10 September 2015
Dr. Wanda Durrett Bigham, Senior Consultant
Academic Search
RE:
Application for Dean of the College of Education, University of Northern Iowa
Dear Dr. Bigham:
I am currently the founding Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University
in Astana, Kazakhstan. I have previously served as the Executive Dean of the Faculty of
Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, as the Dean of
the School of Education at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and as the
Executive Associate Dean in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut in
Storrs, Connecticut. I am writing to apply for the position of Dean of the College of Education
and the Richard O. Jacobson Endowed Chair of Leadership Education at the University of
Northern Iowa, a position for which I believe I am well-qualified and which I think would provide
me with an extremely rewarding setting in which to apply the skills and insights that I have been
able to obtain over the course of my career.
In my present position, I have been responsible for the design and implementation of an entirely
new graduate school of education, one whose mission is to offer world-class training and
research in support of the government’s educational reform efforts, as well as to engage in
extensive capacity building to prepare the next generation of educational researchers and
practitioners. Kazakhstan is undertaking a massive national reform at all levels, K-16+, of its
educational system, and the Graduate School of Education has been tasked with playing a key
role in these reforms. My role as Dean of the School has been the recruitment of an
outstanding group of faculty members, the establishment and implementation of a total of six
M.Sc. and M.A. programs as well as the University’s first Ph.D. program, and the recruitment of
exceptionally well-qualified students for these programs. I have, in addition, been expected to
participate at the national level in policy debates and discussions related to educational reform,
and at the same time have played an important role in the development of academic
governance in the University at large.
As Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University, I am responsible for all
academic, financial and administrative matters in the School. This includes oversight of all
academic programs (as well as the development of new academic programs), student
recruitment and retention, faculty recruitment and evaluation, promotion of research activities,
budgeting, quality assurance activities, and external fund-raising. An important part of my role
as Dean of a new graduate school of education has been providing leadership for strategic
planning for the School. Although I report directly to the Provost of the University, my position
differs from that of the other deans at Nazarbayev University in that the Graduate School of
Education is a separate legal entity from the University itself, which means that I have greater
responsibility with respect to financial and legal matters than do the other deans.
My previous administrative experience in universities, outlined in detail on my CV, includes work
at every level from Department Chair through Executive Dean. I have held faculty appointments
in educational foundations, educational leadership, linguistics, pediatrics and teacher education,
and served as the Department Head for the Department of Educational Leadership and as
Executive Associate Dean of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, as
Dean of the School of Education at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, as
Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, South Africa, and as the ‘CSU Distinguished Professor of Education’ and Chair of
the Department of Teacher Education at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain,
Connecticut.
My administrative experience at the University of Connecticut included a full three-year term of
service as the Executive Associate Dean of the Neag School of Education. In that role, I was
responsible for the daily operation of all aspects of the School of Education, including
undergraduate and graduate academic programs, grant and research activities, the merit,
promotion and tenure processes, management and support of diversity efforts, technology and
program development initiatives, oversight of facilities management, budget preparation and
monitoring, and NCATE and state accreditation. I also served as the legal certification officer for
the University, and as the Co-Chair of the Dean’s Administrative Council of the Neag School of
Education. At the end of my term of service, I was asked by the faculty of the Department of
Educational Leadership to become the Head of Department to manage change during a
particularly difficult period in the history of the department, and did so, serving in that capacity
for about a year and a half. I left the University of Connecticut to become Dean of the School of
Education at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, in July 2004, and was a very
successful and effective administrator, as I had been at the University of Connecticut, in a
smaller, private setting. While at Roger Williams University, I was responsible for the
development of several new programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, for a very
successful staff recruitment campaign, and for beginning the on-going internationalization of
the curriculum of the School of Education. I was also very effective at forging close academic
and personal ties between the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences, an area
that had been of some concern at the time of my arrival. I left Roger Williams University after
being actively recruited by the University of the Witwatersrand for the position of Executive
Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. The position at the University of the Witwatersrand
presented an incredibly exciting opportunity for me, both because of the importance of the
University in South Africa, in Africa more generally, and globally, and because of the potential of
the institution to be a truly world-class research institution based in an urban, African setting.
The position of Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities was both challenging and fulfilling,
and I receive considerable satisfaction from all that we were able to accomplish while I was
there. I returned to Connecticut for family reasons, and to Central Connecticut State University,
in the capacity of a senior faculty member, but was asked by the Dean and Provost to take over
as Chair of the Department of Teacher Education, one of the largest and most challenging
departments in the university, and held that appointment until moving to Kazakhstan.
In selecting a new dean, one of the more important concerns that faculty and other
stakeholders should have is the sort of leadership style that an individual is likely to exhibit. My
leadership style has been consistently described by others as a collegial and collaborative one,
and has been based in large part in my own experience as a faculty member. I believe that a
dean should be as accessible as possible to faculty members as well as to members of other
constituencies of the institution. . It is the job of the dean to serve both as an advocate for the
College to the rest of the university and to external constituencies, while at the same time
providing academic and professional leadership within the College.
