Meeting of the Board of Regents | June 2003

SUMMARY:

Dr. Robert D. Felner, Professor and Director of the School of Education at the University of Rhode Island, has been invited to speak with the Board concerning school reform and middle-level education. Attached is a brief biography for Dr. Felner. Dr. Felner is a well-known national expert in the area of middle-level education and has been a primary evaluator and reviewer of middle-level projects funded by the Lilly Endowment, Carnegie Corporation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In 2000, he was the recipient of the Rhode Island Middle-Level Educator�s Association Award for national and state contributions to middle-level education.

Dr. Felner�s remarks are timely in that the Board will review its revised Policy Statement on Middle-Level Education in June and receive a summary of comment from our public engagement strategy. The Board is scheduled to approve the final policy statement in July.

Attachment

ROBERT D. FELNER

Dr. Robert Felner is Professor and Director of the School of Education at the University of Rhode Island (URI), where he also directs the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy (NCPE). NCPE's work focuses on studying, developing and implementing effective school improvement models for P-12 public education that improve academic success and developmental outcomes for all students. The Center has existing partnerships with schools and local communities, state agencies and other branches of government to help them expand their capacity to respond to pressing educational, social, health and economic issues. As part of URI's focus area on children, family and communities, NCPE's overarching mission is to improve the lives of all children and families by collaborating with communities to solve real problems, in the tradition of the land-grant university.

Previously, at the University of Illinois, Dr. Felner was a Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Social Welfare in the Institute of Government and Public Affairs as well as a Professor in the Psychology Department where he also was the Director of the Graduate Programs in Clinical and Community Psychology. While at Illinois, he founded and was Director of the Center for Prevention Research and Development. In 1990, the University of Illinois appointed Dr. Felner to the "Irving B. Harris Professorship," an endowed faculty position dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship in social policy and education. Dr. Felner was the founding President of the Board of Directors of the Martin Luther King Community Services of Illinois Foundation, dedicated to the needs of economically disadvantaged children and families.

From 1981 to 1986, Dr. Felner also served as Director of the Graduate Programs in Clinical and Community Psychology at Auburn University, and before that as Assistant Professor of Clinical/Community Psychology at Yale University. He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical/Community Psychology at the University of Rochester.

Dr. Felner serves, or has served, on the editorial boards of nearly a dozen scientific journals and been a member of more than two dozen federal and foundation research advisory and grant review panels. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Orthopsychiatric Association. He received the Administrators Award from the U.S. Alcohol, Drug, Abuse, and Mental Health administration. In 1988, the American Psychological Association selected his work on educational reform for prevention as one of fourteen "Exemplary" Prevention Programs in the United States. Dr. Felner has authored over 150 papers, articles, chapters, and volumes. His work focuses primarily on understanding and guiding local, statewide, and national policy regarding the reform of P-12 education, especially as that education impacts the students and families from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. His research work has involved over 2,000 schools across more than 22 states, and has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation, the Lilly Endowment, the Kellogg Foundation, the Kauffman and Danforth Foundations, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the United States Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health administrations, a number of states, state agencies and large school districts.