TEACHERS: $200,000 Grant Provides UC Tuition To Fill Critical Shortage

The University of Cincinnati was awarded nearly $200,000 in funding from the Ohio Department of Education. The grant will launch a program that pays the tuition of 25 licensed teachers to prepare for careers in special education in southwest Ohio. Anne Bauer, UC professor of teacher education and the principal investigator of the grant, says the one-year program will train teachers to become intervention specialists in K-12 classrooms that have children with mild or moderate disabilities. An additional 35 licensed teachers will be selected for the University of Cincinnati Project for Training Licensed Educators at lower tuition rates.

UC’s College of Criminal Justice, Education and Human Services (CECH) currently is recruiting teachers to apply for the new program, which begins fall quarter. The application deadline is Aug. 1, 2005. Candidates who apply must be willing to serve as an intervention specialist for at least three years.

“The University of Cincinnati Special Education Program will work with Cincinnati Public Schools and other districts served by the Hamilton County Educational Services Center and the Clermont County Educational Services Center to recruit candidates for the program,” Bauer says. “We are also recruiting candidates through the Southwest Ohio Special Education Regional Resource Center.”

Each quarter through the 2005-2006 academic year, which begins Sept. 15, students selected for the program will take one distance learning class, a credit experience in their own classrooms under the guidance of a UC mentor, and then onsite instruction in their own schools next summer. The program amounts to 36 credit hours.

“Special education is a teaching area that has severe teacher shortages and this grant will help us provide teachers to fill that need,” says Lawrence J. Johnson, dean of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services.

For information call Anne Bauer, professor of teacher education, at 513-556-4537.