Letter from the chair

Dear Future Teachers,

This academic year our building, Centennial Hall, has been under construction.  We’re excited for both our offices and the Kummer Center for STEM Education spaces to be completed.  We are also excited to welcome Dr. Katherine Sharp to our department and the department of biological sciences.  Dr. Sharp is a shared faculty member who will be teaching in both departments.  Dr. Sharp joins our small but experienced group of education faculty who work hard to find resources to help reduce the cost of teacher preparation for our students. 

This semester, every education student in a field experience course, including student teaching, is being paid for their time and mileage, thanks to a $70,000 competitive grant from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.  These required field experiences are often unpaid, so we hope paying students for their time helps reduce a barrier to completion.  We also offered all of our students, faculty, and staff free Youth Mental Health First Aid Training, thanks to a grant from UMSL.  We also had three student teachers who chose a rural school placement to quality for $3,000 scholarships from DESE in their final semester. 

We’re currently recruiting for future teachers to start in fall 2024, as well as practicing teachers interested in earning a graduate certificate in Teacher Leadership.  This online, asynchronous certificate builds the capacity of our current practitioners to support colleagues in their buildings and districts.  These classes will count for the non-thesis graduate degree in biological sciences.

Our department’s new slogan is “Empathetic, Empowered Educators,” which you’ll soon see on our new t-shirts! 

Check out this wonderful collaboration between our child development center and the chemistry department. 

If you’d like to know more about our programs or centers, please send us an email.

Sincerely,

Beth Kania-Gosche, PhD