Hamann named Equity Fellow

Ted Hamann, professor, TLTE.
Ted Hamann, professor, TLTE.

Ted Hamann, professor in Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE), has been selected as one of 13 state-specific “Equity Fellows” for the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP EAC). Serving Nebraska, Hamann joins other nationally prominent scholars who have engaged deeply and published widely on one or more of the four desegregation areas—race, sex, national origin, and religion—focused on by MAP EAC.

Through the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Hamann has been awarded $125,000 over five years to carry out the responsibilities of an Equity Fellow. They include participating in stakeholder advisory meetings and creating content for the development of MAP EAC resources. Resources are designed for stakeholders engaged in equity work, such as school administrators, educators, family and community members, and students. Stakeholder advisory meetings are an opportunity to share growing educational equity-related needs within the state and with other equity fellows and MAP EAC leaders.

“My promise is to create two products a year that relate to the equity goals of the center,” said Hamann. For one of his 2017 projects, he will be working with two doctoral graduates from his program in TLTE and two current doctoral students. The group’s first project is a series of “vodcasts.” The video podcasts will introduce strategies that educators can use with immigrant students. The multidisciplinary makeup of his team—an English as a second language teacher, a Spanish teacher, a social studies teacher and a math teacher—will “bring a practitioner’s practicality” to the project, said Hamann. “We’ll figure out how to convert what research says to what teachers can use.”

A second project for 2017 will be to create guidance for U.S. teachers about schooling in Mexico. Hamann says hundreds of thousands of students migrate in a circular fashion between the U.S. and Mexico as parents go back and forth. “This migration is increasingly common,” he says. “We’ll be preparing a research brief to help U.S. teachers better understand what schooling is like in Mexico.” With greater understanding, it’s hoped that teachers will be better equipped to serve their transnationally mobile students.

The MAP EAC Equity Fellow for South Dakota, Jamalee Stone, professor of mathematics education at Black Hills State University, is a former UNL doctoral student of Hamann’s. The Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center is housed in the Indiana University School of Education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and is one of four centers nationally. MAP EAC serves Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Each center supports schools and communities in their states in creating equitable educational opportunities for all students. The centers are authorized and funded under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, through the U.S. Department of Education. For more information about the Equity Assistance Centers, visit https://www2.ed.gov/programs/equitycenters/index.html.