College leaders
A century of deans
 George James
dean, 1905–1915
James succeeded David Kiehle as chair of the
Department of Pedagogy in 1902. The College of Education was created on Dec. 12,
1905, with the mandate of guiding the training of teachers, principals, and
school superintendents. James began his ten-year tenure as the first dean with a
tiny budget and a modest office in Folwell Hall.
 Lotus Coffman
dean, 1915–1920
One of the most influential figures in the
college’s history, Coffman arrived with a conviction that primary and secondary
education in the U.S. required a drastic overhaul, and that the teaching
profession needed higher standards and better research behind its practices. In
one of his first acts as dean, Coffman lent his support to the University’s
Bureau of Cooperative Research, an effort to gather data from schools across
Minnesota and apply the information to the study of educational problems. During
his five years as dean, Coffman succeeded in gathering together under the
college’s umbrella all faculty from other departments of the University who were
providing teacher training, thus defining the college as the source of all
teaching certifications. Coffman left the deanship in 1920 to become president
of the University of Minnesota.
 Melvin Haggerty
dean, 1920–1937
During Haggerty’s 17-year-long tenure, he
emphasized the training of school administrators and the development of new
research on secondary and higher education.
 Wesley Peik
acting dean, 1937–1938 dean, 1938–1951
Peik spent 13 years as
dean—a time marked by the emergence of the College of Education as a strong
component of the University. Peik put his weight behind the creation of the
Bureau of Field Studies and Surveys, whose responsibility was to gather
statistical information from Minnesota’s schools and school districts with the
hope of analyzing the data to suggest solutions to common problems.
 Walter Cook
dean, 1952–1963
A member of the faculty in educational psychology
since 1938, Cook championed his belief in the individual differences of each
child. During his 11 years in office, Minnesota needed nearly 1,000 new teachers
each year to meet the demand, and the college continually increased its
facilities and improved its programs to keep up.
 Marcia Edwards
acting dean, 1952, 1963–1964
(Ph.D., ’35, Graduate School) A
master administrator, Edwards was urged by University President James Lewis
Morrill to assume the deanship permanently, but she refused. Although she
regarded herself as qualified to assume the responsibilities of dean, she
believed that Minnesota educators were not ready to see a woman as leader of the
College of Education.
 Robert Keller
dean, 1964–1970
(Ph.D., ’47, education; M.A., ’40, educational
administration) Keller’s varied experience included teacher in a one-room
schoolhouse, North St. Paul high school instructor, and director of University
High School. Like his predecessor, he worked to find a balance between the
college’s support of educational research and its commitment to serve the
educational community beyond the University campus.
 Jack Merwin*
dean, 1970–1976
A professor of educational psychology since
1960, Merwin used his time as dean to reorganize the college into seven
departments. As an administrator, his great talent was planning and setting
institutional priorities during a time when money was scarce.
 William Gardner*
acting dean, 1976–1977 dean, 1977–1991
(Ph.D., ’61,
education; M.A., ’59, education; B.S., ’50, social studies) Among Gardner’s
initiatives were programs designed to bring college staff and faculty more
frequently in contact with local schoolteachers and administrators. In 1987, postbaccalaureate teacher education programs were established, and most
undergraduate programs phased out.
 Robert Bruininks*
dean, 1991–1997
A member of the educational psychology
faculty since 1968 and founding director of the Institute on Community
Integration, Bruininks became dean facing serious budgetary challenges. In 1995,
the College of Education officially became the College of Education and Human
Development. Bruininks left his position to become the University’s executive
vice president and provost in 1997. He was appointed 15th president of the
University of Minnesota in 2002, becoming the second dean from the college to
obtain that office.
 Charles Hopkins*
interim dean, 1997–1998
(M.Ed., ’66, curriculum and
instruction; Ed.D., ’68, education) A professor and former chair of the
Department of Work, Community, and Family Education, Hopkins postponed his
retirement to provide leadership during a time of transition.
 Steven Yussen*
dean, 1998–2006
(Ph.D., ’73, child psychology) Yussen came to
the college from the University of Iowa where he was dean of the College of
Education. During his tenure here, Yussen oversaw a successful capital campaign,
two successful reviews by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher
Education, and received state funding for renovation of the University’s former
mines research station to a state-of-the-art education sciences facility. In his
last year as dean, Yussen has provided leadership during a University-wide
restructuring to help the transition to a new and expanded college.
* living deans |
