UGA Faculty Members: A Historical Overview

Chronology of Significant Events in the Department of Language and Literacy Education History,
including events leading up to the formation of the Department and various and sundry occurrences preceding and surrounding the department’s development

COE Centennial Celebration 1908-2008

Information about events taking place before 1988 is largely taken from Bob W. Jerrolds’ The History of the College of Education, The University of Georgia and Thomas G. Dyer’s The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985. Other information was contributed by current and former members of the Departments or gathered from widely scattered sources.

Memoirs of Departments Past written by Ira Aaron, Ted Kalivoda, and Donald Rubin.

Ira Aaron: Comments on Reading Education, College of Education

Date	Event
1682	The first teacher education courses in the history of universities are offered at Lyons, France.
1785	The University of Georgia is granted its charter but no action is taken to institute the university.
1800	The Board of Trustees establishes that a library collection be purchased for the sum of one thousand dollars.
1801	John Milledge, a lawyer and legislator, buys 633 acres along the frontier on the Oconee River and donates the land as a site for the school.
	The University of Georgia enrolls its first students. In its early years, UGA functions more like an exclusive high school than like a modern university. Early classes are held in privately owned buildings scattered around the area.
1803	The first building of The University of Georgia, made of logs, is erected.
1804	UGA is staffed by two professors (one of whom is Josiah Meigs) and serves 35-40 students, 9 of whom graduate in 1804 for the university’s first graduating class.
1806	The city of Athens is incorporated.
	The first permanent university building, a three-story brick structure, is completed and named Franklin College in honor of Benjamin Franklin. It remains the only university building until 1821, and for many years the university is commonly known as Franklin College. The building later becomes known as Old College.
1830	The UGA library collection is destroyed in a fire. A new collection receives an official headquarters in 1831 in the Ivy Building, built just north of Demosthenian Hall.
1840	Athens and UGA as depicted in the painting by George Cooke.
1850	North Campus view. The wooden fence is replaced by the iron fence and the famous Arch in the late 1850s that remain in place today.
Early 1850s	UGA enrollment reaches its antebellum peak of 159 students.
1857	UGA enrollment dips below 100 students.
1860	The University of Georgia has no officially designated relationship with the State of Georgia. Governor Joseph E. Brown sought a massive endowment for UGA—$500,000 to be distributed over a period of five years—but the outbreak of the Civil War diverted the funds to military aims.
	UGA shuts down for several years during the Civil War. (1860-1864)
1872	UGA is designated a land-grant institution under the Morrill Act.
1885	Franklin College educates students who go on to become teachers, without issuing teaching credentials or stressing pedagogy.
1891	The State Normal School in Athens is founded for teacher education and built on the site of what is now the US Naval Supply School. It is chartered as a department within UGA. Yet most teacher trainees are women, and women are not accepted at UGA at the time, and so the programs are offered in Summer Sessions in which women may enroll. The first sessions are offered in 1892 by a faculty of 9 professors.
	State Normal School
1895	The State Normal School begins offering year-round programs.
1900	The University of Georgia’s first education course is taught.
1901	Franklin College establishes a position in Pedagogy (paid 30% of the salary of comparable professors).
	The State Normal School has 15 professors and 602 students. (1901-1902)
1902	George Foster Peabody becomes a benefactor of education at UGA.  (Peabody’s distant cousin, George Peabody, similarly founded the Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville in 1875.)
1903	The origins of the disciplinary organization of departments (science education, language education, mathematics education, etc.) were put into place based on donations from George Foster Peabody and the leadership of Joseah S. Stewart.
1908	A gift from George Foster Peabody results in the Peabody School of Education, and the Trustees approve the founding of the School. June 13, 1908 marks the “official” birth of the modern College of Education.
1912	The UGA Library
1913	George Peabody Hall is completed to house the education of teachers and is designed in anticipation of the admission of women to UGA. Women had previously attended Summer School but were not admitted to the university.
	Peabody Hall
1913	Total UGA enrollment: 631 students.
1914	World War I is fought (1914-1918). UGA’s enrollment declines by 40%, and the School of Education is affected by an even higher percentage.
1918	The first women admitted to UGA register and enroll, enabling women to become full-time students in the Peabody School of Education.
	Downtown Athens consists of five drug stores, two “tin shops,” 11 grocers, butchers and fruit stands, five boarding houses, six car dealers and auto parts stores, five jewelers, two florists, two restaurants among the businesses downtown, a pool hall, a bowling alley and a sewing machine store. There are no bars.
1919	Total UGA enrollment: 1,262.
1921	With women now eligible for full-time enrollment, the Summer Session no longer needs to be treated as a discrete program, and the Summer Session is added as a 4th quarter of UGA’s calendar.