Since I strongly believe that a university administrator should also be an accomplished scholar, I
think that it is appropriate for me to comment briefly on my work and accomplishments in this
regard. My work has been both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in nature, and has been
focused primarily on issues of language, language teaching and learning, and language policy
studies. I have published more than 125 refereed journal articles and book chapters dealing
with educational linguistics, foreign language education, and language policy and planning, as
well as on the linguistics of natural sign languages (American Sign Language and South African
Sign Language in particular). I have authored and co-authored more than a dozen academic
books; the most recent are Language Planning and Language Policy for Sign Languages,
published by Gallaudet University Press in the Fall of 2010, and Comparative Studies in
Educational Analysis, published by Information Age Publishing in 2013.
As indicated on my CV, I have also presented widely at international conferences, often as an
invited keynote or plenary speaker, and have been active with respect to gaining grants related
to applied linguistics and foreign language education. I have served as a grant reviewer for
linguistics research projects funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States, and
by the National Research Foundation in South Africa, and have served as an external reader for
Ph.D. dissertations at a number of South African universities. I also have considerable
experience as a journal editor and as an active member of the editorial boards of a number of
international journals, and have co-edited both special issues of journals and books. For
instance, I co-edited a special volume of the journal Language Problems and Language Planning
(2004) that dealt explicitly with issues of language and language policy in South Africa, as well as
a book entitled Language in the 21st Century (John Benjamins, 2003). At present, I am also the
Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Language Problems and Language Planning. I was
also recommended by the University of the Witwatersrand to become a ‘rated researcher’ with
the National Research Foundation in South Africa, which is intended to be a recognition given to
senior scholars and researchers with significant international reputations. My selection as the
‘CSU Distinguished Professor of Education’ during the past academic year is the highest honor
that can be conveyed on a faculty member in the Connecticut State University system, and was
based primarily on my research and teaching records.
Although language has been the central focus of my research, it has not been the only relevant
area in which I have worked. I have been interested in and concerned with the preparation of
future educators, and have made important contributions to the literature in the area of teacher
education, especially with respect to the role of reflective practice in teacher education. The
book which I co-authored with Chuck Case and John Brubacher, Becoming a Reflective Educator:
How to Build a Culture of Inquiry in the Schools (Corwin Press, 2000), is in its second edition and
has been translated into Spanish; another book, co-authored with Kay Norlander-Case and
Chuck Case, The Professional Teacher: The Preparation and Nurturance of the Reflective
Practitioner Jossey-Bass, 1999), explored similar themes from a more institutional perspective.
My most recent publication is a co-authored book for future educational administrators entitled
Leading Dynamic Schools: How to Create and Implement Ethical Policies (Corwin Press, 2008). I
have also been interested in various non-western and indigenous educational traditions, and am
the author of what has been described as the foundational work on this subject, Non-Western
Educational Traditions: Indigenous Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice (Lawrence
Erlbaum, 2005), which is now in its third edition. I have also published work on issues concerned
with multiculturalism and diversity in society and education, issues of racism in educational
domination, constructivist approaches to understanding teaching and learning, and with the
development of reflective practice in teaching professionals. I believe that my work in these
areas provides an additional depth and breadth to my work, and that it makes me a far more
interesting and effective scholar and teacher.
As an educator, I have always believed that teaching is an essential part of my function as a
scholar and university citizen. Throughout my career, I have been consistently evaluated as an
outstanding classroom teacher by students, peers and supervisors. My experience includes
teaching courses in educational foundations, linguistics, foreign language education, bilingual
education, and TESOL, as well as in research methodologies, at both the undergraduate and
graduate levels, as well as in curricular and program development in all of these areas. I believe
that my experience working initially as a secondary school teacher, and later in both Schools of
Education and Colleges of Arts and Sciences, has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to
develop my pedagogical skills, as well as to become aware of the challenges and dilemmas that
face educators in a wide array of different kinds of teaching and learning settings. Working with
both pre- and in-service language teachers, as well as with advanced doctoral candidates, has
helped me to develop strong mentoring skills that have also been useful in dealing with the
scholarly development of junior colleagues in the university. I have also had extensive
experience in designing academic programs, including graduate programs, and my work in such
areas has been recognized both nationally and internationally.
With respect to service, I have been very active in a number of national and international
professional organizations, as well as having played a key role in all aspects of university
governance. My experience as a university faculty member and, more recently, as a university
administrator, has involved me in virtually every kind of committee service at the departmental,
school and university levels, and I have consistently played an important leadership role at every
institution at which I have worked. As Executive Associate Dean at the University of Connecticut
for several years, as Dean of the School of Education at Roger Williams University, as the
Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand, and as
Chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Central Connecticut State University, I have
had a wide range of university responsibilities, and have generally been viewed by colleagues as
an energetic and successful administrator. Here at Nazarbayev University, I serve as an active
member of the Academic Council, the Research Council and the University Council – the three
most important governance bodies at the University. Over the course of my career, I have
served, and in most cases chaired, virtually every major committee in the university. Finally, I
have been deeply involved in accreditation activities, especially (though not exclusively) with
NCATE, and have worked successfully in a number of different institutional settings to achieve
full accreditation.
In short, I believe that I would be a strong candidate for the position of Dean of the College of
Education and the Richard O. Jacobson Endowed Chair of Leadership Education at the University
of Northern Iowa. I am attaching in electronic form my current CV, which contains all of my
relevant contact information as well as names of professional references. If there is any
additional information or material that might be helpful to you, please let me know. I look
forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Timothy Reagan
Timothy Reagan, Ph.D.
Dean, Graduate School of Education