Baker professor receives national award

Angie Currey, Ed.D. ’08, has had a busy few years.

In 2015, she began her new role as the assistant superintendent of special programs for Kearney (Missouri) School District.

In 2016, she was elected president of the Kansas City Local Administrators in Special Education.

The following year, she won the state-level Gersh Award from the Missouri Council of Administrators for Special Education, which recognizes exceptional special education administrators.

And in 2018, she received the national Gersh Award.

“I was truly speechless and honored to receive the Gersh Award,” Currey said. “As assistant superintendent, I see my role as supporting all of the teachers and administrators in Kearney. It’s truly a team effort to meet the needs of our students, so it didn’t feel like I should be receiving the award as an individual, but rather as a reflection of the special services team.”

Currey hasn’t always seen herself as a school leader. She was working as a school psychologist when her supervisor encouraged her to return to school to keep progressing in her career.

“[I] couldn’t imagine ever working as a principal or administrator,” Currey said. “However, I’ve always loved school and was ready to take more classes to further my skills.”

While searching for a program that fit, Currey asked around and found that Baker was a popular choice among her coworkers. Many of them had earned their master’s from Baker.

“I knew of other colleagues who went through the Baker program, and they shared how it was a family-friendly program,” she said. “They were learning from professors that were either still current administrators or recently retired, so they had a good knowledge base of what education was really about.”

She enrolled in the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, and was a member of Baker’s first Ed.D. cohort. Currey said both the students and the professors were able to learn from each other as a result of being “first.”

“It was an awesome experience,” she said. “It gave me the foundation I needed to move into the leadership side of education.”

Soon after earning her doctorate in 2008, Currey put her new education to work. She began her first principal position for the Park Hill School District. She also began teaching courses in Baker’s Master of Science in School Leadership and Master of Science in Special Education programs.

Currey is looking forward to 2019 and knows her Baker education has prepared her for whatever the future brings.

“The hands-on projects, quality instruction, and mentoring I received most definitely helped prepare me for my leadership positions,” she said. “Now that I’m at the central-office level, I’ve really applied a lot of the skills gained from the program. I can’t tell you how often I’ve gone back to that course work in my first few years as an assistant superintendent to refresh myself.”