Graduate School

The faculty of the Graduate School of Education Monday unanimously approved the institutions of two new curricular programs geared towards training new high school teachers and retraining current ones. The programs are designed to alleviate the increasing nationwide shortage of secondary school math and science teachers and improve their quality.

A special committee at the Ed School has been working on the new plans since July when Patricia A. Graham became dean and shifted the school's focus to practical education. One program will begin this summer and the other next fall, said Katherine K. Merseth, Special Assistant to the Dean for Institutional Planning, who helped so draw up the new programs.

Faculty members raised questions about the program's funding and the ability of students to pay the tuition, said Jerome T. Murphy, associate dean at the Ed school. He added that funding from various foundations would hopefully take care of most of the expenses.

Now that the committee has faculty approval, Merseth says she will solicit various corporations and foundations for grants, adding that she is keeping her eye on a bill passing through Congress that would provide $400 million for programs to improve math and science education. Hopefully, the Ed School would be able to apply for some of that money, he added.

Merseth said the programs would focus initially on math rather than science because math "provides the foundation for all subsequent work in science," She added that since work in Math requires no lab arrangements, the courses would be easier to set up.