Wheeler/Letter of Application
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September 17, 2015
Dr. Wanda Durrett Bigham
Senior Consultant
Academic Search
UNIDean@academic-search.com
Dear Members of the Search Committee:
I was recently notified that I had been nominated for the position as Dean of the College of
Education and Richard O. Jacobson Endowed Chair of Leadership in Education at the University
of Northern Iowa. I was honored to receive the nomination for such an important position at such
a fine university. The University of Northern Iowa is an institution of the highest quality with
outstanding programs, faculty and students located in a beautiful community.
I am very interested in the position and would like to submit my application for your
consideration. Please allow me to elaborate on my interest in the position and my professional
qualifications as they relate to the desired characteristics and attributes as outlined in your
position announcement.
Interest in the Position
My interest in the position is cultivated by my desire at this point in my career to serve in a
leadership and mentoring role. I have spent a considerable amount of time during my career
engaged in academic program development and administration both as a faculty member and
college-level administrator and enjoy the process of helping to build programs for the betterment
of faculty, staff and students.
From a personal standpoint, I am from the Midwest, having attended Southern Illinois University
at Carbondale so returning to the Heartland would feel like a return home for me. Professionally
speaking I can think of no better place than UNI with such a rich tradition of excellence and once
again recently identified by a number of sources as a highly rated institution and campus
community. The size and scope of the university paired with the location make it a very desirable
place to be and I would like to help in providing innovative leadership and service to the College
of Education and the university.
Professional Qualifications
I am currently Director of the Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Learning and
Development at East Tennessee State University. I was recruited for the position and it proved to
be a timely opportunity given one of our young adult children, a college student in
Tennessee was facing a potentially serious health concern that thankfully has been successfully
treated. I am grateful that my current appointment allowed me closer proximity during his time of
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need and that my son is doing well.
My current role as Director consists of leading a state recognized Center of Excellence with an
emphasis on early childhood development and learning for all children including those with
disabilities from birth to age 8-years. The Center’s mission is to promote awareness and
understanding of child development and learning for typically developing children and children
with developmental delays and or disabilities through professional development, technical
assistance, and applied research. We also host a large annual conference that has attendees from
throughout the U.S. and Canada.
During my tenure as Director, the Center has continued to sustain consistent core funding and
also introduced new initiatives such as the provision of technical assistance to pre-K-12 schools
in the area of autism and newly funded research to explore the cost/benefits of campus-childcare
in the recruitment, retention and graduation of non-traditional students who are also parents of
dependent children. We continue our outreach to schools, childcare programs and as a resource
to educational, health related professionals and families in southern Appalachia.
Previously I served as Dean of the College of Education and Human Development at Western
Michigan University. My college there consisted of undergraduate, graduate and advanced
graduate programs with a total of approximately 5,000 students. We were the third largest college
in the university overall, and the largest in terms of graduate enrollment.
The most notable accomplishments during my time as Dean at WMU included the development
of a National Center for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren that was a joint collaboration with
Georgia State University and the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. The national
center was designed to address the growing area of kinship care of children in our country
through the promotion of best and effective practices and in linking researchers and field-based
practitioners with the ultimate goal of enhancing services for custodial grandparent families. We
also established a Center for Educational Policy within the Department of Leadership, Research
and Technology aimed at addressing the needs of leadership within the nation’s schools,
including a teacher leadership program. Additionally, we secured a full six-year accreditation for
the Interior Design program in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, something that
had never been attempted, and finally through college financial support, the development of a
TeachLIVE lab for training special education teachers in conjunction with the University of
Central Florida, one of only six sites nationally. I was also actively engaged in fund raising while
there and worked with an outstanding development officer. Lastly, I felt very positive about these
program outcomes in spite of budget cuts of 20.5% in the state of Michigan that were the largest
cuts in the state’s history to higher education.
Throughout my career I have focused on the merger of teaching, research and service
aimed at capacity building through the establishment of training programs and the provision of
technical assistance including outreach services to children and families created and sustained
through external grants. The best example of this was the 16-years I spent at Tennessee Tech
University (1994-2010). For twelve of these years, I served as Associate Dean and Director of
Doctoral Studies at Tennessee Technological University. During this time, my professional
responsibilities included program development, budgeting for the college, assisting with program
accreditation in our teacher education program i.e., NCATE (CAEP), procurement of external
grants, and serving as director of the Ph.D. program. I was involved in the design, delivery and
evaluation of teacher education programs including licensure and accreditation at both state and
national levels. I also collaborated with the College of Engineering to assist in recruiting
international students for our graduate program and we were successful in recruiting some
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outstanding students from China and Zimbabwe. Not only did they enrich our program but have
gone on to successful careers serving in key academic and leadership positions.
While at Tennessee Tech University, I directed a program in positive behavior supports for
children with special needs and those deemed at-risk for challenging behavior. We received
contiguous funding from the Tennessee Department of Education for sixteen years for this project
that was designed to build capacity in rural and underserved Pre-K-12 schools in the area of
positive behavior supports. We served 22-counties located in a very poor region of Tennessee that
was most recently recognized as the 6th poorest economic region in the nation. Our model also
focused on applied training for our students at the graduate and advanced graduate levels as they
worked in teams within partnering schools providing supports to children, their families and
classroom teachers.
I also have experience within urban areas and from these experiences am aware of the challenges
facing children, their families and educators in our cities. A few years ago I was asked to serve as
an Esteemed Mentor Scholar, an honorary appointment at Cleveland State University located in
Cleveland, Ohio. I served as an external mentor for three-years to a beginning tenure track faculty
member. During this time, I made several trips to Cleveland to mentor and assist in the
development of a research plan for this individual. We also worked directly with urban educators
providing professional development workshops and training on challenges facing teachers and
administrators throughout the greater Cleveland area.
As far as innovative practice, I have had the pleasure of working with federal and state
departments of education on various projects over the years including program development
activities and grant projects. In the area of grants I have served as P.I. or Co P.I. on several
projects totaling $5,359,514 dollars and many of these were projects aimed at building local and
regional capacity through professional development, technical assistance and applied research in
regional schools. Currently, I just completed a text for Pearson on inclusive education that will be
an e-text featuring live links and also one of the first to be totally compliant with Section 508
(Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act) so that students with hearing or visual impairments can
fully access the content. I have also been enlisted by colleagues here in the Department of
Exercise and Sports Science and our regional Olympic training center to assist in developing a
curriculum and program emphasis movement and play for area children and also intended to
provide exposure to Olympic sports.
In closing, my leadership style is one that is open and transparent and aimed at representing the
best interests of the faculty, staff and students through communication and collaboration. Given
the challenges we are facing in higher education it is essential that we strive to build collaborative
learning communities that are directed towards innovation and improving the student experience,
expanding knowledge and positively impacting the world in which we live.
Thank you for your consideration of my application and I look forward to learning more as the
process unfolds.
Sincerely,
John J. Wheeler
John J. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Director and Professor