Ballenger is ‘passing the ruler’
By Julie Rausch
| Note: The College of Education will honor Marcus Ballenger for his years of service in a reception, open to the university community, 3-4:40 p.m. Thursday, May 11, in the Hughes Metropolitan Complex Meeting Room. |
If Marcus Ballenger, associate dean for the College of Education, could sum up his 30-year career at Wichita State in one word it would be "rewarding."
Ballenger will be back in the fall, but only at a fraction of the time and not as associate dean. He’s retiring from that position, passing the ruler to Peggy Anderson.
Anderson has been appointed associate dean for undergraduate programs and teacher education, effective this summer. Anderson has primarily worked to prepare English as second language teachers, and she is the college’s teacher education coordinator.
During the next academic year, Ballenger’s energies will be divided between relaxing with things he wants to do and helping to prepare the college for the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education review.
"The visit is actually spring 2002, but we need to have all the material ready by the end of the next academic year," Ballenger said. "The review has become more stringent, which is good because it strengthens the program."
His emphasis on strengthening the college will take Ballenger away from what he finds so satisfying – working with "intelligent and caring" students. Part of his leadership has included managing the college’s Student Services Center, which includes program applications and admissions, document preparation, certification and graduation.
"I have loved the teaching and loved working with the students, and that part I will miss very much," he said. "And I’ve had the opportunity to work with absolutely outstanding people over the years – great deans and colleagues who are so very important to me."
Not only has Ballenger loved his role as associate dean at WSU, he’s thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
As a young teaching professional in the Lubbock, Texas, school system he had a number of firsts. He began his career in 1960 as a rarity, teaching fifth grade.
"There were very few men teaching elementary grades back then," he said, "and we were only allowed to teach fifth and sixth grades."
But he wanted to teach even younger children. He finally was hired as the first man in the Lubbock schools to teach third grade. Later, he was the first assistant elementary principal, and after that he became the youngest principal in that school system.
He accepted a position in Wichita to write a grant for the U.S. Office of Education in 1970 and was housed in WSU’s education college. His grant to train administrators how to deal with early childhood students was accepted for one year and extended for two more. Then he was hired by WSU’s curriculum and instruction department to teach early childhood language arts and children’s literature.
He became associate dean 10 years ago. He said he’s proud of the Houghton-Mifflin Language Arts Series textbooks he wrote for fifth and sixth grades. The series had a record-breaking distribution in 1988 and has been consistently strong across the nation since then.
"It was the first language arts series that incorporated grammar and literature," Ballenger said.
Soon Ballenger will spend most of his summer working on "his wreck," a cabin he’s been "fixing up" for 25 years in Colorado’s Four Corner’s area.
"The area has more 14,000-foot peaks than any other area in the country," he said.
As usual, after he sees the first August snowfall, he’ll be back working with his colleagues to help make his college as strong as it can be.
