Departmental seminar
Identifying Protective Possibilities in School Contexts to Enhance School Adjustment of At-Risk Children
Professor Gale M. Morrison
Dean, Graduate Division, University of California, Santa Barbara
Professor of Education in Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology
Chair : Dr Pattie Luk
16th April 09 (Thurs)
12:30 – 2:00 pm
B4-LP-09
AbstractThe focus of the seminar will be twofold. First, a longitudinal study of the educational and behavioral trajectories of a high risk group of late elementary school students will be described. Observations of the risk and resilience patterns across time of these students, and the school and family contexts within which they occur, will serve as a base for exploring protective possibilities in educational settings and the role that teachers, families and peers can play in these possibilities.
Gale M. Morrison, Ph.D. is Dean of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Santa Barbara, serving graduate programs in 45 departments and 6 Divisions/Colleges. She is also a Professor of Education in Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology. She was Acting Dean of the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB for a year and a half between 2005 and 2006. She has also contributed to UCSB in numerous other ways over the years, including as chair of the UCSB Academic Senate Graduate Council, and member of the UC Academic Senate Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs.
In her role with the Graduate Division, she served on the UC Systemwide Student Health Committee in 2006. She is currently the Chair of the UC Systemwide NSF AGEP (Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) Steering Committee. This past year she chaired a committee of faculty and senior administrators to coordinate our campus response to the National Research Council for its assessment of graduate doctoral programs.
Dr. Morrison received her Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of California, Riverside. When not serving in administration, she participates in a NASP-approved school psychology credential program and trains doctoral students in an APA-approved Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology program.
She recently completed a research project funded by the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (field-initiated research award). This research examined the risk and resilience patterns for upper elementary students with and without disabilities who were experiencing discipline problems at school. The project facilitated the documentation of the schooling trajectories of students as they transition to middle or junior high schools; during the tenure of the project, many of these students experienced involuntary transfers to alternative settings for their behavior (the beginning of being "pushed out" of school). Dr. Morrison has published work on resiliency with special needs children, as well as work on school safety and violence. She is one of the few research professionals in the nation that is publishing information about suspension/expulsion disciplinary processes as they affect special education students.
The seminar will appeal to students, professional teachers, school principles, curriculum officers, researchers in education and guidance and counseling as well as policy makers. Light refreshments will be provided to enrolled participants only.
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