USU's Tim Slocum Receives Award for Teaching

“Icing on the cake.”

This is the expression that Tim Slocum, associate professor in Utah State University’s Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, uses when describing being awarded the 2011 Fred S. Keller Behavioral Education Award by the American Psychological Association.

“I just love doing this work of helping to improve education through research and teaching,” Slocum said. “The real rewards come every day in interacting and collaborating with students and colleagues, doing the research and promoting effective education.”

Being recognized for contributions in the area of direct instruction and efforts to promote the widespread adoption of effective, empirically validated teaching practices, Slocum joins some of the most well-known applied behavior analysts in the world as award recipients.

The award is even more meaningful to Slocum because it is named for Fred Keller.

“Fred Keller was a legendary psychologist and teacher who was especially concerned with improvement of children’s’ lives,” Slocum said. “He has been a hero of mine since I was a new graduate student.”

A focus of Slocum’s career has been to advance research and practice on Direct Instruction — the explicit teaching of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the material — and other empirically validated instructional interventions. He has co-edited a textbook on Direct Instruction and published numerous journal articles and book chapters on the subject. He co-founded and has co-edited the “Journal of Direct Instruction” and served as president and on the board of directors for the Association for Direct Instruction.

“Tim has made incredible contributions to the advancement and proliferation of empirically validated educational practices,” said Amy Odum, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Slocum’s nominator. “Similar to Fred Keller, he also has a warmth, genuine respect and love for humanity. Tim also sees each individual, and his or her success, as important, and does his best to help each achieve his fullest potential.”

Slocum’s service extends beyond the classroom to the Cache Valley community. He was instrumental in transforming the Cache Valley Learning Center, a private school he co-founded, into a public school. The Bear River Charter School opened its doors in August 2010 and currently serves twice as many children in K-8 as the previous school.

Slocum has been asked to present an invited address at the American Psychological Association convention in Washington, D.C. (Aug. 4-7), as this year’s award winner.

USU’s Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services

Contact: Tim Slocum, (435) 797-3212, tim.slocum@usu.edu

Writer: Rob Goates, rsgoates@gmail.com