College of Education funding priorities
Educators Hall of Fame: The Educators Hall of Fame recognizes outstanding educators and friends of education each year. Each nomination is accompanied by a $1,000 gift. Funds help build the Educators Hall of Fame Endowed Scholarship which provides a $20,000 scholarship ($5,000/year for 4 years) for outstanding students who wish to pursue education as a career.
Elimination of Teaching Fellows dramatically increases the need for student scholarships: This represents a loss of more than $1 million dollars annually ($5,000 per student x 200 students). This will represent a catastrophic loss to the College of Education. We need comparable student scholarships ($5,000 per year x 4 years)
Wells Fargo Partnership East funding: Funding for this program is essential since so many students rely on the scholarship monies to pay tuition. Since nearly one-third of our teacher preparation students come through this pipeline and districts can no longer support them (and NC Teach monies are virtually gone), it is essential that we pursue other sources of funding.
Money to support student presentations at national conferences or to attend student organization meetings
Money to support the Teacher Performance Assessment project: The Teacher Performance Assessment is the first nationally available, valid and reliable performance assessment for pre-service teachers. By participating in this project, it allows the college to increase the quality of teachers that we produce and ensure that our students are ready for the classroom. Assessments are costly, so we need additional funding to support this very important endeavor.
Money to support the development of Second Life—virtual world practicum experiences: This is an area where we can use technology to improve the clinical practice component of teacher preparation. If we had seed monies and could get prototypes developed, we could find funding to expand this initiative.
Creation of a global classroom in the College of Education: Since most of our students are not in a position to engage in a study abroad program, we would like to bring the world to our students. If we had such a classroom in the College of Education, we could work with the faculty to give each student a collaborative course experience with students from another culture.
