Woodrow Wilson fellowships help place STEM educators in high-need areas
Posted in: College News and Events
With a persistent need for teachers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas, particularly in areas classified as high-need, the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships have been established to help train and place such teachers.
With the program, available through the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, now operating in New Jersey, colleges and universities in the state have been using it to provide master’s degrees in education and placement in schools in areas such as Newark, New Brunswick, Camden and Trenton, among others.
Graduates with bachelor’s degrees are selected by the Woodrow Wilson program and entered in graduate programs at universities around the state. They are placed in teaching situations in high-need areas for one year while they complete the graduate program, then commit to three years of teaching in such an area in the state.
“The intent of the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships was to support universities to be more innovative,” said Tamara Lucas, dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Montclair State University. “We were already doing a residency program when we connected with Woodrow Wilson.”
Montclair State University’s program graduated 23 teachers in its first two years (it is now in its third cohort) with 11 in the program this year, she said.
The graduate students “have a rigorous slate of classes that are held in the school where they are teaching, including the graduate course work,” Lucas said. After graduation when the new teachers are completing their three-year commitment, there is support from the university as well, she said.
Julianne Bello, director of the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships program at Montclair State University, said the selection of graduate students is done primarily through the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, to which they apply. “Some of them come to us with advanced degrees, even Ph.D.s,” she said.
Other New Jersey universities participating in the program are William Paterson University, The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), Rowan Universityand Rutgers University in Camden.
Students in the Montclair program begin their year during the summer term with community-based programs in Newark and Orange, Bello said. “Once September starts, they begin student teaching from the first day of school, four days a week during the fall semester and five days a week during the spring semester.”
At TCNJ, a master’s program of arts and teaching was already in place before the Woodrow Wilson program came to New Jersey, said Cathy Liebars, co-director of the Woodrow Wilson MAT program for the college.
“We saw it as a way to improve our program. We wanted to make it closer to our undergraduate program, and we did make it more content-focused,” she said.
Because the Woodrow Wilson program focused only on STEM teachers, STEM courses were integrated into the existing MAT program, she said. “They want to see a year-long school placement, so we instituted one from the first day school opens to the last day of school.”
Teachers in the schools where students are placed have voiced enthusiasm for the program, Liebars said.
“We’ve had quite a few teachers who have been participating for three years now,” she said.