Rider University has created a plan to increase the number, and diversity, of New Jersey's teachers.
There's an elegant symmetry behind a $1.45 million grant Rider University has received from the National Science Foundation.
The money will help students at the university hoping to teach science in urban settings. Rider will focus its recruiting efforts on cities such as Trenton and Camden - and then send the newly minted educators back to their home communities to pass their knowledge along to the next generation.
Called STEM-Ed, for the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, the initiative will help support 24 students. Under the terms of the five-year grant program, the first group is expected to arrive on campus in 2017.
Rider sought out the grant - one of the largest in its history - to remedy the well-documented inequality of access to adequate K-12 STEM education nationwide.
"Unfortunately, the lack of diversity among STEM teachers in the U.S. perpetuates a dangerously homogeneous work force," Rider science professor Danielle Jacobs said in a statement on the university's web site.
Rider will use grant to recruit teachers
Jacobs and Peter Hester of Rider's teacher education department were the primary movers behind the grant, and will spearhead the project.
STEM-Ed participants will earn full-tuition scholarships in their junior year. They'll also receive financial support to take part in summer research opportunities, as well as educational materials such as laptops and textbooks.
In recent years, there's been a welcome push to open the halls of science and technology to better reflect the country's diversity. Doors once firmly shut are opening, but progress has been slow.
This partnership between a New Jersey university and the one of nation's most respected foundations will certainly move the process forward, with its "grow-your-own" (GYO) pipeline strategy.
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Not only will the new teachers bring a broader perspective to their classrooms, but they also will better understand needs of the communities they'll be serving.
Historically, Jacobs noted, one of the challenges of placing novice teachers in urban schools is the high rate of attrition within the first five years.
Research shows that GYO graduates from these environments are far more likely to return to their hometowns, or similar ones, to teach after graduation - and they are 50 percent more likely to remain in their jobs after the period mandated by their scholarship programs.
Everybody wins in this scenario. Traditionally under-represented populations get a fair shake at a quality education, high school students benefit from their teachers' life experience, and society as a whole gains a well-prepared workforce and academic pool.