PDATE: You were one of several members of the committee that began the process to establish the Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) in Illinois. Our readers can access the full history of that agreement at http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/Board/Agendas/2003/D
ecember/Item%2013.pdf. Please summarize your experience, as an administrator and representative from the University of Illinois, in embarking on this important initiative.

Dr. Evans: One of the decisions that we made early on—Dave Pierce, Stan Ikenberry, and myself—was that this process would be more ‘top down’ rather than ‘bottom up’; that is, we first got an agreement among IBHE, ICCB, and ISBE that reinforced it was a good idea—something we needed to do. And then we went to the presidents of the community colleges, chief academic officers, and deans of colleges of education. That’s an important issue because it was …the proverbial double-edged sword. [Starting with a small group of leaders] allowed us to move along quickly at first, but it concerned some people. In higher education people need to have a voice. Our original thought was, ‘Let’s hold off on that and bring everybody to the table later.’ Our concern was that [trying to launch this with all stakeholders involved] we would not be able to move it forward at all. So, we had to go back and listen to people and their concerns, and that was fine. Once we had buy-in at the dean and CAO levels, we involved the faculty, department heads, transfer coordinators, etc. Here was the key: Every time we brought the faculty together, we made true progress.

UPDATE: In an article about the establishment of Illinois’ AAT, written by Dr. Ikenberry and Victor Perez for the Fall 2003 issue of UPDATE (see http://occrl.ed.uiuc.edu/Newsletter/2003/
fall/fall2003_1.asp), the authors refer to the “necessity and importance of a seamless system that would allow all students to freely navigate the education pipeline and enjoy a smooth transition from one education level to the next.” Within the larger context of the P-16 initiative, the AAT was cited as one creative solution. Please describe the ground-breaking nature of the collaboration that was necessary to accomplish the AAT.

Dr. Evans: What we [traditionally] do in education is a lot of parallel play. We have a common goal, but rarely do we touch together the same product, and try and shape it. Everything tends to be rather sequential. So, K-12 does their thing, then there’s a hand-off to the community college; they do their thing, then there’s another hand-off [to the 4-year institutions]. It’s not a criticism; it’s more a statement about the importance of looking at things from the P-16 perspective, as opposed to the peace-meal, distributed way we do it now. What we were trying to do was to shape that collaboration. So, I do believe ground-breaking is an accurate term.

UPDATE: The AAT was partially designed to attract a more diverse population of students into teaching: those from urban and rural areas in hopes that they would return to teach in those areas where shortages were, and still are, prevalent. What kinds of recruitment strategies have you employed to attract these students to this [AAT] degree at the community colleges?

Dr. Evans: One of the ideas that we had early on was to advertise appropriately so that students were aware of the AAT. The other aspect was in providing solid counseling for students when they approached the community colleges. That [counseling] piece is in place. And it’s really now, in articles like this, and in actually doing advertising—placing ads in newspapers, etc.—that we’re accomplishing that. But we wanted to have a sufficient number of programs at the community colleges and have them articulated with the universities before we did that. So we chose to have the structure in place before we advertised and had people knocking on doors, and no one there to answer!

UPDATE: It appears that the AAT process might have been enabled from the state’s adoption of a standards-based teacher licensure through NCATE, (see http://www.ncate.org/public/
aboutNCATE.asp ) about the same time the AAT came into existence in Illinois. Even so, an effort of this magnitude requires institutional changes that are inherent and necessary when stakeholders from different types of higher education institutions collaborate. What were those changes within the context of the 4-year institutions?

Dr. Evans: When ISBE moved to a standards-based approach to teacher education it encouraged individual institutions to be creative and innovative, within the standards, in their approaches. One of the prevailing thoughts was that when the shift was made to standards-based [licensure] was that we would end up with ‘cookie-cutter’ programs—they’d all look the same. Well, if that had been the case, our job would have been much easier! What actually happened was that institutions took ISBE at their word, and so, a program in the teaching of math, or science, or special education at [one university] was often significantly different than a [corresponding] program at another university. Keep in mind, the idea of standards-based licensure is that when the student graduates, certain things will have occurred. What it doesn’t address—and here’s where innovation and creativity comes in—is the sequence of when and how those things will occur. When a student [graduates] we say they have been exposed to ‘A, B, and C’ and have done ‘X, Y, and Z.’ But, the AAT doesn’t dictate—and it shouldn’t—when and how those experiences occur or when that knowledge is acquired, etc. The [AAT process] forced institutions like UIUC to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got this excellent program crafted in Special Education. It’s one of the best in the country. Now, how do we collaborate with not only community colleges, but also other 4-year institutions in the state?’ We had to rethink how our excellent programs throughout the state—all somewhat different in very meaningful ways from each other—would be the same [in their end product]. We wanted to come up with a transfer program that would articulate to any of the public, and we hoped many of the private, universities. And, from the timing perspective, how we could allow students from any community college that has special education, and math and science, or early childhood education, to transfer in. That was difficult. That’s where we really had to get the faculty together to determine how we could retain quality programs, but at the same time to allow these unique differences. We hadn’t thought that way before. That was one institutional change.

Traditionally, [educators and administrators] have developed programs by getting faculty together and saying, ‘What is the best way to do [X program]?’ Now, we are saying, ‘You’ve already got [X program]. How now, can students coming from elsewhere fit into that program?’ That also required a change. And it required changes in the general education [Gen Ed] core curriculum. It is amazing how fined-tuned our programs are. The Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI) has done a lot of good here. This really pushed the envelope on the IAI because in [community college] teacher ed programs we have courses and curriculum feeding into specific junior/senior teacher ed programs that really affect the Gen Ed core. So, again, it forced us to rethink what was really critical to our programs, often requiring a look at sequencing.

