| Congratulations Dr. Rockie Pederson, Recipient of Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award for Contingent Faculty! |
Rockie Pederson, Ph.D., Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Kinesiology, has been named one of nine UTEP faculty who have received the 2009 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards and one of 73 honored faculty, system-wide.  Dr. Pederson has been a faculty member in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Texas at El Paso since 2001. During this time she has served as Coordinator of the Physical Education Teacher Education Program (PETEP), providing leadership for the Kinesiology Department undergraduate program that prepares our students to become K-12 physical education teachers. In this role, she is responsible for coordinating the pedagogy courses and internship placements, mentoring faculty, organizing and supervising the student teaching internships, preparing students for their professional examinations and collaborating with College of Education faculty and staff to jointly serve the students in this program. There are over 250 students in this program, accounting for approximately half of the Kinesiology undergraduates. Under her transformational leadership and multi-faceted approach to improve this program, the PETEP program has been able to increase the UTEP student pass rate on the Physical Education EC-12 Examination for Educators in Texas ((ExCET), now the TexES)) from 70% to a pass rate of over 90%, sustained since 2003. Pederson’s scholarship has largely focused on pedagogy in physical education, specifically as applied to the preparation of future physical educators. She has designed five new undergraduate courses and one graduate course to focus on best practices in physical education teaching. In addition, she realigned the curriculum and has maintained a competency-based curriculum matrix to insure adequate content coverage in preparation for the Texas Examination of Educator Standards (TexES). She also developed and implemented a weekly preparation seminar, certainly contributing to the 20+ percentage point-improvement in passing scores on the TexES certification examination. Her role as mentor for new faculty has also facilitated development of teaching excellence and modeling of best practices in this program. In addition, Dr. Pederson has served as Principal Investigator on several training grants to facilitate the preparation of physical education teachers. For example, in 2008, Pederson and colleague Nancy Torres undertook an ambitious community –based project to increase physical activity among 4th graders in a largely underserved school district as part of the College of Health Sciences’ Community Outreach Program (CORP). The IGUALES program engaged two university faculty, eight senior teacher candidates from the Kinesiology pedagogy program, five physical education teachers from the district and 115 elementary school students (94% Hispanic) from five schools in the Canutillo Independent School District in an innovative 8-week after-school tennis program. This program leveraged available funding and materials from the U.S. Tennis Association and not only served to enhance the activity level of the elementary school students, gave UTEP’s student teachers an additional opportunity to hone their instructional skills and helped district schools and physical education teachers to expand their capacity to offer activity-based after-school programming. She then documented the outcomes of the project for presentation and publication in the Kinesiology pedagogy field. Dr. Pederson’s research focus has been largely in the application of cooperative learning and team-based learning strategies. Her presentations in local, state and national forums demonstrate her diverse talents in pedagogy. Her work has frequently crossed disciplines and she has a number of collaborative presentations with colleagues both within and outside the Kinesiology Department. She maintains active membership in six professional organizations in health and physical education at the national, regional and state levels. She has received funding for 12 discrete projects during her time at UTEP. Her appointment as evaluator by the El Paso Independent School District on a $750,000 PEP grant speaks to the respect she has garnered within the physical education pedagogy field. Her contributions across the university have been characterized by teamwork, focus and effectiveness in moving an agenda forward. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Pederson on the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award for Contingent Faculty. Her contributions have been critical to her department’s success in the preparation of teachers in physical education. Dr. Rockie Pederson is a leader in the physical education pedagogy field and a stellar example of our very best at The University of Texas at El Paso. |
