The university is a partner in a new statewide fellowship program to prepare teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), as highlighted last week by President Barack Obama.
The president recognized the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship as one of the new partners of the “Educate to Innovate” campaign and announced the six universities that have been selected to participate in the fellowship program — U-M, Michigan State University, Eastern Michigan University, Western Michigan University, Grand Valley State University and Wayne State University.
“America’s leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today, especially in science, math and engineering,” President Obama said. “That’s why I’m pleased to announce the expansion of our ‘Educate to Innovate’ campaign today and applaud the several new partnerships launched that will help meet our goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade.”
President Mary Sue Coleman said: “We believe that the key to improving math and science education is the professional training of excellent teachers. The University of Michigan has a long history of teacher preparation that combines deep study of the disciplines with clinical training, and we are committed to developing even more effective approaches to preparing teachers.”
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded Fellowship program provides promising future teachers with an exemplary, intensive master’s degree program in education and places those fellows in hard-to-staff middle and high schools for a minimum of three years.
The fellowship will prepare 240 teachers for two years beginning in 2011. Through this program, approximately 90,000 students will receive high-quality instruction in the critical subject areas of STEM from fellows during their first three years in the classroom.
The universities will begin important changes over the next 21 months as they redesign their teacher education programs in science and math. They will create a collaborative relationship between the schools of arts and sciences and education, and when appropriate, engineering. Instead of simply adding a pilot project, these model math and science teacher education programs will completely replace the existing programs and will be sustained for years to come.
As part of their commitment to the program, these universities will match a $500,000 enrichment grant from the Kellogg Foundation that can be used to hire new faculty, contract with consultants, purchase equipment or make other changes that are necessary for this transformation to take place.
In addition, the universities will each receive $6,000 per fellow that will be used to provide the new teachers with mentoring during their first three years in the classroom.
