| RELATED WEB SITE |
| * The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation news release |
December 21, 2007
New fellowship will bring math, science teachers to rural Indiana
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new fellowship program funded by the Lilly Endowment will help Purdue University train and support future math and science teachers for work in rural high schools.The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has selected Indiana as the first site for its national fellowship for high school teachers, intended to help overhaul teacher education and encourage teacher candidates to seek long-term careers in high-need classrooms. A nearly $10.2 million Lilly Endowment grant will support the program.
Fellows will receive a $30,000 stipend to complete a master's degree at one of four Indiana universities, including Purdue, Ball State University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Indianapolis.
"What will set Purdue fellowship program apart is the focus on educating teachers who will work in Indiana's rural schools, where highly qualified math and science teachers are needed to encourage our young people's interests in these important disciplines," said Sidney Moon, associate dean for learning and engagement in Purdue's College of Education.
Moon said that low population density in Indiana's rural areas would mean that even with consolidation, many of the state's secondary schools would remain small.
"The educational leadership program in the Purdue College of Education has launched a small schools initiative to focus on the problems and strains peculiar to small and rural school districts in Indiana," Moon said. "In addition, the National Rural Schools organization has selected Purdue as its headquarters for the next five years. These Woodrow Wilson fellowships will allow us to better prepare math and science teachers to teach problem-based learning that is both relevant and challenging for rural students."
Other hallmarks of the Purdue program will include:
* A rural schools network linked by distance learning technologies.
* Content-rich, performance-based teacher preparation focused on rural settings.
* Instruction that engages students in interdisciplinary, problem-based learning.
* Collaborative research by secondary teachers, Woodrow Wilson fellows and Purdue faculty on related education issues involving rural schools.
Upon completion of the program, Purdue fellows will be placed in a rural school, receive ongoing mentoring and participate in advanced professional development opportunities provided by the project. The fellows must agree to teach in Indiana for three years.
The fellowship will be open to college seniors and career-changers who have outstanding undergraduate records and majors in math or science and are willing to teach in Indiana. Initially, the statewide program will prepare 80 new Indiana math and science teachers each year - roughly one-quarter of the total number of teachers the state is now preparing in those fields - with aspirations to scale up to 400 per year.
Program goals call for applications for the first Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowships to be available in fall 2008, with fellows to be named in spring 2009 who will start classroom teaching in 2010.
Writer: Tanya Brown, (765) 494-2079, tanyabrown@purdue.edu
Source: Sidney Moon, (765) 496-3673, sidney@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
To the News Service home page