Posted: 14 Mar 2010 08:49 AM PDT

WORCESTER — In a sign school officials never completed plans to fire all unqualified teachers, a former instructional aide was given a teaching position in Doherty Memorial High School's engineering and technology program despite lacking relevant credentials or extensive experience.

Teachers union officials last week lashed out at the Worcester School Department for hiring Katerina Kambosos, one of five teachers assigned to Doherty's in-house engineering and technology academy, for the $65,000-a-year job last June, even though she never attained certification in any teaching subject until March 1 of this year.

Ms. Kambosos, 32, was hired for the job a few days before she and some 15 other uncertified School Department employees were supposed to be fired. Another 18 School Department employees were supposed to be either reassigned to jobs for which they were qualified or let go.

"The bottom line is we have been laying off certified teachers, and so we should not be rewarding uncertified teachers and letting them stay in the system," said Cheryl A. DelSignore, president of the Educational Association of Worcester, the union representing the city's public school teachers.

The hiring echoes a controversy that erupted last March when it was revealed that a former school superintendent's office manager had been given a special education teaching job even though she lacked certification or teaching credentials.

The former office manager, Donna C. Byrnes, was soon fired. Mrs. Byrnes has sued the city, alleging defamation, violation of state wage laws and claiming she was let go without being given an opportunity for a hearing to clear her name.

Amid the uproar after the Byrnes imbroglio, then-interim School Superintendent Deirdre J. Loughlin declared there would be a top-to-bottom review of teacher certification, including the dismissal of all who were not officially qualified for their jobs.

The School Department has never announced who was fired or reassigned. Union officials say most of the 15 uncertified employees were let go, and that some of the 18 were placed in jobs for which they had proper certification while others were fired.

School Superintendent Melinda J. Boone and Ms. Kambosos did not return calls seeking comment on Ms. Kambosos' hiring and her responsibilities in the Doherty program, commonly referred to as ETA.

Students in the program retain the same teachers throughout their four years at Doherty, and as underclassmen, stay in the same wing of the school. Once they become upperclassmen, they may take either the program's rigorous engineering courses or Advanced Placement classes.

In 2008, 14 percent of ETA students were taking AP classes, compared to 11 percent of the remaining students. The program has both an honors (higher) and college level (lower) track.

School records show that Ms. Kambosos has worked full time in the district for a decade without attaining any professional licensure, according to state education officials.

After first being hired by the school district as an instructional assistant in special education in 2000, Ms. Kambosos received her first formal license only this month, on March 1, according to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The license, for health/family and consumer sciences, authorizes her to teach health education, according to J.C. Considine, a spokesman for the state Education Department.

Over the years, the state has granted waivers from certification requirements to the Worcester School District twice for Ms. Kambosos, Mr. Considine said. The waivers were for teaching biology, Grades 8-12, for the 2002-03 and 2007-08 school years.

The spokesman said the state has no record of Ms. Kambosos — who graduated from Assumption College in 1999 with a major in biology — passing the biology licensure test.

Over the decade, she would have had numerous opportunities to take the biology license test, or any other science area tests, according to Mr. Considine. Over the last few years, for example, the tests have been offered five times a year.

Jack L. Foley, vice chairman of the Worcester School Committee, said that while he was not familiar with Ms. Kambosos' job, he would seek more information about it.

"I don't know if this was overlooked or what. Obviously, we will try to find out what the situation is and what her position is," Mr. Foley said. "It's part of the process we initiated last year, and we will follow up on it."

While Ms. DelSignore, the union official, complained that Ms. Kambosos had received constant step raises despite not being permanently licensed, Mr. Foley noted that teachers on waivers can continue to get step increases. He also pointed out that her current title, "action plan facilitator," may exempt her from certification rules.

Ms. Kambosos' name appeared last April on a school district list of teachers whose requests for waivers from state certification requirements had been denied. School officials said those teachers would be terminated as of June 30, 2009, as would another 18 teachers who could not find positions within the district for which they were trained.

Currently, Ms. Kambosos is at the ninth step of the teacher salary schedule.

With a bachelor's degree plus 15 credits toward her master's degree, which her résumé states she has attained, Ms. Kambosos is at the top of the pay scale for a teacher with her qualifications.

