New Jersey will become the first East Coast state to join a nationally recognized program that seeks to revamp teacher preparation and turn out more educators in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, state officials reported Friday.
Under the initiative, run by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, five New Jersey teacher colleges—the College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, Rowan University, Rutgers University-Camden, and William Paterson University—will create master’s programs, including a full year of student-teaching, that meet the foundation’s standards. They include revamped coursework and a higher entry requirements, among other things.
Each program will begin preparing “fellows” in the fall of 2014. Fellows receive $30,000 in stipends during their teacher training and commit to teaching in high-needs schools for three years.
The Garden State joins teacher preparation programs in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan that have participated in the fellowship initiative.
Funders include the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Brian and Sandy Maher, Laura and John Overdeck, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the PSE&G Foundation, the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, the Schumann Fund for New Jersey, Educational Testing Service, the William E. Simon Foundation, and Jennifer Chalsty, the WWTF said in a statement.