President Paino and I are pleased to announce the appointment of Peter S. Kelly, Ph.D. as the Dean of the College of Education, effective July 25. In this position, Dr. Kelly will be responsible for providing leadership in defining the College of Education’s strategic priorities and for recruiting and retaining a diverse and highly qualified student body and faculty. In addition, he is charged with continuing the current growth of the College across its undergraduate and graduate program and successfully leading the College through its next accreditation cycle, scheduled for fall of 2019.
Dr. Kelly is currently Interim Associate Dean, School of Health Sciences and Education, Truman State University. Possessing substantial experience with state and national accreditation and with program assessment, he successfully led Truman’s Masters in Education program through CAEP accreditation efforts as early adopters of the new standards and processes. Dr. Kelly also has served on five national accreditation teams.
The primary focus of Dr. Kelly’s teaching and research is in special education, with a particular interest in the development of professional development partnerships with local schools. He co-authored two successful grant projects to support this work, and it has yielded numerous state, national, and international presentations. To better prepare teachers to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse student body, Dr. Kelly led the development of several programs, including an interdisciplinary disability studies minor, a collaborative learning experience with pre-service teachers from Harris-Stowe State University (HBCU), and an ESOL certification program. In addition, he was a co-author and project director of the Praxis Program, a personnel preparation project funded by the Missouri Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services.
Dr. Kelly currently serves as chair of the Missouri Council for Education Deans, and he serves on Missouri’s Network for Transforming Educator Preparation (NTEP) leadership team, which is responsible for the development, approval, and implementation of a new state system for evaluating teacher preparation programs in Missouri.
He received a B.S. in education and his M.S. and Ph.D., both in behavior disorders, from the University of Kansas.
Originally founded in 1908 as a teacher education institution known as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women, the University of Mary Washington is now a thriving coed liberal arts university with three colleges. The College of Education, established in 2010, enrolls more than 500 students and offers five accelerated five-year undergraduate/graduate initial licensure teacher education programs (M.ED and M.S.) as well as a post-baccalaureate M.ED.
Nina Mikhalevsky, Ph.D.
Acting Provost
