The National Science Foundation has awarded $517,000 to the University of California at Santa Barbara to create an institute that would work to improve the quality of mathematics and computer-science teaching in high schools.
The new Computing and Algorithmic Mathematics Institute for High School Teachers will train secondary-school math and science teachers to “effectively integrate computer technology into the high-school mathematics curriculum,’' said Marvin Marcus, a professor of computer science and the project’s director.
Sixty teachers will be selected to participate in the 15-month program, which includes two six-week courses during the summers of 1987 and 1988, a home-study course during the academic year, and a “mini-conference’’ at the university next February.
Participants will be selected from a national pool on the basis of motivation, commitment to high-school teaching, and demographic and affirmative-action considerations.
Each will receive a $1,400 stipend, a $1,000 subsistence allowance, and a travel allowance.
The Alberta [Canada] Teachers Association will sponsor two job fairs--on June 4 in Edmonton, and on June 5 in Calgary--to match Canadian teachers with potential employers in the United States.
According to G.R. Rozycki, the association’s secretary for teacher education and certification, the fairs are part of the A.T.A.'s attempts to “export’’ teachers to U.S. school districts. Because of cutbacks in education that came as a result of a failing oil-based economy, he said, the province has nearly 6,000 teachers seeking jobs.
Donna E. Shalala and Michael Timpane, the presidents of Hunter College and Columbia University’s Teachers College, respectively, are serving as co-chairmen of a new task force on professionalism created by the New York City Board of Education. The task force’s mission is to find ways to increase the autonomy of both teachers and administrators in the public schools.
Others serving on the 12-member task force include Alonzo Crim, superintendent of the Atlanta public schools; Sandra Feldman, president of the United Federation of Teachers; and Theodore Elsberg, president of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators of the City of New York.
The task force is expected to complete its report in about a year, at a cost of approximately $150,000.
Under a new agreement between Teachers College at Columbia University and the Simul Academy in Japan, junior and senior high-school English teachers will be able to receive a master’s degree from Teachers College while living in Tokyo.
The program will be the first off-campus degree program outside the United States sponsored by Teachers College, and will focus on Japanese English teachers. Students enrolled in the 34-credit program will receive an M.A. in teaching English to speakers of other languages.
--L.O. & B.R.
