Introduction
The Inquiry Brief Proposal was written by Heather Dunham, Chair of the Education Department and Barbara-Jayne Lewthwaite, the former Chair of the Education Department and current Provost of the College. The faculty of Centenary College approved Inquiry Brief Proposal, in May of 2004 and subsequent revisions were made and sent to TEAC on October 25, 2004.

Centenary College is an independent college, located in Hackettstown, New Jersey with an enrollment of approximately 1600 students. The Department of Education seeks preaccreditation status for its Education Certification Program, which is given at the undergraduate and post-baccalaureate levels. The program has options leading to New Jersey certification in Biology, Business Education, English, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Elementary Education. Candidates in elementary education also have the option of majoring in Psychology or Sociology. In addition, all candidates have the option of seeking a New Jersey certification for Teachers of Students with Disabilities.

About 300 students are enrolled in the Education Certification Program, and unlike other programs at the College, they tend to be primarily commuter students. The program draws from the surrounding community which is not ethnically diverse and is predominantly Caucasian.

The Education Department has six full time faculty members, nine adjunct faculty members, and nine field supervisors associated with the program.

Claims for student learning and Quality Principle I
The program faculty members make the following three claims about the Centenary students in their program:

1. They demonstrate knowledge in liberal arts, knowledge in their academic majors, and can integrate that knowledge with professional teaching knowledge

2. They display professional knowledge in the areas of foundations of education, child development, curriculum, and teaching methods, behavior management and integration of technology into the curriculum.

3. They know how to learn and how practice of professional ethics in their teaching, particularly as caring educators who appreciate and accommodate students’ varied multicultural needs.

These claims are also linked and aligned with the New Jersey INTASC Standards, the TEAC Quality Principles, and the six propositions of the Greater Expectations project

Evidence Supporting the Claims
The program faculty plan to support these claims with evidence from the following eight sources (supported by a large number of locally constructed rating forms):

Some of these measures were piloted with students enrolled in the fall 2002 section of EDU200 and satisfactory scores were found for technology, caring, and multiculturalism.

In addition reliability checks were made on a number of measures and they showed substantial inter-rater agreement and correlation.

Internal Audit
The program’s quality control system is an amalgam of formal and informal methods, internal and external checks, internal procedures, and information on student learning. The system was audited by following five students through six courses taught by full-time program faculty members. The internal audit generally found that the system functioned as designed, but it did uncover weaknesses with regard to intake and field placement processes. This finding has resulted in the hiring of a full-time Director of Field Placement.

Evidence of capacity
The faculty undertook an extensive analysis of commitment (parity) and found the program was above the institutional norms in 9 instances, at the norm in 11 instances, and below parity in 2 instances. There were 2 additional instances where the data were not available or failed to yield a definite verdict. The faculty concluded, on the bases of this analysis, that Centenary is fully committed to the program and that it has the capacity to offer a quality program.