Ball State University will participate in one of the most prestigious teaching fellowship programs, Roy Weaver, dean of the Teachers College, said.
Beverly Sanford, director of communications for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, said the foundation selected four universities out of 41 in Indiana as the first participants in the program, which will provide financial aid to highly qualified teaching students who wish to pursue a master's degree.
Students accepted to the program will be awarded $30,000 toward a one-year master's program in teaching at Ball State, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Purdue or the University of Indianapolis, she said.
The purpose of the fellowship program is to improve Indiana's teaching workforce as well as workforces throughout the U.S., she said.
Ball State was chosen in Fall 2007 to be part of the program because it was considered one of the universities that prepares teachers the most for their future, Sanford said. It is willing to take innovative, collaborative approaches in doing so, she said.
Michael Maggiotto, dean of the College of Science and Humanities, said being one of four institutions chosen to participate in a fellowship program such as this was an honor.
"The foundation is recognizing the quality of what we do," he said. "We have done so much historically to train the best teachers possible and they are letting us know how important that is."
The first groups of 20 students will begin their fellowships at the chosen universities in Fall 2009, he said.
Sanford said the student participants would be obligated to teach science for at least three years at an Indiana high-need school after graduating.
She said a high-need school was a school in poor rural and urban areas with low funding and too many students, which creates an overflow.
Current students and recent graduates who are "extremely academically prepared" will be considered for the fellowship, she said.
They must have an extensive background in the math and science fields, since they will be teaching those subjects as part of their agreement, she said.
Weaver said as part of the fellowship students would gain more hands-on teaching experience.
They will be doing all of their coursework at a school they also will be teaching at, not at a university, he said.
"It's great to have everything right in the school," he said. "If a student is reading about a certain teaching technique or principle and they don't understand it, they can simply walk down the hall and see it in action."
Students also will be paired with faculty mentors for three years after they graduate from the program, Weaver said.
Sanford said the program began Dec. 19, and the selected universities were preparing their education programs to meet the foundation's standards.
Weaver said Ball State faculty had been designing and implementing changes to the teaching program since they were chosen for the program.
"We have spent the time figuring out what we do well and what we need to improve upon," he said. "We're going to pull out the strong elements of some of the innovative programs we already have in existence and piece them together like a puzzle, in a way that will be more powerful for the students."
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