve ever met — knowledgeable, insightful, politically astute, forward thinking, interpersonally skilled, hard-working, determined, and caring.  In short, they inspire me.

Oh sure, there will always be chronic detractors of MPS and its administration, but this time around, I’m not buying their rhetoric.

Marquette Hosts Wisconsin Teachers of the Year for Round-Table April 14

This fall, a panel of educators, parents, and community leaders selected four 2010 Wisconsin Teachers of the Year — three of them Marquette University graduates.

The College of Education is pleased to invite all three outstanding alumnae to a reception and roundtable discussion on Thursday, April 14, 2011 during which they will share their experiences and expertise as some of Wisconsin’s finest educators.

Chosen for their demonstrated instructional innovation and leadership, community involvement, and an ability to inspire a love of learning in their students, the 2010 Wisconsin Teachers of the Year are:

• Middle School Teacher of the Year, Maureen Look-Ainsworth, Arts ’86, is a teacher of seventh- and eighth -grade science at Horning Middle School in the Waukesha School District. Maureen was also nominated as the official Wisconsin Teacher of the Year, and will represent Wisconsin at the National Teacher of the Year program this spring. [Read more about Maureen Look-Ainsworth]
• High School Teacher of the Year: Claudia Felske, Arts ‘90, is a ninth- through 12th-grade English teacher at East Troy High School in the East Troy Community School District. [Read more about Claudia Felske]
• Special Services Teacher of the Year: Peggy Wuenstel, SP ‘80, is a prekindergarten through fifth-grade speech and language pathologist at Washington Elementary School in the Whitewater School District. [Read more about Peggy Wuenstel]

Join us for an event honoring these outstanding Marquette University Educators!

Wisconsin Teacher of the Year Reception and Round-table Discussion
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
6:00 p.m.
Marquette University’s Tony and Lucille Weasler Auditorium
1506 W. Wisconsin Ave.

Reception from 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Roundtable begins at 7 p.m.

Event is free and open to the public.

Parking is available in the Marquette University Parking Structure at 749 N. 16th Street for $3 after 5pm on the evening of the event.

For additional information, please contact Lori Fredrich at lori.fredrich@marquette.edu or 414-288-0659.

“It’s About the Children”: Common Ground Event on April 11

By Bridget St. Peter — As a graduating senior and student teacher with the College of Education, I look at the atmosphere surrounding education right now and feel very unstable.  Public, private, choice, budget cuts, certification requirements are all hot topics in education reform but when I get caught in the philosophy of these issues and in the politics of it all I lose focus on what really matters.  I want to be in education for the children and despite the political scene, I walk in the classroom everyday with the same motivation, passion, and determination to educate my students.

The school where I work might lose some funding, but this will not affect my goals for educating my students.  Many of you readers that are educators could agree, yet there is no reason that our voices should not be heard.

That’s the reason behind this post — to share with you a way to get involved and encourage you to speak out for education.

I have recently taken part in the Common Ground Education Initiative called “It’s About the Children” to let my voice be heard.  Common Ground is an unbiased, social justice group that acts as an umbrella organization to bring local communities of Southeastern Wisconsin together under one powerful voice.  As a group, we organize around foreclosure, healthcare, employment, and now we are conducting research on education.  An immediate goal of the education initiative is to build a relationship with Governor Walker so they can respectfully have the voice of the community be heard and have a place at the table with the recent political happenings.  We want to be heard as a community, not as a left or a right group but a group concerned about the education of all children.

To meet our goal, we are gathering signatures and support to gain a meeting with Governor Walker.  Again, it is not about being against or for his program; it is about being heard as a powerful group of citizens and, in our case, educators.

Marquette is a part of Common Ground and has made a commitment to bring representatives to a large community action focusing on education on April 11th.  The April 11th action will take place at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ (6090 N. 35th St).  The meeting will start at 6:30pm and approximately 800-1000 concerned citizens are expected.

The purpose of this meeting is to end the “divide and conquer” approach to education and seek true common ground in addressing the challenges our community faces in education.  To this end, principals from MPS, Choice, and Charter schools will share their perspectives on the proposed budget and their situations.

If you care about the future of our children in the Milwaukee area, we want your signature and your support on the 11th. To show your support, please print out a copy of the petition form.

Sign it yourself and then pass it around.  All signatures are due by Monday before 4:30 in Campus Ministry located in the Alumni Memorial Union.   Please contact MU Common Ground via email at mucommonground@gmail.com if you plan to show your support on April 11th.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at bridget.stpeter@gmail.com.  For more information on Common Ground, please visit their web site.

These are just the first steps.

Common Ground and Marquette for Common Ground is constantly looking for input from students who will spend multiple semesters in MPS through service learning, observation hours, student teaching, and as engaged students invested in the future of schools and the greater Milwaukee community that we all belong to and to which we are very much connected.

Bridget St. Peter is a native of Milwaukee.  She is currently a Marquette senior majoring in mathematics and secondary education.

InPowerInPeace Week: Empowerment as a Theme in Education

By Natalie Campbell – InPowerInPeace began as an idea to encourage Marquette students to re-examine the things in life which hold them back, and those which propel them forward. There are many different aspects to human empowerment: economic empowerment, spiritual empowerment, and communal empowerment.

I got invested in InPowerInPeace, a week devoted to bringing awareness and promoting human empowerment, as I began to realize how central empowerment is to my own life and further, all humans. I am very thankful that I feel my time at Marquette, and further my role as an Education student, is catalyzing personal growth for me in all of these areas.

