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As part of a $3.5 million initiative by the Ohio Board of Regents, Miami will partner with other Ohio universities to create two regional academies -- one will recruit high-school students to becoming future math teachers and the second will develop Chinese language teachers.
High-school juniors and seniors from Cincinnati Public's Hughes Center Magnet Programs and Princeton City Schools are about to join a program developed by Miami, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University to get them thinking about a career they may have never considered. The Southwest Ohio STEM Secondary Teacher Academy -- a proposal awarded $340,000 jointly to UC and Miami -- will provide an intensive, three-week summer experience; an internship; free college credit (as well as high-school credit) in calculus or algebra; and mentoring for 50 high-school students. The yearlong academy, which will get under way this summer, aims to identify high-school students who could become promising future high-school math teachers.
Ray Terrell, assistant dean for research and diversity in the School of Education and Allied Professions at Miami, serves as co-principal investigator of the grant and says he envisions the initiative as a major step forward to recruit and prepare mathematics and science teachers from underrepresented groups.
The Chinese Language Grant, also worth $340,000, is a joint venture among Miami, Cleveland State and Ohio State universities. This initiative will recruit high-school juniors and seniors from the greater Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati areas and provide them with skills to become secondary teachers of Chinese language.
The language academy will use mentors, videoconferencing, iPods and other forms of cutting edge technology to develop a sense of community and support for the students across the three sites, according to Carine Feyten, dean of the School of Education and Allied Professions at Miami. Feyten and Robert di Donato, professor and chair of German, Russian and East Asian Languages at Miami, are working with Diane Birckbichler, professor and chair of French and Italian and director of the Foreign Language Center at Ohio State.
Both grants are part of a larger statewide initiative to improve instruction for high-school students in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and foreign language areas. The ultimate purpose of the grants is to enhance the skills of future Ohio high-school graduates making them competitive with students anywhere in the global community. Participants in the program will receive dual credit applicable toward high-school graduation and transferable to Ohio colleges.
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