Professor Takes Reins of School of Education at Crucial Time

Professor Takes Reins of School of Education at Crucial Time

By Brian Hiro

Moses Ochanji (left) is the new director of the School of Education, effective Aug. 1. He replaced Laurie Stowell (right), who will enter the Faculty Early Retirement Program. Photo by Luna Canham

When the time came for a leadership change atop Cal State San Marcos' School of Education this summer, there wasn't exactly a mad rush of candidates.

Teachers, after all, love teaching aspiring teachers how to teach, and the notion of sacrificing that for a largely administrative post can be a hard sell for many.

But with the teaching industry still struggling to claw back lost numbers from the pandemic, the job is more essential than ever, and the School of Education thinks it has found the perfect person to lead the way.

Moses Ochanji, who's entering his 21^st year as a professor at CSUSM, was officially appointed to a two-year term as the school's director on Aug. 1. Ochanji has served as associate director for four years under two different directors, and he also has been the chair of the human development department.

"I have been looking in at this job for some years," Ochanji said. "I know a little bit about what the job entails, and I thought it was time for me to raise my hand and do it."

Ochanji has replaced Laurie Stowell, who became School of Education director in January 2021. Stowell, a professor at CSUSM since 1992, is entering the Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP), which allows tenured faculty to continue teaching after retiring from service.

Stowell also will continue to run the San Marcos Writing Project, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year.

"I think it's fabulous," Stowell said of the leadership change. "I talked to him about the job. All of us in the school have thought Moses would be a great leader for a long time, and he's also a wonderful science educator."

As a professor of science education, Ochanji teaches science methods classes for prospective teachers. He also is the co-principal investigator on two grants in the science education arena: the Mathematics and Science Teacher Initiative (MSTI), a California State University-funded program to help recruit math and science teachers; and the Noyce Teacher Scholars program, a National Science Foundation grant that encourages talented STEM students and professionals to pursue teaching careers.

Ochanji and Stowell agree that recruitment is the biggest hurdle facing the School of Education and the teaching profession as a whole. Teachers left the field en masse during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the population has yet to recover.

At CSUSM this fall, there is the usual distribution of student teacher cohorts - three for the multiple-subject credential, two for single subject and one each for middle school and special education - but the numbers in each cohort are smaller.

"When people are leaving the profession, the word goes around," Ochanji said. "So there are spillover effects. People hear about it and think, 'Teaching is hard. I don't want to go into teaching.' And that discourages more.

"Then there's this national narrative that teachers are not paid well. So it's, 'Why would I do something so difficult and not get paid well?' Those are some of the challenges that we face with many young people."

Both the state and CSUSM are taking action to stem, and even reverse, the tide. The state, for example, has removed the requirement that teachers must pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test, allowing the undergraduate degree to substitute as a measure of competency. California also offers residencies as a way to pay students while they are engaged in student teaching so they don't need to hold down jobs on the side.

At CSUSM, the School of Education is considering bringing back a part-time program or adding the option of a January start so that student teachers have more flexibility. The school has a recruitment committee and faculty recruitment fellow who is studying the challenges that the university is facing and how it can better reach prospective teachers.

Despite the enrollment decline, the School of Education has enjoyed some clear successes. Perhaps the best recent example is Project SUPPORT, a five-year, $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education that ended last fall. The program greatly increased the number of bilingual teacher candidates to enter the School of Education, to the extent that in the last two years there was almost a full cohort of them (roughly 30 teachers).

"One thing that the CSU has pushed is to make teacher recruitment a university-wide event, not just a School of Education activity," Ochanji said. "We're all parents, and we want the people who leave our program to be good enough to teach our children. So we all have an interest in making sure that we have good teachers in the classroom helping our students."

Moses Ochanji talks with Laurie Stowell in her office. "I think it's fantastic," Stowell said of Ochanji replacing her as director of the School of Education. Photo by Luna Canham

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