UPDATE: I see in your response that one of the innovative things that was also difficult was that you had to think of this new articulation concept as more than a vertical model.

Dr. Evans: Correct. That’s where those faculty meetings became important. Picture this: you have this room with 40 special ed [professors] in it from the public and some private universities. We also had teacher ed faculty from community colleges, who tend to be generalists as opposed to specialists. So, we had all those people together, and we had to look at it not only horizontally, and vertically, but also diagonally. If we were going to come up with one program that would feed into all the other programs, we really had to rethink, ‘Why did we put that in?’, and ‘When can we move it around so it works?’ One of the terms that we used to solve this confusion was equitable treatment of AAT graduates. What we found was that with those very unique programs there is no way that a student graduating from [one particular community college] with an AAT in Special Education, for example, was going to be able to transfer equally, the same, to any of the dozen public university teacher ed programs because of the uniqueness of those programs. So, what we agreed to was equitable treatment. We guarantee to the students who come in that they will be able to graduate in the same amount of time that residential students going through that program at the 4-year institution will graduate in. But they might not take exactly the same program because they might have some things out of sequence.

For example, students transferring to UIUC with an AAT in Math would be on an equitable basis with the residential students, equally prepared. To be a teacher education student in Math at UIUC, one has to be a Math major. Generally speaking, the student who graduates from [a high school], unless he or she has thought it through and has taken a very rigorous Math program at that high school, is going to be behind and will have to take some extra courses. That’s equity. What we did [foresee] was that when students transfer in with an AAT degree, they will have had some things that the residential students will not have had; and at the same time they, maybe, will not have some other things. What we called ‘the promise of the AAT’ means that both kinds of students will be treated equitably. The [transfer students] will be given credit for the things they have taken that perhaps residential students have not, they might have to take some things in their junior year, and accommodations will have to be made accordingly. That’s the promise of the AAT: equitable treatment. That allows the universities to retain their innovation and at the same time to protect students coming in.

UPDATE: I can see where that could be very complicated, and have to be treated almost on an individual basis.

Dr. Evans: In some cases it is. Generally, what happens is that it just works quite well. When the university programs were crafted, the differences weren’t significant because we were working from a standard space. But there were differences [in creating the AAT]; we had to address them and that’s how we did it while protecting the students.

UPDATE: What kinds of ongoing maintenance efforts to this agreement are required among institutions?

Dr. Evans: Mainly two: One is that our world in teaching is very dynamic. We continue to make improvements. For every time a program changes at a university level, we need to make sure that everything is still articulated and in place. The second thing we’re seeing (which should come as no surprise), is that there are [preferred] pathways being created. While the AAT is set up to allow a student to graduate from any community college with an AAT and then to go to any public or participating private university, there are still [historic] ‘pathways.’ For example, folks from western Illinois tend to go to Western Illinois University. While the AAT is set up [for universal transfer] what we’re seeing now is a fine tuning among community colleges and what one might call ‘primary providers.’ That’s no surprise, and that’s good. But we’re always having to monitor it, which is what IBHE is doing now: going back to make sure that the AAT remains inclusive, not allowing changes that would only apply to certain community colleges and a 4-year institution in one pathway while creating a disadvantage to those not in that primary pathway.

UPDATE: Has the establishment of this initiative inspired other processes wherein the 2-year and 4-year institutions work together for student, education, and workforce needs, creating what Debra Bragg has called "systemic linkages" and what Barbara Townsend and Jan Ignash have termed "greater systemic efficiency?"

Dr. Evans: Yes, we have certainly seen, in my opinion, a greater support of and interest in both the IAI and what you see now coming in the Course Applicability System [CAS]. While those initiatives, particularly the IAI, have been around for a long time, we’re noticing much more interest across other disciplines of how we can [think systemically] now the AAT has shown that it is possible within education. So, we’re seeing a much more collaborative approach to program development in other areas. I see it in both community colleges and at the university level (see http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/
reports_retreats/p16_document.asp#toward). Take, for example, program development from a 4-year perspective: Twenty-five years ago the universities developed the programs and the community colleges had to fit in. Now, it’s much more of a partnership approach - more of a collaborative. And we see in the IAI and CAS that people are looking in other disciplines to do it. Part of this is pushed by society also: the expectation that the students will be able to get through [college] in four years. Keep in mind that is not only a parental expectation, it’s also public policy. Now people are saying if it’s working in education, it can work everywhere.

UPDATE: The national literature on forming the AAT indicates that very few 4-year institutions resisted it, and the resistance from 2-year colleges was confined to the area of possible proliferation of associate's degrees. What about the Illinois experience?

Dr. Evans: People always agreed on the AAT at a conceptual level, and not just because it was good public policy. I think a majority of the people we encountered and worked with believed in our goals: to produce more teachers and better teachers who were aligned with the needs of the state of Illinois. That meant we had to have better racial alignment and people comfortable in urban settings and people comfortable in rural settings. Everybody agreed to that. The challenge, (I’m not sure I would call it resistance) was that with these very individualized programs that people were proud of, how could we make the necessary changes to allow the AAT to work for all students and programs. I think it’s sort of like when most people look ahead at a very hard task, the natural leaning is, ‘Oh my gosh! Do I have to do that?’ So, it wasn’t resistance; it was more of the recognition of all the work that would be necessary to accomplish our goal. Yet, when people actually ‘got in the pool’—when the faculty got together—I found that most of that reluctance or fear of ‘how are we going to do this?’ just melted away. We all really wanted this to occur. So, it wasn’t resistance or reluctance, but a respect of the challenge we had in front of us.

Dr. Charles Evans is Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Director of University Outreach and Public Service at the University of Illinois. He can be reached at cevans4@uillinois.edu.