Contact: Sammy McDavid
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education is continuing its approval of professional programs in Mississippi State's College of Education.
In a letter received last week, NCATE president Arthur Wise notified university officials that the land-grant institution's third oldest major academic unit again meets the organization's rigorous standards for preparing future K-12 instructors.
"The goal of accreditation is to ensure that the standards reflect a consensus about what is important in teacher education today," Wise said. "That is why, in order to incorporate the profession's best practices and research, we revise the standards every five years."
Some 540 institutions today hold the highest ranking of the United States Department of Education-recognized certification process. Collectively, they produce two-thirds of the nation's new teachers each year.
Established in 1909 as the School of Industrial Pedagogy, MSU's teacher training unit currently enrolls nearly 2,900 undergraduate and graduate majors. Only the university's foundation programs in agriculture and engineering have been longer on campus.
The college's five departments include counselor education, educational psychology and special education; curriculum and instruction; health, physical education, recreation, and sport; music education; and instructional systems, leadership and workforce development.
"We are most gratified and happy to continue an accreditation that first was awarded back in 1973," said Dean Roy H. Ruby. "This latest achievement is a result of the long-term and focused efforts of our college administrators, faculty, staff, and students, along with the assistance of (Interim) President Charles Lee and so many others throughout the campus."
Ruby said the college enrolls the university's second largest number of majors (elementary education) and has the largest number of living alumni (20,000). It also ranks second only to engineering in external research and service funding. In addition to the Starkville campus, undergraduate programs in elementary and secondary education and graduate programs in educational leadership and counselor education are available at MSU-Meridian.