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Simmons School of Education & Human Development Strategic Plan

Simmons Vision: Catalyzing Discovery and Innovation

Through excellence in research, teaching, and community outreach, Simmons is a catalyst for discovery and innovation that transforms social conditions and advances human potential.

Download the Simmons Strategic Plan

Simmons School Goals

• Recruit, retain, and graduate students of the highest quality.
• Advance research efforts using rigorous approaches to address complex issues on both a local and global scale.
• Create new and innovative paradigms for partnership and community impact.
• Grow Simmons capacity and administrative infrastructure.

Department Strategies that Serve Simmons' Goals

Simmons Goal:  Recruit, retain, and graduate students of the highest quality.

Department of Teaching & Learning

• Add diagnostician certification training to Learning Therapy curriculum.
• In response to student and community interest, implement an Urban Education specialization.
• Implement infrastructural changes to our educator preparation programs that address students’ self-assessment practices.

Department of Education Policy & Leadership

• Improve and establish coherent cross-content principles and objectives for curriculum.
• Implement an Urban Education specialization that satisfies student interest and meets a community need.
• Build new interdisciplinary, methodological, program, and center collaborations.
• Intentionally address equity, social justice, and diversity in courses.

Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness 

• Partner with local professional sports teams and organizations to create industry research opportunities for Master of Science in Sport Management students.  
• Provide new funding sources for Physiology PhD students.
• Formalize an on-campus executive speakers series.

Department of Dispute Resolution & Counseling

• Develop/implement assessment and evaluation techniques and practices in order to enhance student outcomes. 
• Increase the opportunities for involvement by students in civic and industry engagement and field work.

Graduate Liberal Studies

• Expand field research opportunities for DLS and GLS students.
• Develop new interdisciplinary research clusters.
• Develop a curricular opportunity that promotes student publications and academic presentations.
• Expand the Medical Center Partnerships. 

Department of Education Policy & Leadership

• Pursue additional support for quantitative research.

Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness

• Pursue more research projects with area research institutions and hospitals.
• Pursue more external grant funding from the government, private corporations, and foundations.
• Pursue funding for a state-of-the art Locomotor Performance Laboratory extension facility to study biomechanical movement with broad ranging applications for athletes’ performance and health.

Department of Counseling & Dispute Resolution 

• Pursue opportunities for interdisciplinary research across 51°µÍø. 
• Advance efforts to integrate research and evidence-based practice as part of partnership efforts.

Research in Mathematics Education

• Pursue research opportunities that address access/equity issues in STEM education.   
• Increase the number of externally funded grants.
• Increase annual research expenditures by 50%.
• Increase efforts to disseminate articles and presentations.

Budd Center 

• Facilitate data-driven and evidence-based collaborations between families, community serving nonprofits, and traditional and non-traditional neighborhood schools in order to improve academic and social outcomes for children.

Center on Research Education

• By leveraging existing and successful community partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations, expand and define CORE’s own Research Agenda, to create an identity for ourselves and to delve deeper to become experts in specific areas

Simmons Goal: Create New and Innovative Paradigms for Partnership and Community Impact

Department of Teaching & Learning

• Create new classes and programs that will increase community partnerships.
• Implement an Urban Education specialization that will serve with community organizations and effect positive change in local urban settings.

Department of Education Policy & Leadership 

• Build new interdisciplinary, methodological, program, and center collaborations.

Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness 

• Partner with local professional sports teams and organizations to create industry opportunities for MSSM students.
• Establish industry partnerships in order to involve students in “real-client” experiential learning and initiate consulting projects with industry leaders.
• SPL will enhance its partnerships with DISD, the Model School, and Carter High School.

Department of Counseling & Dispute Resolution

• Increase opportunities for involvement by students in civic and industry engagement and field work.
• Advance efforts to integrate research and evidence-based practice as part of partnership efforts.
• Evaluate impact of community and industry partnerships.
• Encourage, incentivize, and provide structure for interdisciplinary, cross-departmental, program and center collaborations.
• Enhance services and capacity in the Counseling Program’s Family Therapy Clinics in Frisco, Plano, and Dallas.

Graduate Liberal Studies

• Become involved in the new Model School, perhaps offering both Human Rights/Social Justice training for teachers and Educational Coaching and Leadership from a Human-Centered perspective.
• Expand the Medical Center Partnerships.

Research in Mathematics Education

• Increase our internal and external presence in the community and nationally.

Center on Research Education

• Based on emerging internal evidence about what works in partnerships, maintain a variety of options for engaging in the work.  Pursue innovative funding mechanisms to support evaluation capacity building for a range of organizations.
• Will continue to simultaneously execute and evaluate a range of research and practice partnerships; will work to build a codified and common understanding of effective and replicable elements of successful partnerships by documenting “what works” across our projects. 

Budd Center 

• Promote program evaluation measures for community programs in which the Budd Center is involved.  Equip partners with data, professional development and coaching that enables them to align actions; maximize strengths; focus interventions; impact student outcomes; and close family, community, school and nonprofit resource gaps.
• Share lessons learned and strategies developed by The Budd Center in the field of collaborative community intervention and create The Leadership and Learning Development Model, a five-part professional development package being prototyped in FY2018-19.
• Participate in the development and implementation of the new West Dallas STEM School.

Simmons Goal:  Grow Simmons Capacity and Administrative Infrastructure 

Department of Teaching & Learning

• Create new classes and programs that will allow the department to serve local school districts.

Department of Education Policy & Leadership

• Strengthen 

Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness 

• Establish a Sports Institute.
• Conduct a major sports symposium/conference.
• Formalize an on-campus executive speakers series.
• Establish an advisory board.

Department of Counseling & Dispute Resolution  

• Be intentional in efforts to recruit high-quality, diverse faculty members during upcoming faculty searches; strive to retain current "diverse" faculty and staff members.
• Encourage, incentivize, and provide structure for interdisciplinary, cross-departmental, program and center collaborations.
• Strengthen processes and systems for faculty governance and decision-making.

Research in Mathematics Education (RME)

• Formally establish RME as a Center.