Emporia State University has long been known for the quality of its teaching program. The quantity, however, is another story.
In terms of how many undergraduates emerge with an education degree, ESU is actually the second-ranked regents university in the state. Kansas State University is currently on top with 327 graduates in the 2005-2006 school year, compared to 226 from ESU.
That doesn’t surprise Tes Mehring, the dean of the Teacher’s College at ESU.
“That’s been the situation for about 20 years,” she said. “And frankly, I don’t know if we want it to be any larger. ... In many ways, we’d like it to be a little smaller.”
The reason? ESU tries to give its students a lot of classroom experience and a lot of time with faculty. The teaching staff right now has 78 full-time faculty, about 40 part-timers and 40 graduate teaching assistants.
“I think the larger you get, the harder it is to focus on quality,” Mehring said.
The totals at each university include graduates from the fall of 2005 and the spring and summer of 2006. They do not necessarily include some specialized areas, such as music teachers, that might be handled by another department or school.
It’s a little harder to determine who comes in third. If all of Wichita State University’s education students are counted, the total comes to 225, just shy of ESU. But many of those students are in specialties that don’t aim at a career in classroom education. Limit it to the teaching-focused students and Wichita winds up with 146 graduates over the last year. That puts WSU behind both Pittsburg State University (191 graduates) and the University of Kansas (168 graduates from a five-year program).
The smallest number of education graduates came from Fort Hays State University, which graduated 119 students in the 2005-2006 school year.
The quality of ESU’s program has garnered a lot of praise over the years. This year, the teacher’s college was named one of four model teacher-preparation programs by Arthur Levine, the former president of the teacher’s college at Columbia University.