Posted By Sophie Lange on Apr 13, 2024 | 1 comment

By Sophie Lange, News Editor, and Brandon Fey, Assistant News Editor

The Teacher Certification Program

Gettysburg College terminated its Education Department in November of 2022. This measure was taken in response to staffing shortages, and it resulted in the conclusion of the popular teacher certification program for subjects other than music education. The Class of 2024 was to be the final class to attain teacher certification upon graduation. However, due to the coordinated determination of several faculty members and administrators, it was formally announced at a faculty meeting on Jan. 25 that teacher certification programs were to return.

Because of this decision, in addition to the unaffected music education certification, Gettysburg College students once again have the option to graduate with certification to teach English and social studies to grades seven through 12 in public schools. There is a plan to extend certification offerings to include biology and mathematics by the spring of 2025 at the earliest.

Gettysburg College is accredited by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and licensed to certify teachers. Pennsylvania teacher certification is reciprocal with most states. The reinstated certification program provides participants with the requirements of the Pennsylvania Department of Education: two foundational courses in both math and English (one of each being already provided by the Gettysburg Curriculum), educational psychology, specialized classes for teaching students of geographic and cognitive diversity, a specific content methods course for teaching the intended subject of focus (English, social studies or music) and experience working as a student teacher. The program’s Certification Officer, Sunderman Conservatory of Music Professor Russell McCutcheon, is tasked with ensuring that students are able to complete all necessary courses required by the state.

Students who undergo the teacher certification program complete a major in their intended content area for teaching and fulfill the teacher certification requirements. The Class of 2024 was to be the final class teacher-certified, yet now current first-years, sophomores and juniors are able to enter teacher certification as well. Andrew Casher ’24 who is in the process of earning his teacher certification for English, shared his thoughts regarding the program’s return.

“I know a lot of students that came in after me were looking forward to that [the teacher certification program]. I think it’s really important. Obviously, like, if there’s one thing that I should tell Gettysburg College, it’s that we have students who want to teach in a country that is lacking teachers, so I say let them teach. Give them their certification, because we need good teachers,” Casher said.

Because it can now be difficult for current upperclassmen to fit required certification classes into their schedules, the faculty involved in the program will assist interested students with their course planning and are advising them to take advantage of relevant summer offerings and potentially classes at other institutions.

While the Education Department will not return, the Educational Studies Minor will be available for students in addition to, or separate from, the teacher certification program. Students who choose to complete the minor without undergoing certification at Gettysburg College have the option of pursuing other education programs, such as Teach for America and Urban Teacher Residency, or they can consider teaching at a private school. Educational Studies Minors can also pursue certification by achieving a Master’s Degree in teaching. The separate Music Education Major remains available to aspiring music teachers, who can be certified to teach grades Kindergarten through 12.

Gettysburg College had offered teacher certification for elementary schools until the Pennsylvania Department of Education changed its requirements in 2013. In response to this, Gettysburg College started a non-certificate interdisciplinary minor in Educational Studies. This was done to support the level of enrollment in the secondary certification program by inviting students to take education courses even if they did not want to pursue certification at Gettysburg College.

The Reinstatement Effort

The effort to return teacher certification was led by the Director of Educational Studies and Director of Community Based Learning and Research Divonna Stebick. At the announcement of the teacher certification program’s discontinuation in 2022, Stebick, who had been reassigned to the Sociology Department, immediately sought to identify alternative programs that Gettysburg students could pursue at other institutions. 

In Aug. 2023, the newly appointed Provost Jamila Bookwala met with Stebick on an unrelated matter, yet the topic of teacher certification was brought up, and Bookwala gained background information about the program and its removal. Bookwala then met with Stebick and McCutcheon for a follow-up meeting to learn more about their strong interest in the College continuing with teacher certification. Bookwala then invited them both to prepare a proposal to reinstate the teacher certification program, and Stebick took the lead role in that effort. The proposal, which was submitted to both Gettysburg College President Bob Iuliano and the President’s Council, was well-received, and the decision was made to officially relaunch teacher certification.

In her argument, Stebick showed that the required classes for certification were still being offered for music education, and she worked alongside the Admissions Office to cite information on how the removal of the program negatively impacted recruitment. In addition, Stebick included the Athletic Department in her proposal, as several student-athletes are interested in becoming teachers and/or coaches. She also consulted the Office of Student Success, the Office of Institutional Analysis and the Office of the Registrar, to assess anticipated net gains in revenue from a reinstatement.

The reinstatement effort also included the College’s English and History Departments as those subjects were previously offered as areas of focus for students graduating with a teacher certification. English Department Chair Christopher D’Addario wrote a letter of support for the reinstatement of the program, emphasizing its importance to English majors interested in teaching and confirming the commitment of the English Department to continue teaching the methods course necessary for certification. Former English Department Chair, English Professor Kathryn Rhett, was one of the first to argue against the program’s removal and was also involved in this effort. 

According to D’Addario, “Gettysburg is one of a few liberal arts colleges that offers a Teacher Certification program and its loss made the College less distinctive to prospective students. The program provides an excellent opportunity to Humanities majors especially interested in a pre-professional program; its presence makes the Humanities overall stronger at the college, something essential to Gettysburg’s identity as a liberal arts institution.” 

As stated by History Department Chair Dina Lowy, “As a department, we always felt it was important for teacher certification to be an option for students.”