1922	The Peabody School of Education initiates “correspondence courses.”
1927	Chancellor Charles M. Snelling advocates for the Peabody School of Education faculty to conduct research on the problems facing educators.
	The Georgia State Normal College is renamed Georgia State Teachers College.
1929	The Stock Market crashes, ushering in the Great Depression and its consequences for UGA.
1932	The College of Education is formed from a merger of the Georgia State Teachers College, the Peabody School of Education, and the education units of the Georgia State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. The College becomes one of three units at UGA, the others being the Franklin College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Georgia State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
1933	The College of Education is renamed the Peabody College of Education.
	The University of Georgia authorizes the awarding of Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
Mid- 1930s	The Practice School of the College of Education is built as a Public Works Administration project co-funded by UGA and the PWA. This building is now known as Baldwin Hall.
1939	UGA is attended by 2,171 men and 1,246 women.
1940	Peabody College of Education students are among the first UGA students to be awarded doctorates.
	The U.S. is involved on two major fronts during World War II. (1940-1945)
	World War II (1941-1945) provides the context for the College of Education. Funds go to support programs whose graduates could serve the war effort, e.g., food production and preservation, studied in courses offered by the Departments of Home Economics Education and Agriculture Education. With young men serving in the military, UGA enrollments shifted to a higher percentage of women.
	82.8% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
1941	UGA loses its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, following Governor Eugene Talmadge’s dismissal of COE Dean Walter Dewey Cocking. Cocking had been accused of, although had denied, announcing a plan to build a teaching academy serving both Black and White students.
	Walter D. Cocking Dean – College of Education (1937-1941)
1942	The Peabody College of Education is renamed the College of Education.
1946	5% of young people in Georgia attend college.
	The program in English Education is first mentioned in Jerrold’s history of the COE.
1948	English Education students are required to take courses in the Departments of English, Speech, and Drama.
1948	Dean O. C. Aderhold identifies upgrading the faculty’s credentials as a major goal for the COE.
	Omer Clyde (O. C.) Aderhold Dean – College of Education (1946-1951) President – University of Georgia (1950 – 1967)
	Of the state of Georgia’s 15,000 White teachers, about 6,000 have earned a bachelor’s degree and 9,000 have not.
1950	Dean Aderhold is named President of The University of Georgia.
	79.2% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
1952	4,659 students attend UGA, with men outnumbering women 2:1.
1956	The Reading Clinic is founded, located in Waddel Hall. The Reading Clinic gradually morphs into the Department of Reading Education. At the time of the founding of the Reading Clinic, only one undergraduate Reading course is in the books. Ira Aaron is the Clinic’s initial director, first with one assistant and then, during his seven-year tenure as director, with two additional faculty members, Hazel Simpson and Byron Callaway. These three become the founding members of the Department of Reading Education. Ira Aaron directs the Clinic and then chairs the Department through 1973.COE graduate student Bernice Cooper is the first woman to be awarded a doctorate from UGA. She returns to teach in and chair the program in Elementary Education, and teaches courses in Children’s Literature.
	Ira Aaron and Hazel Simpson
	The Georgia legislature approves a new state flag that features the “Stars and Bars” of the flag of the Confederate states that sought secession through the Civil War. Coincidentally, the Civil Rights movement has begun to gain traction in the Deep South.
1958	The College of Education includes programs in Agricultural Education, Art Education, Business Education, Elementary Education, Home Economics Education, Industrial Arts Education, Music Education, Physical Education, Secondary Education, and Speech Correction. It trains one-third of all new teachers in the state. The COE has 61 full-time faculty members, 41 with doctorates. About ¾ of the faculty are men.
1959
	Waddell Hall
1960	68% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
	Sixth-year certification programs (not degree programs) in secondary English Education and secondary Foreign Language Education are founded in the Department of General Secondary Education. At this time, each teaching field has its own faculty and chair, and operates as a de facto department with respect to curriculum, instruction, and certification. (1960-1961)
	College of Education faculty members produce a total of 58 publications, suggesting the emphasis on instruction rather than research. Education faculty have to this point been regarded primarily as teaching and service faculty who emphasize the development of curriculum for Georgia public schools. (1960-1961)
1961	Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes are admitted as UGA’s first African American students.
1962	The University Council for Teacher Education is formed, and recommends more selective admissions for the College of Education and more research productivity from faculty and graduate students. The Office of Educational Research is instituted by Dean Joseph Williams to facilitate the latter initiative. Dean Williams also increases the number of faculty members with assigned research time to 31 of the COE’s 87 faculty members. (1962-1963)
	Mary Frances Early becomes the first African American to receive a degree from the University of Georgia, earning a master’s degree in music education.
	Fifty-five of the eighty-seven COE faculty members have doctorates. The 63% who hold doctorates exceed the University’s 52.5% of doctorate-holding faculty members. (1962-1963)
	Mary Tingle and Rachael Sutton are awarded $250,000 for a five-year curriculum project in English Education, the largest grant awarded during the year to COE faculty members.
1963	Byron Callaway is named Director of the Reading Clinic.
1964	Dean Joe Williams, appointed in 1962, asks Ira Aaron to serve as head of the Department of Language Arts Education, which would include Reading Education. Aaron responds that because of the increasing national interest in Reading, a Department of Reading Education could be built more rapidly and strongly if it stood alone. Williams agrees and the Department of Reading Education is founded.The Department of Language Education is also founded at this time, with Mary Tingle serving as the chair. A family history describes her as follows: “Miss Mary Tingle of Athens, Georgia is, as far as I know, the last living grandchild of Confederate War veteran, Archibald Daniel Tingle, the son of Daniel and Parthenia. Miss Mary is retired from the faculty of the University of Georgia, and she is a gracious Southern gentlewoman.”During this period, many other departments come into being as well, with each organized by content area. The size of the COE allows for departments to organize according to content area rather than to have a Department of Curriculum and Instruction that follows a “Noah’s Ark” approach of housing two of every kind from a range of disciplines. The Department of Secondary Education, then, gives way to departments of Language Education, Science Education, Mathematics Education, and Social Science Education. The Department of Reading Education remains independent of the Department of Elementary Education.
1966	The doctoral program in Reading Education is initiated. (1966-1967)
1968	The Children’s Literature Conference and Georgia Children’s Book Award Program are founded by Mary Tingle and Shelton Root. (1968-1969)
1970	Ted Kalivoda founds the study abroad program in Valencia, Spain, designed for prospective Spanish teachers and conducted in cooperation with the University of Valencia. The Department of Romance Language, in which Kalivoda holds a joint appointment, administers the program after 1971.Bob Elkins of the program in Foreign Language Education initiates and directs the Southeastern Language Center, an intensive Foreign Language program for 200 secondary school students from all over the U.S. It is co-sponsored by the COE and the College of Arts & Sciences and held in the summers of 1970 & 1971. He leaves UGA in 1973 to chair the Department of Foreign Language Education at the University of West Virginia, and the program closes.
	The Department of Language Education, which has been housed in Baldwin Hall, relocates to Aderhold Hall.
	59.4% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
1971	The College of Education moves to the new Omer C. Aderhold Hall, which boasted the first escalators in any building on campus.
	Aderhold Hall
1972	L. Ramon Veal begins his term as chair of the Department of Language Education.The escalators in Aderhold Hall begin to malfunction.
1973	George E. Mason begins his term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
1976	Roy O’Donnell begins his term as chair of the Department of Language Education.
	The Department of Reading Education is ranked first in the nation in a survey conducted at the University of Texas. (1976-1977)
	The B-52s form, playing their first gig at a Valentine’s Day party for friends in 1977.
1978	UGA COE faculty is ranked first in the nation in numbers of articles on reading research by faculty members published in professional journals during the previous seven years.
	Faculty members in Reading Education present the most papers at meetings of the National Reading Conference over the previous three years.
	Ira E. Aaron begins his second term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
1979	The COE Faculty Senate holds its first meeting, replacing the appointed Faculty Executive committee with elected senators from across the College.
1980	Foreign Language Education professor Ted Kalivoda founds the American Language Program (ALP) in conjunction with the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, which provides the funding. He directs the program until 1988, when the program is handed off to other administrators.
	43.6% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
Early 1980s	University of Georgia administrators begin cracking down on campus parties, and bars begin opening downtown to accommodate students.
1982	Jan Kemp, an English instructor in the Developmental Studies Program, is fired for refusing to change student-athletes’ grades from failing to passing, as she has been ordered to do. She sues the university and in 1986 is awarded a $1.08 million settlement. Following the “Jan Kemp Affair,” university President Fred Davison resigns and wholesale changes are made in UGA athletics regarding eligibility and accountability. Many regard this incident as a critical turning point in UGA’s development from a parochial, regional university to an institution that commands scholarly respect at the national and international levels.Bob W. Jerrolds begins his term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
1983	R.E.M. issues its first album, /Murmur/.
1984	Downtown Athens includes 9 bars, 22 restaurants, 96 retailers, and 103 professional offices.
1985	Widespread Panic, consisting of the duet Michael Houser and John Bell—both UGA students—plays its first gig on February 24, 1985 at the A-Frame house on Weymanda Court in Athens.
