College of Education

Preparing proactive educators to improve the lives of all children.

Mission

The College of Education offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs to prepare teachers at the initial and advanced levels. Programs of study include undergraduate programs in Elementary Education, Middle Grades Education, Secondary Education, Art Education, Educational Studies, and Drama Education. Graduate programs at both the initial and advanced certification levels include master’s programs in Art Education, Elementary Education, Middle Grades Education, Music Education, four content areas in Secondary Education, and Special Education. The College also offers the Education Specialist and Doctor of Education degrees in Curriculum and Instruction.

The theme of the College of Education is “Mastering the art of teaching: Preparing proactive educators to improve the lives of all children.” The College of Education strives to prepare scholarly, reflective, proactive educators in a caring environment with challenging and meaningful learning experiences. These practitioners effectively educate their own students to become knowledgeable, inquisitive, and collaborative learners in diverse, democratic learning communities.

Specific continuous commitments support our conceptual framework. These commitments are reflection, collaboration, leadership, expertise, and democratic principles. We advocate for reflection in all educational contexts, collaboration with our students and community, and shared responsibility in decision-making and effective communication. As an institution, we are committed to transformational learning that is embedded in relevant and innovative experiences for all learners, and we are committed to the principles of fairness, equity, shared governance, and inclusivity.

We endorse the following processes as a means of striving for our democratic ideals: engaging in participatory decision-making; collaborating in teaching and learning; reflecting in all educational contexts; collecting information from all constituencies; examining options and projecting consequences; nurturing open discourse; providing meaningful field experiences; assessing processes as well as products; modeling democratic ideals in the classroom; forming communities of learners; and constantly revising the curriculum to reflect new insights and understandings. Further, we endorse the development of a sense of personal integrity and we demonstrate our collective belief that all individuals have the potential to learn and the right to an education.

Students’ Responsibility

Students must assume full responsibility for knowledge of the policies, rules, and regulations of the College of Education and the University, and of departmental requirements concerning their individual programs. Students are also responsible for meeting deadlines as published on the University website. In no case will a regulation be waived or an exception be granted because a student pleads ignorance of the regulation or asserts that the individual was not informed of a specific requirement by an advisor or other University personnel.

All Piedmont students are required to utilize the Piedmont email system for the dissemination of information by the administration. Students are responsible for all information distributed in this manner.

Continuation and completion of all programs is contingent upon demonstration of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn as described in the College of Education Conceptual Framework and InTASC standards. Piedmont University reserves the right to withdraw a teacher candidate from teacher education for failure to meet these outcomes.

Students must be knowledgeable about professional ethics and social behavior appropriate for school and community, and they must also have specific knowledge about the Georgia Code of Ethics for Educators. Candidate Dispositions are consistently systematically measured.

Regulations, program requirements, and procedures are subject to change pending rules of the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. Programs of study leading to certification are approved by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. Candidate Dispositions are consistently systematically measured.