Date: September 4, 2007
Contact: Lindsay Gladstone
Governors State University
Phone: (708) 534-7090
Fax: (708) 534-8399
Email: l-gladstone@govst.edu
For Immediate Release
University Park, IL, September 4, 2007 – “It is a national crisis. Between 45 and 65 percent of all teachers leave the profession by the fifth year,” said Dr. Connie Mietlicki, Assistant Professor of English and Secondary Education at Governors State University and Director of the Teacher Quality Enhancement (TQE) Partnership grant.
To address this crisis, GSU has been awarded a $1 million Teacher Quality Enhancement Recruitment grant by the United States Department of Education to attract interested students to the teaching profession and provide mentoring programs to support new teachers in the first years of their career.
According to Mietlicki, the additional funding augments the TQE Partnership program already in place at GSU, which is also funded by U.S. Department of Education.
“Together these grants will enable us to attract talented individuals to the profession, offer them extensive and effective teacher training, and provide them with a skilled and well-trained mentor to help them in the early years of their teaching careers,” explained Mietlicki.
With the new funding, GSU will expand its recruitment initiatives. Qualified students entering the secondary education program in biology, chemistry, English, and math (pending Illinois Board of Education approval) at the university will receive scholarships for full tuition and fees.
“We are eager to meet the increased demand for qualified secondary education teachers,” said Mietlicki. “Our students will be able to make their dreams come true through the secondary education programs at GSU and the TQE scholarships. The new grant adds $400,000 in scholarship funds to the $98,000 remaining from the previous grant.”
Another major component of the TQE Recruitment grant is the expansion of the new teacher-mentoring program.
“This new funding enables us to create a mentor teaching program which will include graduate level courses on mentoring,” said Mietlicki.
The new mentoring program at GSU will partner with Bloom District 206, Rich District 227, and Crete-Monee District 201-U.
“Mentoring programs help novice teachers through their induction years. There are no easy fixes to this crisis in education, but good teachers make good mentors. Well-trained mentors help new teachers succeed,” said Mietlicki.
For more information about the TQE recruitment, scholarships, and mentoring programs at Governors State University, call (708) 534-4374.
