Research Symposium Success

Six visitors from the University of Waikato tour the campus

Twelve members of the faculty and six PhD students in the College of Educational Studies joined five faculty members, the Associate Dean, and the Coordinator of International Programs from the School of Education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand for three days of talks, May 23-25, on the Chapman campus.  From getting acquainted on the first evening, through sharing research interests and forming study groups on the second day, to making concrete plans for collaborative work on the third day, the event was both intense and productive.

“There is no doubt that these two faculties are a good fit, both philosophically and on a personal level—I could tell that on the first day,” said Roger Moltzen, Deputy Dean of the Waikato SOE. “Everybody really seemed to enjoy each other, and they laughed a lot while still getting a lot done,” noted event coordinator Barbara Tye. “They’re all looking forward to getting on with the research projects they mapped out, and—all in good time—to publishing and presenting papers on them at professional conferences.”

Representatives of CU and WU signing the Memo of Intent to Collaborate in 2008

This symposium was the culmination of over four years of exploratory work, including visits by several CES faculty members to Waikato and of several Waikato SOE faculty members to Chapman in the years since 2007.  The two universities signed a Memo of Intent to Collaborate in 2008, and Professor Suzanne SooHoo and Professor Emeritus Ken Tye met with Dean Alister Jones at Waikato in 2009 to begin discussing the possibility of a symposium. Now that a faculty-to-faculty relationship has been established, the next step will be to explore opportunities for student exchanges in both directions. As a start, Moltzen made a commitment to send two PhD students from Waikato to the Emerging Scholars Conference being hosted by the Chapman CES this September.