The Peace Corps and Teachers College of Columbia University have launched a fellowship program designed to entice returning Peace Corps volunteers who have completed two years as mathematics or science instructors abroad to teach in the nation’s inner-city schools.
The purpose of the program, according to P. Michael Timpane, president of Teachers College, is to help “fill a void” left by potential math and science teachers who have decided against entering the field of education and opted instead for “more lucrative jobs.” The program is intended to increase the number of math and science teachers nationwide, particularly those willing to teach in inner cities.
The fellows, who will receive a master’s degree and certification at the end of the two-year program, will teach math or science in an inner-city school while enrolled in the program. They will receive a full teacher’s salary for their work and a 50-percent discount on the regular university tuition for the master’s degree program in education.
While the first fellows will be placed in the New York City school system, other city systems will be included as the program expands, Mr. Timpane said. He plans to start next fall with about 10 fellows but he hopes to expand the program eventually to more than 50 volunteers a year.
Xerox Corporation provided $60,000 to launch the program.
Concerned over the lack of consideration given to industrial arts in the new Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act, the American Industrial Arts Association recently held hearings to develop recommendations for changing it.
Speakers at the hearings said they were disturbed that the industrial arts are mentioned only once in the act and are inappropriately linked to agricultural arts.
The act, approved by the Congress and signed by President Reagan in October, replaces the Vocational Education Act of 1963. Its primary purposes are to increase the accessibility of programs to a wide range of groups, including the handicapped and disadvantaged, and to improve the quality of existing vocational-education activities. Proposed regulations for the act were published last week.
Gene Bottoms, executive director of the American Vocational Association, said the association is generally pleased with the regulations but also will recommend some changes.
“The department has done a good job of writing them in terms of legislative intent,” he said, but the association will make suggestions concerning funding to states and some of the definitions within the regulations.
The proposed regulations were published in the Jan. 25 Federal Register.
