Mississippi’s two largest universities come together to help improve the quality of Mississippi’s teachers.
Courtesy Robert Jordan | Ole Miss Communications
University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones (right) and Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum
The University of Mississippi has joined forces with Mississippi State University to create the Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program (MET), a program designed to be like an honors college for education and attract high-ability incoming students from high schools to the field of education.
“The Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program is an exciting opportunity to attract the best and brightest students into teaching as a profession and to raise expectations regarding teacher preparation in our university and our state,” Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones said.
“I am grateful to the Hearin Foundation for their financial support, President Mark Keenum and colleagues at Mississippi State for collaboration and to Dean David Rock and his faculty for developing this program.”
Forty students will be accepted each year, 20 by each university. They will receive a full scholarship including tuition, room and board, technology, study abroad opportunities and the chance to network with students at the other university beginning in the fall of 2013.
Incentives such as these are important, because many students believe they will be able to make more money in fields other than education.
“Our goal is to try to change the perception of becoming a teacher to show that you can be a top performer in school and that you can be rewarded by going into the teaching profession and there are some huge benefits for doing so,” said David Rock, Ole Miss dean of education.
Each student admitted makes a five-year commitment to teach in Mississippi following graduation. The goal of MET is, after five years, to introduce up to 160 new teachers into Mississippi school systems.
“This is one of the most significant developments to attract more highly capable people into the teaching profession,” said O. Wayne Gann, director of the Mississippi Board of Education.
This program was a result of a joint collaboration between Ole Miss and Mississippi State earlier this summer, through a push for the two largest universities in the state to work together to try and improve Mississippi’s education system.
“A byproduct of this cooperation should be universities in the state recognizing that we can and should work together across university lines,” said Richard Blackbourn, dean of education at Mississippi State.
The program is funded by the Robert M. Hearin Foundation in Jackson.
The Hearin Foundation is committed to helping the children of Mississippi and believes the collaboration of the two universities would greatly benefit the state.
“Any time you can keep really ambitious go-getters out there that really have a passion for changing education, I think innovation is going to come from them. We just help them get to that point,” said Andrew Abernathy, communications specialist for the Ole Miss School of Education.
Rock added that students in the School of Education rarely change their major after junior year, and he believes that the more students who enter the program, the more who will realize how much of a difference they will be able to make in the lives of the children of the state of Mississippi.
