Overview
FDU's Sammartino School of Education Brings First-Rate Curriculum, Multi-Campus Structure to New Jersey Higher Education
Of all institutions offering New Jersey higher education, Fairleigh Dickinson University is the largest private one with more than 11,000 students, which includes some 4,000 graduate students. While most graduate students come from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, FDU continues to attract a significant number of students from around the nation and around the world. The same is true of the Sammartino School of Education.
Through rigorous education and innovative research the Sammartino School imparts both the personal and professional skills that graduates need. Helping toward this goal is the multi-campus structure of Sammartino's graduate studies programs, which are offered on FDU's two northern New Jersey campuses (Metropolitan Campus in Teaneck and College at Florham in Madison).
Courses are also held at the university's overseas campus - Wroxton College in Oxfordshire, England - which serves to amplify the point of the multi-campus structure's value. That there is an engineering master's program available completely on-line, and that other graduate programs include online and distance learning coursework, suggests similar options may be available at Sammartino in the future.
The School of Education also has a Center for Dyslexia Studies, which offers a range of training programs for mastering the Orton-Gillingham approach. A straightforward, phonics-based approach to teaching affected students how to read, write, and spell, the Language Tool Kit approach helps future teachers reach affected students. An extensive, intimately supervised practicum is an essential element of this program. Of the remedial methods in use today for teaching dyslexic students, the Orton-Gillingham approach has been shown most effective.
Sammartino School Offers MA in Educational Leadership, MA in Learning Disabilities, and MA in Teaching
The MA in Educational Leadership has a state-of-the-art program ultimately based on the real-life demands facing today's teachers. The focus is on developing the vision of schools, as communities of learners, into real, working educational environments.
Graduates of the program will have developed core competencies in both administrative strategies and professional skills, in order to engage all educational community members in decisions and processes. Small group interaction, simulations, and problem-based learning challenges will form the core of the hands-on curriculum for an MA in Educational Leadership. In the second year, students can apply the educational theories from formal coursework in a full-year field practicum in schools where they can observe outstanding practitioners.
An MA in Learning Disabilities is available for licensed teachers with work experience in special education environments. They can direct their skills toward teaching in the field, or diagnosing learning difficulties and designing instructional programs for preschool through grade 12. One can opt to become a teacher of students with disabilities or a learning disabilities teacher consultant in Sammartino's MA in Learning Disabilities degree program, accredited by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC).
At Fairleigh Dickinson, the MA in Teaching is a graduate program for making teachers of those who hold a baccalaureate degree in liberal arts or sciences. If they desire to join the teaching profession, the MA in Teaching program is designed to build on their solid undergraduate academics and get them into the classroom. Adding the student's other educational and work-related experiences to this thorough program provides an effective route to state teacher certification.
Sammartino School of Education Faculty and Students Bring Insights Out of the Research Facilities and into the Classroom
Sammartino School of Education faculty members represent a wide range of trained scientists, educators, and education specialists. With professional backgrounds as school administrators, classroom teachers, technologists, various specialists, and clinicians, they are intimately involved in helping the teaching profession evolve through their research, professional journal publishing, and consulting work, as well as local, state, national, and international educational conference presentations. Also actively involved in professional educational organizations, faculty members are encouraged to think critically (and creatively) to confront the real-world challenges facing today's teachers and scholars.
Part of the school's mission is to integrate current research findings and new technologies into teaching practices. Through the collegial approach that fosters a spirit of teamwork between and among the various faculties, the School of Education produces well-prepared professionals to both teach and conduct research.
The close and ongoing collaborative partnerships the school enjoys with P-12 school districts and educational/business groups also leads to numerous research efforts that support common goals. Graduate students can share in the excitement of developing pedagogical methods to improve learning behaviors, and watch their findings have real effect beyond the research facilities, in the lives of real students.
Fairleigh Dickinson provides extensive research facilities that support educational research, primarily strong, broad, and deep library resources and powerful computing assets. With teamwork among the faculty of different schools and programs a natural part of the process at FDU, there are always numerous routes to another breakthrough as well as varying ways to measure, assess, and interpret results of testing and other research.
