Concordia College is in the final stages of receiving approval from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) for a new Master of Education in teaching and learning.
“The new Master of Education with a concentration in teaching and learning came about because of our proven track record with the Master of Education in world language instruction,” said Dr. Cassandra Glynn, program director of the Master of Education in world language instruction and associate professor of education.
“We are in our 15th year of that program and we are currently recruiting our 16th cohort for summer 2021. This has been a highly successful and meaningful program for language teachers, and we wanted to expand to working with teachers of all content areas, knowing that we can bring our long history of high quality teacher education to a new program.”
The new program will mostly be staffed by the education department faculty with some adjunct instructors who will be hired from outside of the program. It is a unique program in that it will be completely online. There is also the possibility of individual districts or schools putting together their own cohorts for a reduced cost and the delivery of the program would be customized for their school or district. For example, depending on their needs, some classes can be run in person and/or faculty could travel to their location and continue to offer some courses online.
Both the new program and the existing Master of Education will be run similarly, with two overlapping courses.
Glynn says that most colleges offer a Master of Education in some form, but some of the course foci for Concordia’s program are unique and the ability to customize the program for schools will also be a unique feature.
“Our current M.Ed. in WLI students would tell you that we go out of our way to make the program work for individual students, even if it means putting them on a completely different course schedule,” she said. “They feel that function is very different from most other grad programs on the market because of our personalized approach.”
“We also started new graduate language courses as part of the M.Ed. in WLI in partnership with the world language and cultures department, and we have very exciting course offerings for teachers that began last spring,” Glynn added.
Glynn serves as program director of the Master of Education of world language instruction and will also serve as director of the new Master of Education program. Rebecca Amundsen, executive director of Graduate and Continuing Studies, says the college is also waiting for approval from the HLC board for a Master of Music in music education.