President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Joseph A. Aguerrebere will be giving a Distinguished Educational Thinkers Lecture titled “Toward a Strong Profession” today at 5 p.m. in the University Club Lounge.
Aguerrebere is hailed as a national expert on school reform and has held numerous positions in a variety of educational fields. These include service as an elementary school teacher and administrator, professor at California State University Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles, and deputy director of the Ford Foundation in New York.
“His lecture will focus on strengthening teaching as a profession,” said executive director of the UC Davis Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools Center Mary Vixie Sandy. “It will also focus on the ways in which our systems support and do not support the development of education.”
Aguerrebere graduated from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, where the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver took place. He then attended the University of Southern California and received his bachelor’s degree in political science, before moving on to receive his master’s and doctorate degrees in educational administration at the same institution.
Today, Aguerrebere is recognized as an advocate for teacher professional development, according to Sandy.
“As a lecturer, he brings a good deal of grounded experience, knowledge and theory,” she said.
As president and CEO of the board, Aguerrebere will also be discussing the responsibility educators hold for and within educational systems, according to the UC Davis School of Education official website.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is a nongovernmental organization based in Virginia that was founded with the purpose of advancing the quality of teaching and learning by creating educational standards and recruiting certified education professionals into advocating educational reform, according to the official mission statement.
Aguerrebere’s lecture is part of a series of lectures sponsored by the UC Davis School of Education and the Graduate Group in Education. The purpose of these lectures is to educate and enlighten the UC Davis community on various aspects of educational knowledge.
The series typically includes approximately four to six speakers over the course of the academic year, according to Sandy. However, some years have witnessed as many as eight or 10 lectures.
“It’s a fairly eclectic series, and it doesn’t necessarily follow one theme,” Sandy said.
Agueberre’s lecture is a free event and open to the public.
RITA SIMERLY can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.XXX