As a future educator, InPowerInPeace takes on even more significance to me as I recognize the ways that education is a means to empower others in life. It is through education that others can be given the skills, learning environment, and encouragement to become the authors of their own ambitions. Teachers play a very important role in this development due to the genuine nature of education as, in my eyes, an investment in the lives of our students. Empowering students is the way that teachers can promote social justice beyond their own personal efforts, beyond their own time in the classroom, and even beyond what they might imagine.

Empowerment is not just about seeking the most for your own life, it emphasizes faithfully handing off power, responsibility, and faith to others trusting that each human has the power to thrive.

What can you do?
While I hope to see many students participate in InPowerInPeace week, April 4-8, I have a particular desire to see involvement by students in the College of Education.  AFter all, empowerment is our goal as future teachers. During the week ,numerous events will promote empowerment including:

• “Simple Dinner,” Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. in AMU Henke Lounge — round-table discussion about economic empowerment. Soup and bread will be served.
• “Awakening,” Wednesday, April 6, at 8:30 p.m. in Cudahy 001 — A screening of the documentary Awakening: Empowering Women through Microloans will be shown to deepen understanding of the power of microfinancing in helping women to achieve their own empowerment.
• “InSpiration,” Thursday, April 7, at 9 p.m. in Straz Tower Chapel — Meditation and reflections on the spiritual manifestations of empowerment to be shared.

Additional details, as well as material to inspire and create a personal challenge, will be available at a table outside of the AMU Brew Bayou, April 4-7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.   Please check out the website for InPowerInPeace for more information: inpowerinpeace.org.

Beyond the scope of InPowerInPeace week, I encourage you to continually consider the role of empowerment in our lives. Through reflection and community we can empower ourselves; as teachers we can empower our students; as humans we can empower one another.

Natalie Campbell is a sophomore in the College of Education. Her majors are Secondary Education and English. She is originally from Naperville, IL, but currently loves living in Milwaukee, attending Marquette, and running by Lake Michigan.

Research Exchange Offers Students No Risk Experience with Research

By Rory Raasch, 1st year Counseling student -- At the beginning of the year, I decided to join the committee for the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology Graduate Student Organization (CECP GSO) Research Exchange. The Research Exchange is an annual mini-conference where graduate students from a variety of disciplines have the opportunity to share research about mental health with their peers.

I did not join this committee with the intention of presenting at the event. Though I participated on a number of research teams as an undergrad, I did not have much experience presenting. This committee for me was more about supporting others who “knew what they were doing.”

But after talking to students and faculty who attended the event in the past, I became persuaded to present. I learned that the event is pretty informal and that it is a great opportunity for students to get practice presenting and to receive collaborative feedback from peers and faculty. The research at this event is often NOT in completed study form. Rather, students often choose to present literature reviews and/or proposals for potential future studies. In addition, Research Exchange presenters tend to use a past or current research assignment from one of their classes.

I am looking forward to presenting at April 1^st Research Exchange. It will be exciting to exchange current research with peers and give and receive feedback in a safe, comfortable environment. I hope to learn and grow from this experience so that one day I may have the knowledge and confidence to present at a “big time” research conference.

The Research Exchange is open to Marquette University students  — both graduate and undergraduate.  Research submissions are due on or before March 15, 2011.

If you are considering presenting at the Research Exchange on April 1^st please visit http://epublications.marquette.edu/researchexchange/ or contact me rory.raasch@marquette.edu or Stacy Trinastic stacy.trinastic@marquette.edu.

COED Faculty Whipp & Chubbuck to be Featured on Lake Effect

Tomorrow (10/5/10), on WUWM’s Lake Effect, Drs. Sharon Chubbuck and Joan Whipp will share their research on Socially Just & Moral Teaching with Stephanie Lecci.

Chubbuck’s research interests include social justice in education, and Whipp researches moral development and multicultural teacher education. Both focus their work on teacher dispositions and their development for teaching in urban schools.

Marquette University’s teacher preparation program graduates approximately 95 predominantly White middle and upper middle class students each year. In 2004, the program was revised to more explicitly foreground “teaching for social justice.” During their courses of study, students take courses that focus on school diversity issues, culturally relevant and critical pedagogies, and their entering beliefs about diversity. In addition, they actively engage in field experiences in community agencies and schools serving large populations of racially and culturally diverse students; and they complete a full semester of student teaching in an urban school.

In Drs. Whipp & Chubbuck’s most recent work, they are conducting a qualitative study of 64 recent graduates from the end of their student teaching experience into their first year of teaching to investigate how they were developing dispositions needed for socially just teaching and what pre-program, program, and on-the-job knowledge, experiences, and pre-dispositions contributed to that development.

The show will begin at 10 AM, and readers can listen by tuning in to WUWM 89.7 FM or by streaming the show LIVE.

Anyone who misses the episode can also listen to it and download the episode as an mp3 file from wuwm.com/lakeeffect beginning at about 11 AM on Tuesday, October 5, 2011.

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Lake Effect is WUWM’s locally-produced magazine program. The program covers considerable ground, focusing on local individuals, events, and issues. From discussing politics and the economy to spotlighting Wisconsin authors and musicians, Lake Effect goes beyond the headlines. Join the Lake Effect team each weekday at 10 am as they open a window onto life in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin.