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Graduate programs in elementary and secondary education are perennially ranked in the top 10 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s annual issue of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”

One of the University of Georgia College of Education’s most preeminent departments—Elementary and Social Studies Education—has changed its name to the Department of Educational Theory and Practice (ETAP) after an almost unanimous approval at the University Council in late February.

For nearly as long as Elementary and Social Studies Education has existed as a merged department, its faculty has been concerned that its name did not reflect its mission, its component parts, or the work that the faculty pursued, said Ronald Butchart, professor and head of the department.

Even in its early existence, its name obscured the fact that Middle School Education and Early Childhood Education (by far the department’s largest program) were housed in the department. More recently, the department has created two more programs, a doctoral emphasis in Teacher Education and a unitary doctoral program, and has absorbed responsibility for the undergraduate social foundations courses. Those new aspects of the department’s work were also excluded from the department’s formal name.

Over the years, the faculty found it awkward to explain the department’s name to people unfamiliar with it. Elementary Education existed only as a graduate emphasis, not as an undergraduate major; Social Studies Education, meanwhile, usually thought of primarily as a secondary education major, was awkwardly married to elementary education. Further, not a quarter of the research pursued in the department touched primarily on elementary or social studies education. Potential faculty applicants had been dissuaded from applying because of their confusion about the department’s structure.

Any attempt to create a traditional department name inclusive of all its moving parts would have resulted in a name so long that, as the department said in its justification for the name change, it would have taken the top half of departmental stationery. Further complicating matters, in recent years the department has become a powerhouse of exciting, interdisciplinary research that falls far beyond the boundaries suggested by traditional departmental names.

As a result, the faculty decided it needed to decide upon a departmental name that reflected its new reality as a department containing three outstanding teacher certification programs, a new dynamism in its graduate programs, a wholly rethought and intentionally interdisciplinary doctoral program, the college’s undergraduate cultural contexts and diversity courses, and scholars pushing the boundaries of educational knowledge.  It was a short step to realizing that the name it had adopted for its unitary doctoral program, Educational Theory and Practice, was also the name that best fit the entire department.  It also expressed the department’s commitment to testing theory in practice, and informing practice with theory.

The new name, the Department of Educational Theory and Practice, was vetted through College of Education department heads who took the proposal to their faculty with little objection. The proposal then went through the entire college and university systems with strong support at every level, culminating in a nearly unanimously favorable vote at the University Council.

Graduate programs in elementary and secondary education are perennially ranked in the top 10 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s annual issue of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”  In the 2014 issue of specialty rankings, UGA tied for third for secondary education and ranked fifth for elementary education.