Title:  Director of CLAS PK-12 Initiatives

Office:  D-1-214 MAK

Phone: (616) 331-2495

Fax: (616) 331-3675

Email: [email protected]

• Leads content-area teacher education faculty in CLAS
  • Helps coordinate teacher education program design and implementation
  • Oversees internal and external teacher education program evaluation
  • Supervises creation and submission of SPA and CAEP accreditation documents by content-area faculty
  • Actively promotes communication and collaboration between content-area and education faculty
  • Provides support to PCKET director and unit heads on matters related to teacher education
  • Collaborates with the Regional Math and Science Center Director and others within CLAS on education initiatives
  • Coordinates events for PK-12 teacher education faculty to promote collaborations
  • Seeks out grant opportunities to support PK-12 initiatives within class
  • Provides assistance as requested to directors and unit heads within class on PK-12 outreach
• Serves as liaison with the College of Education and Community Innovation
  • Collaborates with leadership in CECI on teacher education programs, curricula, and initiatives
  • Helps coordinate collaborations among CLAS and CECI faculty
  • Communicates with CLAS faculty about events and developments in CECI
  • Sits ex officio on Teacher Education Council
• Serves as CLAS representative for PK-12 education outreach efforts
  • Leads CLAS dual enrollment initiatives and matriculation agreements, including those to promote teacher pipelines and “grow your own” programs
  • Helps support communication with community college leadership on teacher education transfer agreements
  • Represents CLAS at the state level, including attending DARTEP and other MDE meetings
  • Actively promotes GVSU’s teacher education program and helps coordinate efforts to strengthen the teaching profession across the state

Tamara Shreiner is an associate professor in the History Department, where she specializes in social studies education.  She is also the director of the Comprehensive Science and Arts for Teaching Program.  Prior to her work at GVSU, Tamara was a classroom teacher for ten years, teaching middle school and high school history, civics, geography, and English courses.  She also worked as Associate Curator of Education at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, MI. 

Tamara received an M.A. in Social Studies Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Teaching and Teacher Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She also holds a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from U of M.  All of her research has been concerned with the relationship between history education and civic education in K-12 schools. Her work currently focuses on the teaching and learning of data literacy in social studies, exploring ways that critical analyses of data visualizations in history and other social studies subjects can both enhance students’ learning of subject matter and prepare them to be critical consumers of information.   She has publications in Cognition & Instruction, Theory & Research in Social Education, The History Teacher, the Journal of Social Studies Research, and World History Connected.

Tamara has been an active advocate for history and social studies education, serving on various boards and committees at state and national levels.  She is currently the executive director of the Michigan Council for History Education, and served on the Michigan Social Studies Standards writing task forces in both 2007 and 2019.  She has also been chair of the American Educational Research Association Teaching History Special Interest Group and a board member for the Michigan Center for Civic Education.