Planting Partnerships: How Efforts in the 1990s Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Fruitful K-12 Collaborations
By Christine Byrd
May 2, 2025
May 2, 2025
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When Mary Roosevelt first visited UC Irvine in 1974, the bison outnumbered the buildings scattered among the rolling hills. With her experience teaching internationally and visiting universities around the world, she was, frankly, unimpressed by the Irvine campus. But with her knack for forging relationships and a relentless desire to support local schools, Roosevelt ultimately became instrumental in UC Irvine’s teacher education program, planting the seeds for community partnerships that continue to define the School of Education today.
Roosevelt, trained as a teacher in England, had been Principal of the Junior House at the United Nations International School in New York and a teacher at the International School of Geneva. It was in Geneva that a school director noticed her fearlessness in pushing institutional boundaries and chose her to help develop a new elementary school curriculum. Roosevelt traveled to schools and universities across Africa, Europe, and the U.S. researching the curriculum, which would eventually become the International Baccalaureate offering for primary grades. “It was grueling, but I loved it,” Roosevelt recalls. “It was a lifetime experience.” |
Mary Roosevelt (third from right) with the recipients of the 2024-’25 Mary Roosevelt Honor Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (from left): Nicole Park (Multiple Subject Teaching Credential student), Kaitlyn Lo (MS), Audrey Ramirez (MS), Vicki Vasques (foundation trustee and alumni donor), Roosevelt, Megan Larson (Single Subject Teaching Credential student) and Jared Serpa (SS)
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During her time in Geneva, she met James Roosevelt, son of former U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mary and James eventually married and settled in Newport Beach, visiting founding chancellor Dan Aldrich to learn about his vision for the campus. When she decided to get certified to teach in California, she enrolled at UC Irvine – then the only campus in the University of California system to offer a teaching credential. But instead of becoming a local teacher when she finished the program in 1974, Roosevelt was offered a job supervising the student teachers in UC Irvine’s elementary training program.
Roosevelt hesitated, but her husband encouraged her. “This is a new institution; it’s going to make or break,” she remembered him saying. “And if it makes, what a wonderful opportunity to be part of something great.”
Reimagining Teacher Preparation
In her new role, Roosevelt started meeting with superintendents, principals, master teachers, and student teachers in school districts across Orange County, looking for opportunities to improve the training program that she had just completed.
“I had a distinct philosophy about training teachers. It wasn’t to just dump them in a classroom and let them sink or swim,” Roosevelt said. “There also used to be this idea that if a teacher was struggling, then let them have a student teacher who might help them. But that wasn’t my idea of training a new teacher either.”
Instead, Roosevelt was looking for master teachers who were committed to helping develop future teachers, willing to learn from the younger generation, and welcomed fresh ideas, like the use of technology in the classroom. When Roosevelt was promoted to Academic Coordinator of the Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, she advocated to align the teacher education program calendar with the school year of local schools so that aspiring teachers could experience the first and last day of school in the classroom.
In 1992, Roosevelt teamed up with reading education specialist Linda Clinard, Ph.D., to create the UCI Professional Development Schools Program, a bold collaboration with 44 local schools across eight districts. Together, they designed a model centered on listening to the needs of schools—not just offering solutions.
“Rather than saying, ‘Hey, we know how to do this,’ we asked, ‘What do you need from us?’” Roosevelt recalled.
Fruitful partnerships
One of Roosevelt’s biggest joys was the transformation of the newly built Pio Pico Elementary School in Santa Ana, which served students from low-socioeconomic neighborhoods and was situated in an area with a reputation for crime. UC Irvine student teachers, staff and faculty collaborated with school leaders to not only train future teachers but also support the school’s success.
“We hosted block parties on Saturdays to bring the community together and plant gardens that the students would water,” said Roosevelt. “I’d always dreamed that we’d have a school that was a community project like this. Other schools had other needs, but they all brought something special to the Professional Development Schools Program.”
“Having worked with people over the years and seeing the partnership between the schools and the university come to fruition is amazing,” she added.
A legacy that lives on
In the final years at UC Irvine, Roosevelt served as Director of External Relations for the Department of Education. She retired in 2002, after four decades in education – 27 years of which she dedicated to UC Irvine, helping transform the teacher education program worthy of the top-tier research institution UC Irvine had become. It was, in fact, the “something great” that her husband had mentioned – and she had helped create it.
And her legacy continues.
In 2024, UC Irvine and the Santa Ana Unified School District announced the creation of a new university-assisted partnership at James Monroe Elementary, one of the same schools Roosevelt worked with in the ‘90s. This partnership builds on efforts of the Orange County Educational Advancement Network, or OCEAN, and includes student teacher placements, research collaborations and professional development opportunities.
