SOE announces 2011-12 Couper Fellow

Corine Omole was introduced as the 2011-12 Couper Fellow during a reception May 12 for the 19th Annual Edgar W. Couper Lecture.

Omole’s studies will focus on culture, curriculum and schooling in post-colonial Africa.

“I am happy to be a recipient of the Couper Fellowship award,” she said. “I thank the Couper family for establishing the fund and the School of Education for considering me worthy of the award.

“I appreciate all of the professors in the School of Education whose courses I have taken. Each of these courses has contributed to my ability to question what I have all my life accepted as normal.”

The Edgar W. Couper Endowment Fund for Educational Excellence provides Couper Fellowships annually to one or more full-time students in SOE’s doctoral program in Educational Theory and Practice.

The fellowships and lecture honor Couper, a former chancellor of the New York state Board of Regents, who helped bring Binghamton into the State University of New York system in 1950.

The reception also served as introduction to the school’s 13 new doctoral students. The students include Randall Edouard, director of Binghamton University’s Educational Opportunity Program.

The Couper Lecture was given by Russell Skiba, professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University. He discussed “Race is Not Neutral: Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in Discipline.”