107 NASULGC UNIVERSITIES COMMIT TO INCREASE POOL OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS TEACHERS

DATELINE: Washington

The following information was released by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges:

The lack of highly qualified science and mathematics teachers in middle and high school classrooms across America is a crisis that is well-established. If the U.S. is to remain a leader in engineering, technology and innovation in the global market place, the state of science and mathematics education must be reversed.

The presidents of 74 public universities and 11 university systems representing an additional 33 campuses have taken a bold step toward reversing the crisis by formally committing to the Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative (SMTI) developed by NASULGC, A Public University Association (To see a complete list of institutions, click here).

SMTI institutions commit to increase substantially the diverse pool of highly qualified science and mathematics teachers in their states. Institutions will work with appropriate state agencies to identify their immediate and longer term needs for high school teachers. They will bolster partnerships among universities, school systems, state governments and other entities to address statewide needs and share best practices for the preparation of teachers.

"For too long, institutions like mine have stood aside on this important issue. We cannot continue on the sidelines," said Richard Herman, chancellor of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and chair of the SMTI Commission. "One of the best paths for meeting the need for more science and mathematics teachers is to commit ourselves to this important initiative and inspire more of the nation's top mathematics, science and engineering students to become our top teachers."

"It is essential that our public universities produce highly qualified and diverse science and mathematics teachers to ensure our country stays competitive," said Peter McPherson, president of NASULGC. "I congratulate these 107 NASULGC-member institutions for making the Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative an important component of their efforts to help address the growing teacher shortage in these key fields."

SMTI was announced in November 2008 during the NASULGC annual meeting in Chicago with nearly 80 institutions making a preliminary pledge at that time. Today, the number of institutions committing to SMTI continues to increase and has surpassed the original goal of 100 universities, three months since the initial launch.

NASULGC is also forming The Leadership Collaborative (TLC), a group of 27 institutions drawn from universities making the commitment to SMTI. The collaborative will examine ways to strengthen science teacher preparation at their institutions and work more intensively to develop a far deeper understanding of how to enhance the priority of teacher preparation and disseminate lessons learned throughout the community.

TLC activities have been funded by a $1.5 million, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Math and Science Partnership: Research, Evaluation and Technical Assistance (MSP-RETA). TLC will enable universities to identify and address institutional constraints that often impede the formation of effective and sustained secondary science and mathematics teacher preparation programs. The outcome of the research will be widely disseminated through the Internet, collaborative meetings, and sharing of technical assistance. Sixty-one institutions applied to join TLC.

"This NSF grant provides a unique opportunity to involve a group of leading public research universities in collaboratively examining how they can best prepare 21st century science teachers to meet the present national shortage," said Jennifer B. Presley, director of science and mathematics education policy at NASULGC and director of TLC. "An exciting aspect of the collaborative is the partnership with several disciplinary societies which will help to build a strong faculty role in the development of new approaches to strengthening the preparation of science teachers."

While members of the collaborative will receive no direct money from this grant, they will have the opportunity to work with disciplinary societies such as the American Physical Society's Physics Teacher Education Coalition, as they partner with their state and local departments of education to determine teacher needs for their region.

"In any given year, I have more openings for physics teachers than I can fill because I can't find highly qualified teachers in this field," said Judy Jeffrey, director of the Iowa State Department of Education and leader in the national Council of ChiefStateSchool Officers. "I'm delighted by the potential of the Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative - that working in collaboration with their state education leaders, major public universities would step up to their responsibilities to address this critical local and national need."

NASULGC-member institutions, the leading public and land-grant universities in each state, educate the largest cohort of undergraduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students, on research-intensive campuses with influential colleges of education. By committing to this effort, NASULGC-member institutions are responding to the call for 10,000 new science and mathematics teachers in the National Academies report, Rising Above The Gathering Storm.

The teacher imperative has been supported by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASULGC and in-kind contributions of faculty from several universities.