The University of California announced today (Dec. 3) that it has been awarded nearly $5 million in grant money to improve teacher education in math and science.
UC Irvine and UC Berkeley have been awarded two of 12 grants from the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) to implement programs modeled after UTeach, a successful math and science teacher preparation program at the University of Texas at Austin. The grants of up to $2.4 million each followed a competition that included submissions from more than 50 universities nationwide.
“These grants will allow UC to build upon its existing collaborative efforts to fill an important need – training qualified math and science teachers for California classrooms,” said UC Provost Wyatt R. (Rory) Hume. “Addressing this teaching shortage is critical to helping keep California’s economy and communities strong.”
The NMSI grants will complement UC’s California Teach (Cal Teach) program. Launched in 2005 in consultation with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California State University Chancellor Charles Reed, Cal Teach is committed to quadrupling the number of UC students trained annually to be math and science teachers from 250 to 1,000 by 2010-11; CSU committed to train 1,500 math and science teachers a year for a combined annual total of 2,500. Cal Teach, also known as the Science and Math Initiative, features programs at nine UC campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. In addition to state funding, Cal Teach has received private support from corporations including Intel Corp. and AT&T Inc.
The UTeach program was established in 1997 at the University of Texas at Austin as a new and improved way to introduce undergraduate math and science majors to secondary school teaching. The UTeach Institute was created to expand and replicate UTeach at universities across the United States. For more information: www.uteach-institute.org.
The National Math Science Initiative is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to help the United States maintain its global leadership in technological innovation. ExxonMobil contributed an initial $125 million to the initiative’s efforts. Additional donors include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. For more information: www.nationalmathandscience.org
To view UC Irvine news release: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/16921
To view UC Berkeley news release: www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/12/03_tchgrant.shtml
To view UC Berkeley feature article: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/12/14_calteach.shtml
For more information about California Teach: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/academics/1000teachers
To view UC President Robert C. Dynes’ March 13 congressional testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, visit “Science and Technology Leadership in a 21st Century Global Economy”:
http://science.house.gov/publications/Testimony.aspx?TID=7337