“UCI's roots in the local K-12 education community, going back decades, set the foundation for this exciting partnership,” said Associate Professor Andres Bustamante, associate professor and one of the leaders of the partnership. “The Monroe Elementary University-assisted Partnership School is a great example of the innovation and impact that come from long-standing and dedicated collaboration between universities and school districts.”
Throughout her career, Roosevelt was recognized for her contributions to the university: she received the UCI Alumni Association’s Lauds and Laurels Award for University Service in 1984 and the university’s highest honor, the UCI Medal, in 1990. And now, with the forging of the new university-assisted partnership at Monroe, the legacy of town-and-gown relationships that Roosevelt pioneered in the 1990s is being celebrated once more.
“That original generation from the Professional Development Schools Program may be gone, “Yet the basic principles of cooperation between the university and local schools have stayed in place,” said Roosevelt. “It’s wonderful to see.”
Roosevelt hesitated, but her husband encouraged her. “This is a new institution; it’s going to make or break,” she remembered him saying. “And if it makes, what a wonderful opportunity to be part of something great.”
Reimagining Teacher Preparation
In her new role, Roosevelt started meeting with superintendents, principals, master teachers, and student teachers in school districts across Orange County, looking for opportunities to improve the training program that she had just completed.
“I had a distinct philosophy about training teachers. It wasn’t to just dump them in a classroom and let them sink or swim,” Roosevelt said. “There also used to be this idea that if a teacher was struggling, then let them have a student teacher who might help them. But that wasn’t my idea of training a new teacher either.”
Instead, Roosevelt was looking for master teachers who were committed to helping develop future teachers, willing to learn from the younger generation, and welcomed fresh ideas, like the use of technology in the classroom. When Roosevelt was promoted to Academic Coordinator of the Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, she advocated to align the teacher education program calendar with the school year of local schools so that aspiring teachers could experience the first and last day of school in the classroom.
In 1992, Roosevelt teamed up with reading education specialist Linda Clinard, Ph.D., to create the UCI Professional Development Schools Program, a bold collaboration with 44 local schools across eight districts. Together, they designed a model centered on listening to the needs of schools—not just offering solutions.
“Rather than saying, ‘Hey, we know how to do this,’ we asked, ‘What do you need from us?’” Roosevelt recalled.
Fruitful partnerships
One of Roosevelt’s biggest joys was the transformation of the newly built Pio Pico Elementary School in Santa Ana, which served students from low-socioeconomic neighborhoods and was situated in an area with a reputation for crime. UC Irvine student teachers, staff and faculty collaborated with school leaders to not only train future teachers but also support the school’s success.
“We hosted block parties on Saturdays to bring the community together and plant gardens that the students would water,” said Roosevelt. “I’d always dreamed that we’d have a school that was a community project like this. Other schools had other needs, but they all brought something special to the Professional Development Schools Program.”
“Having worked with people over the years and seeing the partnership between the schools and the university come to fruition is amazing,” she added.
A legacy that lives on
In the final years at UC Irvine, Roosevelt served as Director of External Relations for the Department of Education. She retired in 2002, after four decades in education – 27 years of which she dedicated to UC Irvine, helping transform the teacher education program worthy of the top-tier research institution UC Irvine had become. It was, in fact, the “something great” that her husband had mentioned – and she had helped create it.
And her legacy continues.
In 2024, UC Irvine and the Santa Ana Unified School District announced the creation of a new university-assisted partnership at James Monroe Elementary, one of the same schools Roosevelt worked with in the ‘90s. This partnership builds on efforts of the Orange County Educational Advancement Network, or OCEAN, and includes student teacher placements, research collaborations and professional development opportunities.
“UCI's roots in the local K-12 education community, going back decades, set the foundation for this exciting partnership,” said Associate Professor Andres Bustamante, associate professor and one of the leaders of the partnership. “The Monroe Elementary University-assisted Partnership School is a great example of the innovation and impact that come from long-standing and dedicated collaboration between universities and school districts.”
Throughout her career, Roosevelt was recognized for her contributions to the university: she received the UCI Alumni Association’s Lauds and Laurels Award for University Service in 1984 and the university’s highest honor, the UCI Medal, in 1990. And now, with the forging of the new university-assisted partnership at Monroe, the legacy of town-and-gown relationships that Roosevelt pioneered in the 1990s is being celebrated once more.
“That original generation from the Professional Development Schools Program may be gone, “Yet the basic principles of cooperation between the university and local schools have stayed in place,” said Roosevelt. “It’s wonderful to see.”
