Sept. 15, 2010

Morningside College faculty member shares her education expertise

Barbara “Cathy” Wilt, assistant professor of education at Morningside College, was one of 10 professors in the United States chosen to work recently with the assessment team at Excelsior College in Albany, N.Y., to develop standards for its Literacy Instruction in the Elementary School examination, and she was chosen to be a reviewer of proposals for the upcoming American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education annual meeting in San Diego.

Excelsior College is a distance learning institution of higher education with a student population of about 60,000 adult learners from the United States and other countries. Its elementary education majors take the Literacy Instruction in the Elementary School exam. The assessment team was working to set standards to determine the cutoff scores for each letter grade earned on the exam. The exam is approved by the American Council on Education.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national alliance of educator preparation programs dedicated to the highest quality professional development of teachers and school leaders in order to enhance preschool through high school student learning. There are approximately 800 institutions of higher education that hold membership in the organization.

Wilt has a master’s degree from Morningside College. She is certified as an elementary principal and teacher evaluator, and she is currently a doctoral student in educational leadership at Northcentral University. Before coming to Morningside College, she taught for 18 years in the Westwood Community School District in Sloan, Iowa, and she now serves on the school board there.