Mutual Regard — A profile of CEHD dean Steven Yussen
By Suzy Frisch
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Access, the General College magazine.
As General College faculty and students prepare to move next year to their new home in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), they will encounter many new colleagues, research projects, and programs. Here is an introduction to a few of our new colleagues. Look for more profiles of CEHD faculty and staff in the final two issues of Access.
For Steven Yussen, life right now is all about change. As dean of the College of Education and Human Development, he is shepherding the college through a transformation as it takes on General College and, from the disbanding College of Human Ecology, the School of Social Work and the Department of Family Social Science. He is also preparing to return to teaching in 2007 after eight years as dean.
A specialist in child development, Yussen will take a sabbatical in 2006-07 and then come back to the University as a professor in the new College of Education and Human Development. (A national search for a new College of Education and Human Development dean is under way.) “Change is always challenging, but it’s good,” he said. “We change whether we plan it or not, and you need to be excited about it.”
Yussen couldn’t be more excited about the “enormous” opportunities he sees for academic collaboration once General College becomes a department in the College of Education and Human Development. After all, the professors in his college research how students from kindergarten through high school learn, and the faculty of General College study learning in college-age students.
“With our General College colleagues, the colleagues we have in the existing college, and then with the School of Social Work and Family Social Science, we have an enormous opportunity to look at schools, family, and communities across a broader age range than we did before. We also have the prospect of looking at access questions beyond the K–12 arena,” said Yussen. “We then become a more powerful intellectual force within the college, the University, and across the country.”
Yussen said the faculty in the College of Education and Human Development are looking forward to working with their new GC colleagues. “There is a perception in the current college that the General College faculty is very strong, that it’s a program well known around the country, and well regarded,” said Yussen. “We have some of the world’s experts here in the fields they work in, so we’re very excited about the change.”
Yussen, who earned his Ph.D. from the University’s Institute of Child Development, spent 19 years teaching child development at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and seven at the University of Iowa as a professor and dean of the College of Education. This avid marathon runner is most interested in cognitive development, memory, learning, and reading comprehension in school-age children. Since he returned to the college as dean in 1998, Yussen has taught a freshman seminar on the world of reading and a course for teachers on early adolescence.
During his sabbatical, Yussen will plan future research projects and prepare to teach full time at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He said, “I’m also going to look around and see how an old timer can be of help in the policy world.“ With more than 30 years under his belt, Yussen has plenty to offer.
The way W. Andrew (Andy) Collins sees it, the faculty from General College already share a common bond with professors in the College of Education and Human Development. They all are focused on finding effective ways to teach, whether it’s educating younger students or those entering college. It’s an area he sees as rich for future collaboration between new colleagues as professors from General College become part of the College of Education and Human Development.
Collins hasn’t done any research projects with GC professors, but he has participated in a few committees at the college to explore potential research projects.
“I’ve always had respect for General College, that’s not an issue,” said Collins. “The one thing I’ve encountered in General College is a real commitment to the quality of teaching. I see that as a point of connection.”
After earning a Ph.D. from Stanford University, Collins came to the University of Minnesota in 1971. Collins is a professor of child development, a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Child Psychology, and director of the doctoral minor program on interpersonal relationships research. His focus is on socialization, social development, and the significance of close relationships.
Collins has been an investigator for the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, in partnership with professors Byron Egeland and Alan Sroufe. In its 28th year, the study tracks individual development in 180 participants to understand the factors that guide people toward good or poor outcomes. The participants came from families in poverty who were at risk for child abuse.
Collins’ area of interest has been on the subjects’ normative social development and the way they relate to their parents and romantic partners. “We do find that early care makes a difference. It’s not the only important factor—later experiences make a difference as well,” he said. “A consistently strong predictor of hostility between a couple in early adulthood is very strongly predicted by care in their early relationships—if they had indifferent or unresponsive care from their parents. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If people weren’t there for you, you carry residual anger and hostility about it.”
In addition, Collins teaches undergraduate courses in development and interpersonal relationships, graduate courses in socio- and emotional development, and a proseminar on interpersonal relationship research. When General College professors join the College of Education and Human Development, he said, they can look forward to “wonderful collegiality and faculty who have great support for each other.”
Getting students excited about learning statistics and improving the teaching of statistics has been the life’s work of Professor Joan Garfield. She’s passionate about teaching the subject, showing students its relevance and importance, and preparing other teachers to do the same.
A professor of educational psychology, Garfield has been on the University faculty since 1981. She started out in General College, where she taught mathematics and statistics. In 1995 she moved to the College of Education and Human Development to teach statistics, statistics education, and statistics education research to graduate students. She is also director of the graduate program on statistics education.
Garfield has been honored many times for her teaching abilities, receiving the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award, the CEHD Distinguished Teaching Award, and The Founders Award, the highest honor given by the American Statistical Association. She strives to mitigate students’ fears about learning math and statistics by making the subject fascinating and fun.
“I’ve been trying to help people learn statistics in a very positive way, to empower people to use statistics and statistics theory to make the learning of statistics an enjoyable and empowering activity,” said Garfield. “That’s been a big theme in my work during the past 25 years.”
As a professor who made the transition 10 years ago from General College to CEHD, Garfield said the GC community should view the move as a “great opportunity to be part of one of the top-ranked colleges of education in the country and work with top-notch faculty who are doing exciting things and are good colleagues.”
A longtime collaborator with GC Associate Professor Robert delMas, Garfield plans to continue working on research projects with him. She sees opportunities for research that teams GC and CEHD professors to study learning, assessment, social psychology, or the teaching of specific subject areas.
Garfield believes that the General College community will find a welcoming home in the new college, just as she has. “I think the College of Education and Human Development is a very vibrant and stimulating community with a lot of great research going on,” she said. “It’s a wonderful environment in which to work. There are great colleagues, support for innovative teaching, and excellent help in getting research grants. It’s a positive environment.”
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