USC Trojan Family Magazine - Winter 1998: Excellence in Urban Education (Pg2)

IN 1920, LESTER BURTON ROGERS, a graduate of Columbia University’s teacher’s college on leave from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wis., became the school’s second dean. The school gave its first bachelor of science degree in 1923 and its first doctor of education in 1928. Prior to 1928, the school had operated University High School, a prep school that served as a teaching school for USC students. In 1928, the school also started sending its student teachers to local city schools – a tradition that continues today.
During World War II, the school faced yet another shortage of educators. As early as 1942, the school was preparing to train “new teachers and administrators to replace those called...away by government, military and industrial establishments,” according to the 1970 doctoral thesis by Leon Levitt, who went on to become a professor in the school.
After the war, USC’s education school geared up for yet another growth spurt as returning GIs started settling en masse in Southern California. From July 1, 1949 to June 30, 1950, the California State Department of Education issued 799 credentials to teachers and administrators who had been recommended by USC, according to the 1950 Southern California Alumni Review – more than twice the number given to any other university in the state.

Barbara Rossier

As housing tracts replaced agricultural acreage in Orange and Riverside counties and in Los An-geles County’s San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and Inland Empire, the school’s alumni helped launch waves of suburban school districts. As the alumni’s influence blanketed Southern California, so it spread throughout the State Department of Education. In a 1950 alumni magazine article, Osman Hull, dean of the School of Education from 1946 to 1953, recalled having attended a State Commission of Education meeting. Of appointees to influential statewide jobs, nearly three-quarters were Trojans.
“I was almost embarrassed,” Hull confessed.

AND THAT WAS BEFORE what the school remembers as “The Melbo Years” – the near mythic tenure of Irving R. Melbo, a former deputy superintendent and director of curriculum in Oakland’s school system who served as dean from 1953 to 1973.
“It was really under Melbo that the school attained national prominence,” says John Orr, an emeritus professor of religion and Hentschke’s immediate predecessor as the school’s dean.
In the six years after Melbo became dean, the number of faculty members rose from 67 to 90, which is more than twice the size of today’s faculty. Offerings at the school also became increasingly specialized. In a measure of the school’s growing influence in educational counseling and psychology, the Veteran’s Administration established at the school a now-defunct counseling center for returning Korean veterans. In 1954, the school allied with the John Tracy Clinic to provide training for teachers of the hearing impaired. The relationship still continues today. During this period the school launched special offerings for school administrators and superintendents – thrusts that remain strengths today.
Under Melbo’s watch, the school of education, which had previously shared facilities with other academic units, got its own home. In 1968, the school dedicated Waite Phillips Hall, which is named after the Oklahoma oil tycoon whose bequest funded the construction.
Also under Melbo, a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve, the school became one of the nation’s premiere trainers of teachers at Department of Defense schools on a range of military bases in Europe and Asia. The programs trained military personnel whose job involved instruction and retrained military personnel leaving the service, as well as providing education for dependents of military personnel and civilians in those counties.
The programs were discontinued in the 1980s as the military dismantled Cold War outposts and university officials decided to concentrate on enhancing research efforts on campus. But the program left in its wake a strong international network of support for the school.

AS THE CALIFORNIA SYSTEM has assumed USC’s one-time role as trainer of the majority of the state’s teachers, the Rossier School of Education has increasingly emphasized its role in applied research. Today, those efforts anchor all 23 of the school’s programs.
Take the Center for Multilingual and Multicultural Education, which after its 1983 founding offered some of the state’s first credentials in bilingual education. The center’s efforts today include the education of Latino teacher’s aides, who have proven much more likely to complete education degrees and become teachers than students who start out with no classroom experience.

Barbara and Roger Rossier (center) are joined by USC President Steven B. Sample (left) and California Governor Pete Wilson at the announcement ceremony for the Rossier School.

Another example in which applied research allows the school to offer unique educational experiences can be found at the school’s Center for Teaching and Learning through Multimedia. Established in 1995 in partnership with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the research unit complements master’s, Ph.D. and Ed.D. degree programs in educational technology. So far, USC has the only education school in Southern California to offer all three degrees.

AS MUCH AS THE SCHOOL has evolved from its role as the region’s chief trainer of teachers, it has not lost sight of the responsibility it has always felt for improving local schools, particularly those in its neighborhood. In partnership with the Division of External Relations and the School of Social Work, the School of Education in 1987 launched the Inter-Professional Initiative. Now commonly known as the Family of Five, the program brings unique educational and cultural opportunities to students at the five public schools in USC’s immediate surroundings. By last count, the program has touched 8,000 kids.
“The face and faces of Los Angeles have changed,” Hentschke says. “Some people are intimidated by this. We at the Rossier School of Education are inspired by it. Our mission remains clear: to prepare agents of educational change for the largest, most complex, and most diverse educational system in urban education today.”