Every college of education likes to say it is reimagining the profession. At the University of Maryland College of Education, the claim comes with a paper trail stretching back more than a century. The college was established in 1920 after the School of Education was founded in 1919, with four faculty members and 94 graduate students, offering programs in agricultural education, home economics, industrial education, and general education. In 2020, the college marked its centennial, a milestone celebrated in a video series called Benjamin Broadcast, named for the Benjamin Building that has housed the college for decades on the College Park campus, just outside Washington, D.C.
The college’s proximity to the nation’s capital is not incidental to how it tells its own history. In 1955, one year after Brown v. Board of Education, Elaine Johnson Coates enrolled at the University of Maryland in the College of Education. Four years later, in 1959, she became the first Black woman to earn an undergraduate degree from the university. It is the kind of fact a college could bury in a timeline. UMD puts it near the top of its own story.
A Dean Who Calls Herself a Problem-Based Researcher
Dean Kimberly A. Griffin was appointed to lead the college in 2022, after joining the Maryland faculty in 2012 and serving as associate dean for graduate studies and faculty affairs. She describes her own scholarly identity plainly: a “problem-based researcher.” Her work, much of it funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, has focused on mentorship, career development, faculty diversity, and graduate student development. She also served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Diversity in Higher Education from 2018 to 2022.
Education Week has recognized Griffin among the most influential education scholars in the country for four consecutive years, rather than three.
When the college’s graduate program rose in the 2024 U.S. News rankings, Griffin put the achievement in institutional terms: “I am deeply proud of the work EdTerps do… This distinction reflects our commitment to pursuing bold, impactful research and to creating a supportive community where we cultivate transformational leaders and practitioners.”
By 2026, the college had climbed further: No. 24 among graduate schools of education nationally, No. 1 among public graduate schools of education in Maryland, and No. 15 among public graduate schools of education in the country. Individual programs scored higher still among public institutions: No. 1 in Student Counseling and Personnel Services, No. 5 in Educational Psychology, No. 8 in Higher Education Administration, No. 12 in Secondary Teacher Education, No. 14 in Education Policy, No. 14 in Elementary Teacher Education, and No. 16 in Curriculum and Instruction.
The Department Doing the Heaviest Lifting
Most of the actual work of preparing teachers happens inside the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership (TLPL), one of the college’s three departments, alongside Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education, and Human Development and Quantitative Methodology. TLPL houses teacher-preparation programs spanning elementary education, secondary education, special education, TESOL, and other certification pathways, including Terrapin Teachers and the Creative Initiatives in Teacher Education program.
“At the University of Maryland College of Education, teacher education is being reimagined,” reads the department’s own framing of its work, a note credited to Jennifer King Rice, who has since become the university’s senior vice president and provost. “Teachers are the most important school-based factor affecting student learning. An excellent teacher can transform learning for thousands of students over the course of their career.”
The department’s programs are built around specific areas of need, including special education, mathematics, science, and teaching English to speakers of other languages.
The Researchers Behind the Reimagining
The names behind that work are worth knowing. Lawrence Clark, associate professor, studies mathematics teacher education and the experiences of teachers and learners, including work examining how teachers’ knowledge and beliefs shape their teaching. His work has also included Mathletics, a summer program using sports statistics to engage middle school students in mathematics and data analysis.
Taharee Jackson studies issues connected to teacher workforce diversity, retention, and equity, including the experiences of teachers in urban schools.
Daniel Chazan, who holds the Jean, Jeffrey, and David Mullan Professorship in Teacher Education, directs the Center for Mathematics Education and has led federally funded research examining mathematics teaching and teacher education. His work has included the LessonSketch project, which uses representations of classroom practice to support teacher learning.
Diane Jass Ketelhut, associate professor, conducts research on technology-enhanced learning and immersive environments. Her work includes the development and study of virtual and mixed-reality environments designed to improve teaching and learning.
On the literacy side, Megan Madigan Peercy leads work focused on preparing teachers of multilingual learners, while John O’Flahavan has worked extensively in literacy and writing instruction.
Christy Tirrell-Corbin, clinical professor and executive director of the Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention, recently launched a preschool curriculum funded by the Maryland State Department of Education and developed in partnership with the Smithsonian Museum and Apple. The curriculum is being piloted in 65 classrooms and addresses teaching English Language Learners and students with disabilities while incorporating strategies for addressing trauma, including trauma associated with school shootings and the opioid epidemic.
Building the Pipeline — and the Simulations to Train It
Two veterans of national education policy round out the college’s public voice. Donna L. Wiseman, dean from 2008 to 2017 and former board president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, has emphasized the college’s role in teacher-education policy and its responsiveness to educators and administrators in the field.
David Imig, who led AACTE as director and CEO before joining the faculty, co-directs the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, a consortium focused on improving professional practice through education doctorates.
On the ground, the pipeline work is concrete. CITE (Creative Initiatives in Teacher Education) provides a pathway for paraeducators and conditionally licensed educators to earn an M.Ed. and teacher certification, and the program has expanded its partnerships beyond its original Montgomery County base. Terrapin Teachers provides pathways for STEM undergraduates to combine their STEM studies with teacher preparation, including mathematics and science education.
The college is also experimenting with how teachers learn to teach before they enter their own classrooms. Research at UMD has used avatars and immersive virtual environments to give preservice teachers opportunities to practice teaching, observe the consequences of instructional decisions, and reflect on their work. Current projects have evolved toward real-time virtual classrooms in which preservice teachers interact with virtual student agents in simulated instructional settings.
That combination — historical access, teacher preparation, equity-focused research, workforce pathways, and technology-enabled practice — is what gives the University of Maryland College of Education its particular place in the national landscape. Its story is not simply about becoming a highly ranked college. It is about using research and preparation to shape who enters the profession, how they are trained, and how effectively they can serve increasingly diverse classrooms and communities.
