by Mike Gallagher for the CMF NewsWire
Posted 12/18/09

University leaders, the governor and even the president of the United States are singing the praises of the recently announced Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship and its mission of getting more young students interested in math and science careers.

Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the new fellowship program will take a leadership role in tackling an educational challenge in a way that many say will help change how America competes globally in the 21st century.

The groundswell of praise came this past week when the Kellogg Foundation announced the six universities and five Michigan school districts that will be the first to participate in the new fellowship program. Last fall, the foundation revealed it was granting $16.7 million to fund the effort.

The program will provide promising future teachers with an intensive master’s degree program in education that includes placing its fellows in hard-to-staff middle and high schools across the U.S. for a minimum of three years.

According to Sterling Speirn, Kellogg Foundation’s president/CEO, the fellowship will prepare 240 teachers for two years beginning in 2011.

Through this program, approximately 90,000 K-12 students will receive high-quality instruction in the critical subject areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) from fellows during their first three years in the classroom.

“At the Kellogg Foundation, we look to support innovative partnerships that will help create the kinds of schools that all children deserve,” said Speirn. “Strengthening students’ skills in math and science is necessary to strengthen our state – and the nation’s – economy.

President Barack Obama joined in saluting the efforts of the creation of the fellowship teaching model designed to inspire students to excel in math and science and Kellogg Foundation’s role in helping fund it.

The president also used the occasion to announce the Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship as one of several new partners of his administration’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign – a nationwide effort to help reach the administration’s goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade.

“America’s leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today, especially in science, math and engineering,” said President Obama.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm followed up the president’s announcement by also praising the new program during a press conference with Speirn and Dr. Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, a nationally acclaimed expert on teacher education.

“Improving the quality of math and science instruction in our schools is critical if we are to reach our goal of having one of the best-educated workforces on the planet," said Granholm. "This fellowship will be transformational for our students, teachers and universities.”

Added Levine, “America’s schools of education are being asked to rise to the challenge of preparing a new generation of teachers – educators who can teach the most diverse population of students in the nation's history to meet the highest standards ever demanded by our schools.”

Michigan Universities Announced

The six state universities that have been selected to participate in the fellowship program are the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Eastern Michigan University, Western Michigan University, Grand Valley State University and Wayne State University.

The five Michigan K-12 school districts that have agreed to accept the fellows during the first three-year teaching phase are: Battle Creek Public Schools, Benton Harbor Public Schools, Detroit Public Schools, Grand Rapids Public Schools and Kalamazoo Public Schools.

Several factors were considered as part of the process of selecting the universities, according to Speirn, including:

• Commitment to the goals and standards of the fellowship
• Capacity to establish a world-class math and science teacher education program
• Existing relationships between the universities and surrounding urban or rural school districts

As part of their agreement to participate, the six universities will begin to make 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.

The universities also 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 which will be used to provide the new teachers with mentoring during their first three years in the classroom.

The fellows, who will be announced in the spring of 2011, will each receive a $30,000 stipend while they complete the program. They will study a curriculum that is rooted in subject matter, but that also covers adolescent development and learning, working with parents and communities and classroom management.

Beginning in fall 2012, the first team of fellows will be placed in one of the five Michigan K-12 school districts and receive intensive support and mentoring to encourage them to continue teaching as a long-term career. Marks of success for the fellowship program will be the fellows’ retention in teaching as well as student learning outcomes in the fellows’ classrooms, according to Levine.

Working in partnership, the university and school district leaders will identify the middle and high schools where the fellows are to gain extensive, supervised field experience - the same kinds of high-need schools in which the fellows will teach when they complete their year-long program.

The fellows can be college seniors, recent graduates or career changers.

“The current market downturn in Michigan has forced many experienced engineers and professionals out of the workforce, making available a talented pool of workers who can share their knowledge and depth of experience with the state’s students in formal learning settings,” said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman.

“What must be realized,” she added, “is that we have a crisis in this country and it is a crisis of not having enough kids interested in math and science. Thanks to the Kellogg Foundation we can begin to change that.”

Dr. Michael Rice, Kalamazoo schools’ superintendent, also noted that the Kellogg Foundation “should be given a tremendous and collective ‘Thank You’ by each and every citizen of Michigan for stepping up to make a difference in the educational lives of all our children.

“The issue is not the willingness of our students to learn,” said Rice, “but a big shortage nationally in strong science teacher candidates. This (fellowship initiative) is a step in the right direction to address that problem.”