The reinstatement of the program comes at a time when teachers across the country are in high demand, and Stebick believes that the certification program at Gettysburg College is pivotal given the shortage of teachers.

“Nationally, there’s a drastic teacher shortage. It is a crisis of how few teachers we have who are certified to be working in schools,” Stebick explained. “I’m very grateful that we have this opportunity to do this and for the support we have received from the President and the Provost’s Office.”

A graph demonstrating the number of students enrolled in education programs from 1985 to 2022.

From The Education Department to The Office of Teacher Education and Certification

In its first year, the Educational Studies minor attracted 21 students. At the time of its closure in 2022, the Education Department had a total of 34 students either enrolled in the minor or the teacher certification programs. Between 2014 and 2021, 190 students completed the Educational Studies minor, and another 90 students completed the teacher certification.

The Educational Studies minor was originally introduced in 2009 but was not offered to students as a minor until 2013. It was introduced by then-Professor of Education David Powell, who served as chair of Education from 2014-17 and again from 2019-20. It was not a popular idea at first among the faculty of the Education Department. Powell proposed the minor in response to changes in state guidelines for teacher certification, which led to the elimination of the College’s elementary certification program. He felt that the minor would allow for more students to not only understand how to teach but also help increase enrollment in Education courses. Powell also rewrote the curricular guidelines for the teacher certification program. 

Powell expressed that, “The Education program was exceptionally healthy—maybe as healthy as it had ever been—when the decision was made to close it. We also completed a self-study and external review in 2016 that affirmed the health of our programs.”

On why the teacher certification program was ended, Powell shared that “the real problem was not anyone’s leadership style, or philosophical differences, or even that culture of distrust: all of these things were magnified by the fact that we had seen a steady decline in the faculty resources available to us.” 

When this Powell member began their career at the college, the Education Department had five tenured or tenure-track faculty and additional adjunct support but by the time the department was closed, only two remained. The dwindling number of full-time faculty worsened stress and made cooperation difficult, thus threatening the strength of the programs offered.

Powell said, “When people left we didn’t always get those resources back, and so what that meant was that we had people who felt like they were doing more than they could handle. We were doing more with less; we were trying to be successful as a department and as a program without all the resources that we needed. That then put us in sort of this doom loop where people were just not feeling good about the work that they were doing.”

After the department closed, Powell received countless calls and emails from prospective students asking if the decision to close the department was permanent. When the previous Provost stepped down from their position, Powell approached Iuliano about why the administration made the decision to close the Education Department. In this conversation, Iuliano allegedly expressed that the department could not, and would not, continue on account of the College’s unwillingness to provide the resources necessary to ensure the health of the department.

“I said, ‘This might be a good time for us to reconsider the decision [to close the Education Department] and talk about it,’ and his response to that was we’re not going to reconsider it. The decision was made, it’s over with, and that’s that,” Powell explained.

Gettysburg College was the only local liberal arts college to offer a teacher certification program as Dickinson College and Franklin & Marshall College do not have these programs. In their discussions with Iuliano, Powell mentioned that this could have given Gettysburg an advantage in the college market.

The administration has now decided to restart the teacher certification program as part of the new Office of Teacher Education and Certification (OTEC). Stebick has been named the inaugural Director of OTEC.

Despite his efforts and experience with the program, Powell said he was never approached by Bookwala about the reinstatement of the Education programs and only discovered that the Educational Studies program would continue with a director after he moved to Public Policy: “I was never part of the conversation about restarting certification, and when I did ask about it (after hearing rumors and reading about it in the Gettysburgian), I was told that my help was not wanted or needed.”

Powell also claims that his exclusion from the new programs raises troubling questions about the administration’s handling of the situation.

“Restarting the certification program was the right thing to do––it never should have been closed in the first place. But the decision to restart the program was made almost as hastily as the decision to close, and both decisions were made without considering all of the implications or consulting everyone affected by the decisions,” Powell said. “The College is going through a lot of changes right now, and we have a right to know that changes are being made carefully and thoughtfully, not just expediently.”

Nevertheless, Powell said he is eager to move on.

“I poured my heart and soul into proving that we could have a viable Education Department at Gettysburg College, and I’m proud of what we accomplished when I was chair of the department,” he said. Powell did add that he is ready to focus on his new role as a member of the Public Policy Department.

“I wish I could turn back the clock on the decision to close Education, because I think it was a mistake,” Powell said, “but I still love the work I’m doing and the students I work with. As a good friend once told me, ‘Moving forward is always the better choice because you already know what’s behind you. There’s no adventure in that.’”

Despite this unease from some faculty members regarding the reestablished teacher certification program, there has been an outpouring of student support for the program. Casher completed his student teaching last semester and reflected on what the program has meant to him.

“Education is my passion, and when you find a group of passionate people like that on campus that are able to share that experience, it’s so valuable, socially but also academically, to be able to share your ideas and philosophies together,” Casher said. “It’s been the most rewarding experience in my Gettysburg College life… I’m really happy to know that the program’s back.”

This article originally appeared on pages 12 to 15 of the April 2024 edition of The Gettysburgian’s magazine.

(Editor’s Note: This article was edited at 11:59 a.m. on April 16, 2024 to clarify that “Student Success” and “Institutional Analysis” referred to the Office of Student Success and the Office of Institutional Analysis. – L. Franchetti)