But Ms. DelSignore maintains that a teacher lacking necessary credentials should have been paid as a long-term substitute and not allowed to ascend the salary step ladder.

Instead of $65,000, a teacher with Ms. Kambosos' qualifications should be making $42,000, the salary of a first-step teacher with a bachelor's degree and 15 master's credits, Ms. DelSignore said.

In addition, teachers with more experience and training should have been given preference for a prestigious assignment such as Doherty's engineering and technology academy, she said.

"They developed a job for her that a lot of people would be interested in," Ms. DelSignore said. "She doesn't have the qualifications without being licensed for the job."

Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at ssutner@telegram.com

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

UNL undergrads hone research skills - Omaha World-Herald

Posted: 14 Mar 2010 06:26 AM PDT

LINCOLN — While many of her fellow college students sun themselves on beaches during spring break this week, Mari Pesek will be sifting through piles of cool, damp leaves, hunting wolf spiders.

Pesek became fascinated with the eight-legged critters, thanks in part to an unusual undergraduate research program that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln established 10 years ago.

Not only does the program, known as UCARE, pay Pesek for her research, it has helped hone her interests in biology and environmental studies.

"Working with spiders has taught me that I can work with a lot of different animals," said Pesek, a senior from Brainard, Neb. "And maybe not the kinds of animals that you think are so cute and fuzzy."

Her faculty mentor, Eileen Hebets, an assistant biology professor, came to UNL five years ago from the University of California-Berkeley, where she worked with a similar program.

She said such programs are relatively rare nationwide. "Undergrad research is really important, and it's often difficult to get undergrads in the lab if there isn't some incentive or a program like UCARE," Hebets said.

Although most universities offer research programs for undergraduates, the students usually work as research assistants for faculty members and don't get financial support for independent projects.

If students do work on independent projects, they're treated as an additional teaching assignment for faculty members, said economics professor Rick Edwards, who helped design the UNL program when he was senior vice chancellor of academic affairs in 2000.

Nancy Hensel, executive director of the Council on Undergraduate Research in Washington, D.C., said the UNL program incorporates what many experts regard as the best practices for undergraduates to learn the ropes of academic research.

It combines teaching students how to do research and giving them a chance to apply what they learn to their own projects, she said.

"Students need to learn how to do research, and one of the ways to do it is to work with a faculty member on their research," she said. "To have it formalized in a program (like UCARE) is really terrific."

The program's official name is Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience. It is financed in part through a trust fund established by PepsiCo Inc. when UNL gave it exclusive rights to sell soft drinks on campus in 1999.

UCARE receives about $400,000 from the PepsiCo trust fund each year, plus another $200,000 from the Program of Excellence Fund. Students are paid $2,000 per academic year.

After starting with 100 students and 100 faculty members, about 450 students and more than 280 faculty members now participate in UCARE, said Laura Damuth, director of UNL undergraduate research.

"If you think about the benefit for students, it's huge," she said. "They're delving deeper in their field of study, and faculty are developing future researchers in their field."

From the start, UCARE has been open to all disciplines, faculty members and colleges. Usually about half the projects are in laboratory science and the others in liberal arts.

Projects typically last two years.

During the first year, undergraduates work on faculty projects.

During the second year, students typically do their own research projects, guided by faculty mentors.

Pesek wanted to add more research experience to her resume after switching her major from biology to environmental studies during her sophomore year.

She landed in UCARE after spending more than a year assisting graduate student Kasey Fowler-Finn, who was studying wolf spiders in Mississippi.

While Fowler-Finn focused on the way the spiders moved about and their courtship practices, Pesek grew interested in how some male spiders had big black brushes on their forelegs while others did not.

Fowler-Finn helped Pesek develop an experiment on whether the spiders' foreleg brushes inhibited their ability to forage.

Pesek applied for UCARE assistance in February 2009, during her junior year and was assigned Hebets as a mentor.

Pesek's UCARE project will last only one year because she will graduate, though she plans to continue her research. Pesek is applying to graduate schools to study ecology.

University officials believe all graduates should have research experience.

"One of the best ways to develop future scientists is to engage undergraduates," Edwards said.

World-Herald staff writer Leslie Reed contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

444-1304, news@owh.com.

Copyright ©2010 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Educators race to the top? - Worcester Telegram & Gazette

Posted: 14 Mar 2010 03:56 AM PDT