We embrace the ideal of working with education professionals, students, colleagues in league with our educational institutions to cultivate intellectually vital, socially just, aesthetically rich and compassionate communities in our universities, schools, towns, and cities. We strive to build an inclusive, caring educational community aimed at ?cultivating the humanity? of the whole person: engaging education professionals in scholarly study and open-minded inquiry, socially engaged praxis and community service, creative experimentation and artistic expression, as well as critical self-examination and contemplative practice. Teachers are encouraged and prepared to attend faithfully to the well-being and growth of children by creating such communities with their own students, and engaging them, as well, in these practices.

• The curriculum of the Childhood Education Program was designed to reflect this understanding of teaching and vision of education. It features:
• Teachers collaboratively engaging in scholarly study and open-minded inquiry through course work that is interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and inquiry-based.
• Teachers participating in socially engaged praxis and community service through a program that advances critical pedagogy and service learning within a school- community partnership model.
• Teachers exploring teaching as an art, requiring artistic expression and creative experimentation through direct engagement with the arts in arts-based classes, as well as direct experience with diverse teaching practices and possibilities via field-based courses in the pedagogical arts.
• Teachers cultivating their own character in a program that is student-centered, individualized through course work aimed at understanding oneself via autobiographical inquiry, critical self-examination and contemplative practice?engaging teachers in the reflective practice of their craft and the articulation of personal vision through their work.