June 12, 2002 - Raised through childhood in Centerport, Long Island, and now a Manhattan resident, Eileen Weiss, Ed.D., a professor of education at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., was recently honored by the campus' Professional Experience and Placement (PEP) office with its 2002 Faculty of the Year Award. This honor is bestowed annually by the PEP Office to outstanding advocates of its award-winning cooperative education program.

PEP chose to honor Dr. Weiss for her support of student participation in PEP's experiential education programs. She has taken an active role in planning and supporting Professional Development Day, which is an opportunity for C.W. Post student-teachers to attend résumé and interview workshops designed for teachers and to get advice from a panel of school district administrators on how to land a teaching position.

At C.W. Post, Dr. Weiss teaches educational psychology and supervises student-teachers. In recent years, she has coordinated and led student-teacher supervisor forums, prospective student-teacher meetings, and cooperating-teacher meetings for the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. These community-building efforts have created a new climate of collaboration and camaraderie among mentors of student-teachers, which in turn has benefited some 200 Curriculum & Instruction student-teachers' in the field each semester.

Far from confining her professional activities to the campus classroom, Dr. Weiss is quite active in research and development. She has been published in the areas of teacher evaluation, teacher induction, teacher commitment, and reflective teaching and reflective supervision. Reaching out to connect field practice and theoretical knowledge base, she created the first professional development school (PDS) model for C.W. Post at Cross Street School in Williston Park, and piloted and implemented a new student-teaching supervision paradigm for the university's Department of Curriculum & Instruction. She spearheaded a 5-year pilot project that recently led to the implementation of a "Teaching Portfolio" for her department's student-teachers, which had also been piloted with PEP.

Dr. Weiss earned a master's degree in elementary education from Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. She attended Teachers College at Columbia University to earn a master's degree in philosophy and education and a doctoral degree in educational leadership. She worked as an elementary school teacher for 16 years before teaching on the college level.

PEP provides paid internship opportunities (called "Co-ops," for cooperative learning) for students in every major. Through PEP and Co-op, students can gain hands-on work experience, build a résumé, receive career counseling, and conduct job searches through an on-line database of thousands of potential employers nationwide. For additional information about PEP or Co-op, call (516) 299-2435 or visit www.liu.edu/pep.