November 6, 2007

Carnegie Corp. Provides Grant to Support Training of Science Schoolteachers

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has awarded the association representing land-grant universities a $200,000 grant to help public universities prepare more and better schoolteachers in mathematics and science.

The grant, to the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, known as Nasulgc, came weeks after Congress separately authorized new grants to universities for improving the training. Like the Congressional programs, the Nasulgc project, announced on Monday, is meant to raise the low number of schoolteachers in math and science who have earned degrees in the disciplines they teach. Analysts have blamed that paucity as one cause of the mediocre scores of American students on international science examinations.

The association will use the money to set up an online clearinghouse of promising practices among existing teacher-education programs. Nasulgc also plans to develop tools to measure the education programs’ progress and to quantify the need for more science and math teachers by state. The project, which is focused on secondary schools, is called the Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative.

“I’m eager to work with my fellow university presidents and chancellors to determine and fulfill the responsibility of large public universities in preparing the next generation of science and mathematics teachers,” said Richard H. Herman, chairman of the project and chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a written statement. —Jeffrey Brainard

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