January 21, 2015
History of ECU as a Teacher Preparation Institution
ECU has a proud heritage with a mission of teaching, research, and service. Its commitment to the region is an expression of its motto, “Servire,” or To Serve. Chartered in 1907 as East Carolina Teachers Training School (ECTTS), ECU has continually served the region with quality and commitment. In 1972, ECU joined the UNC System, becoming the third largest university in the system, and the College of Education (COE) is its founding college.
The Mission Statement was revised in 2014 to reflect ECU’s goal “To be a national model for student success, public service and regional transformation.” ECU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to award baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral degrees. ECU’s conceptual framework for preparing education professionals focuses on empowering all learners in all educational endeavors and achieving excellence through partnership.
The EPP unit at ECU consistently produces the most educational professionals in the state annually. Many graduates teach and lead in the eastern part of NC within The Walter and Daisy Carson Latham Clinical Schools Network (LCSN) and continue to be valued partners with the EPP and ECU Pirate Nation.
In 2009, the COE was awarded an $8.9 million Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant from the US Department of Education to reform teacher preparation and impact school reform. Several TQP reforms are innovations in the EPP’s Pirate CODE, Transformation Initiative. In 2010, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) awarded the Edward C. Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teacher Education to the editorial team of the Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI), a COE-supported online journal.
More recently, the teacher preparation programs at ECU were studied as part of a Spencer Foundation project on data use practices in teacher education. This work is being featured by AACTE as a forthcoming series of institutional profiles and problems of practice briefs.
Learn more about ECU’s mission and values: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/chancellor/mission.cfm
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