1989	David Reinking begins a one-year term as interim chair of the Department of Reading Education.
	David Reinking
1990	Carol Fisher begins her term as chair of the Department of Language Education.
	James Baumann begins his term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
	James Baumann
	29.1% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
1992	The College of Education, under Dean Alphonse Buccino, adds an administrative layer of four Schools that house the various departments. Reading and Language Education, along with other departments that work directly with teachers, serve as separate departments in the School of Teacher Education. The other Schools include in the School of Professional Studies, the School of Health and Human Performance, and the School of Leadership and Lifelong Education.
	Alphonse Buccino Dean – College of Education (1984-1994)
	Hugh Agee from the Department of Language Education serves a one-year interim term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
1993	David Reinking begins his term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
	Under the leadership of Governor Zell Miller, the HOPE scholarship is instituted in Georgia.
1994	Downtown Athens includes 15 bars, 30 restaurants, 73 retailers, and 72 professional offices.
1996	JoBeth Allen begins her term as chair of the Department of Language Education.
	JoBeth Allen
1998	Joel Taxel begins his term as chair of the Department of Language Education.
	Joel Taxel
	The University of Georgia converts from its historic organization according to academic quarters to a new semester system.
	The programs in Foreign Language Education, TESOL, and Bilingual Education are rechristened as Teaching Additional Languages during the transition to the new semester system, which invites bureaucratic change. The program has previously been named Foreign Language Education, but new hires in the early 1990s have contributed to the growing need to prepare teachers to instruct immigrant populations as well as English speakers seeking to learn world (mostly European) languages. This need comes in response to the rapid increase in Georgia’s population in immigrants from Mexico and other Central and South American nations, whose first language is Spanish.
2000	21.4% of adults in Georgia have not completed high school.
	U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield rules on July 24, 2000 that the University of Georgia has unconstitutionally engaged in “naked racial balancing” by using race as a factor in some admissions decisions “without having an adequate justification” and that UGA’s stated goal of promoting diversity through its admissions policy is an “amorphous, unquantifiable, and temporarily unlimited goal” that does not represent a compelling state interest for which the university could constitutionally defend its use of racial preferences.
2001	About 6% of the university’s 31,000 students are African Americans.
	Governor Barnes signs into law a new state flag in which the Confederate “Stars and Bars” symbol is included as a miniature, along with the two Georgia flags that preceded it and original and present miniatures of the U.S. flag.
2003	Linda Labbo begins her term as chair of the Department of Reading Education.
	Linda Labbo
	UGA ranks fifth among public universities on U.S. News and World Report ’s 2003 list of “Great Schools at Great Prices” and fourth on Kiplinger magazine’s list of the twenty best public colleges that “combine great academics with reasonable costs.”
2004	Concluding a process that has taken 3 years, the COE’s 19 departments are reduced to form 9 departments as part of a provost-initiated reorganization of the College of Education. The 9 departments are created through mergers of existing departments. Many faculty repudiate the dissolution of the discipline-based department organization, and a number leave UGA for other institutions. As part of this reduction in the number of administrative units, the four Schools that have housed the COE’s departments since 1992 are eliminated. The Departments of Reading Education and Language Education merge to form the Department of Language and Literacy Education, with Joel Taxel serving as the inaugural chair.
	The people of Georgia vote 3-1 in favor of a new state flag designed under the authority of Governor Sonny Perdue.
	Downtown Athens includes 40 bars, 50 restaurants, 67 retailers, and 76 professional offices.
2005	Characteristics of students who apply to UGA: Approximate number of applicants 12,300 Total admitted students (not all choose to attend) 7,825 Total non-Caucasian students 1,600 Black students 570 Hispanic 167 Multi-racial 262 Did not report 57 High School grade point average 3.8 Average SAT score 1268
2006	The escalators in Aderhold Hall, inoperable for roughly 35 years, are removed and replaced by office space.
	Three story hole left after the escalators were removed New office created from the removal of the escalators.
2007	Mark Faust begins his term as chair of the Department of Language and Literacy Education.
	Mark Faust
	Downtown Athens includes 44 bars, 60 restaurants, 61 retailers, and 35 professional offices.
2008	Graduate enrollments in the Department of Language and Literacy Education: Ph.D. ED.D. Ed.S. MED MED Cert MA ND TOTAL TAL 17 0 1 24 33 0 30 105 ENG 23 0 14 21 26 1 0 85 READ 33 7 19 24 0 0 16 99 E/LA 18 0 6 13 0 0 0 37 TOTAL 91 7 40 82 59 1 46 326
	Enrollment at UGA: Undergraduate 23,665 Graduate 6,021 Professional 1, 524 Off-campus Enrollment 967 Total 32,177
2010	The programs in Reading Education and Children’s Literature and Elementary Language Arts Education merge to form the program in Reading, Writing, Children’s Literature, and Digital Literacies
2011	The program in Teaching Additional Languages is renamed TESOL & World Language Education Programs (TWLE)
2013	Bob Fecho became Department Head