About This Issue

As the chief executive officer of one of the nation's leading research universities, I am often asked why I devote so much of my time and energies in the area of elementary and secondary education. For me, the connection between K­p;12 education and higher education is obvious. The better job our nation's schools do in the early years of our young people's lives the better prepared they are to benefit from what colleges and universities have to offer, and ultimately, the better citizens they will be.

Here at Vanderbilt we are committed to working with our nation's schools to prepare our children for a lifetime of learning. With funding from federal agencies and foundations, we are developing research-based innovative programs and methods to be implented in the nation's schools. In this issue of Research at Vanderbilt, we provide a glimpse of some of these innovations. It is by no means comprehensive, but instead representative of the work under way in our Tennessee neighborhood and elsewhere.

Much of the work is centered at Peabody College, long recognized for its excellence in educating teachers and in advancing the knowledge of how children learn. While Peabody takes the lead in these efforts, the commitment to improving our nation's schools is a university-wide priority. We have professors in nearly all of the University's schools and colleges who spend time working with classroom teachers and K­p;12 students.

One aspect of modern education that has received much attention in recent years is technology. Here again, Peabody College has been a national leader in integrating this important tool into teacher preparation and the classroom environment. But the key to our efforts has been using the technology in a meaningful and effective manner to add value and dimension to the learning process, as I believe you will see through the articles in this issue.

You will also see that education research is not conducted in a vacuum. It is conducted in collaboration with classroom teachers, students and, in some cases, parents. And we have taken what we have learned and translated it into very real programs that can be made available on a large scale, as in the case of the Learning Technology Center's Jasper Woodbury series.

I believe this issue of Research at Vanderbilt offers a sampling of the important ways that Vanderbilt faculty are working to ensure that today's and tomorrow's schoolchildren will be well equipped for the next millennium's frontiers.

Joe B. Wyatt