Excellence in Faculty Service
Dr. Cynthia Elliott
Excellence in Faculty Service
Dr. Cynthia Elliott
Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning
For Cynthia “Cindy” Elliott, the idea of service to
others was implanted early in life. A high school student in
Blanchard 12 miles from Shreveport she participated
in a service-oriented group working with special needs children.
“My mother was a school teacher, so early on I had a
desire to work with children,” said Elliott, a professor in
the Department of Teaching and Learning. “Then in college at
Louisiana Tech, I was with a group that volunteered to work with
exceptional children, and we would go to places like the Ruston
State School to paint the windows with various holiday
themes.”
The value of service stayed with Elliott throughout her
professional career. It became more than a personal
“feel-good” emotion when she recognized the valuable
role service can play when students combine it with classroom
studies. Because of her efforts to encourage service-learning at
Southeastern, she is being recognized with the 2011
President’s Award for Excellence in Service by Faculty.
A member of the Southeastern faculty since 1994, Elliott got her
first grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents to construct a
service-learning course.
“At the time, there was a real effort nationally for
education colleges to demonstrate, for accreditation purposes,
strong cooperation with colleges that provide teacher content
the arts, sciences, social studies,” she said.
“I saw this as an opportunity to develop service-learning
programs within the department. We looked for ways that our teacher
candidates could participate in these activities.”
The experience led to her selection as chair of the
university’s first Service-Learning Committee, a function now
handled by the Center for Faculty Excellence. In 2006, she was
named a “faculty fellow” by the center, where she
mentors faculty on incorporating service-learning activities in
their courses.
One of the most prominent activities Elliott has coordinated is
Jumpstart, an early literacy program affiliated with
AmeriCorps/VISTA that operated at several area Head Start centers
for eight years. Over 300 university students logged in more than
108,000 hours of community service for children and their families.
The program’s national leadership, to Elliott’s dismay,
decided to focus its efforts in larger, more urban areas.
“It was a very successful program and we were the first in
the state to have it” she recalled. “We built a course
around it for our early childhood education students. Even though
we no longer have Jumpstart, we’re still doing that type of
work.”
Another activity she helped launch is the dual language Pre-K
program at the Livingston Parish Literacy and Technology Center in
Walker, the only one of its kind in Louisiana. Operated in
cooperation with the Livingston Parish Public School System, the
program integrates 10 English-speaking children with a similar
number of Spanish-speaking children. The results have been beyond
her imagination.
“The program is now in its fourth year, and there is a
waiting list from both English and Spanish-speaking
families,” she said. “My hope was to involve teacher
candidates in the program to gain additional diversity exposure.
“At first they are a bit nervous,” she added,
“ because they’ve never worked with a child who speaks
a different language,” she said. “But their feelings of
confidence and self-efficacy are changed.”
It is her work with teachers and counselors following Hurricane
Katrina that seems to touch Elliott most personally. She knew after
disasters it is important for people to have some structure in
their lives that distracts them from the trauma they experienced.
“I questioned whether we as teachers are prepared to deal
with crises,” she explained. “It has been said in
situations like this, teachers are in some ways the first
responders in a child’s life. I believe that.”
She brought in Denny Taylor of Hofstra University, founder of
the organization the International Center for Everybody’s
Child, to assist teachers and children in the aftermath of
disaster. Elliott said Taylor, having worked in Darfur and other
sites following catastrophes, was a tremendous help to teachers and
parents in the aftermath of Katrina.
Taylor, however, witnessed Elliott’s own near-heroic
efforts at that time: “Dr. Elliott visited shelters, worked
with families, and organized meetings to support principals,
teachers and school counselors. Her days began at 4 a.m. and ended
at midnight. She took a leadership role and did whatever she could
do.”
Interim Dean of the College of Education William Neal sees Elliott as well deserving of the award: “Service has been at the heart of her professional career from the day she was employed here. When she becomes involved, she becomes a leader in whatever the effort is.”
