Professor of the Practice of Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Concentration: Teacher Education
Expertise: Teacher education for urban schools, situating special education within the larger framework of diversity in the reform of teacher education, inclusive teacher education, and dual licensure programs in teacher education...additional information
Email: pugach@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-3415
Curriculum Vitae & Publications
Dr. Marleen Pugach is Professor of the Practice of Education at Rossier. Her research and scholarship focus on teacher education for urban schools, preparing teachers for inclusive education, dual licensure programs in general and special education, and situating special education situated within the wider context of diversity in the reform of teacher education.
Dr. Pugach provides leadership to the collaborative research agenda at USC to study the unique, urban-focused MAT@USC teacher education program. Her other current projects are focused on the relationship between the preparation of general and special education teachers for urban schools. In a series of related studies, she is investigating how, as a policy response to the persistent low achievement of students who have disabilities, dual certification programs in teacher education are conceptualized in relationship to the full range of student diversity, rather than solely as a response to students who are identified as having disabilities.
Before joining the Rossier faculty, she served as professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she directed the elementary/middle teacher education program for urban schools. From 2003-2011 she was co-principal investigator of the teacher education reform project Teachers for a New Era at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She was a member of the American Educational Research Association's Panel on Research and Teacher Education, Studying Teacher Education, writing on the preparation of general education teachers for teaching students who have disabilities. She is an expert on collaboration in teacher education between general and special education. Dr. Pugach earned a BA in Art History from Mount Holyoke College, an MS in Education from USC, and a PhD in Teacher Education and Special Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. S he is the recipient of the Margaret Lindsey award for mid-career research from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the Merrill Award for Excellence in Teacher Education from The Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Research Foundation Senior Faculty Award, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.