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Goal is to increase the numbers of talented college students fromdiverse backgrounds who pursue teaching careers
January 11, 2008
ANDOVER — An innovative, highly successful program to recruit and prepare talented undergraduates from diverse backgrounds for teaching careers, the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT), has been granted an unprecedented $2 million to strengthen its endowment by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Founded by Kelly Wise in 1990 at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., the IRT has identified and guided more than 1100 young adults toward master’s and doctoral degrees, and ultimately to careers in K-12 and college teaching.
“This grant from Mellon is very significant, especially because it underwrites endowment and helps ensure the longevity of the program,” said Executive Director Wise. “It also underscores the national need for teachers’ recruitment and retention,” Wise added. “The IRT recruits students with bright minds and glowing hearts who want to recharge classrooms with inspired teaching and dynamic curricula. It is the quality of these students that distinguishes the IRT.”
The substantial grant reflects the foundation’s confidence in this highly successful effort to bring the percentage of people of color teaching in the nation’s classrooms more in line with their growing representation in the population. Dr. Lydia English, program officer at the Mellon Foundation, said, “The IRT’s effort in helping prepare students for graduate programs, teaching, and research has been one of the foremost concerted efforts underway. This is critically important because for the last 40 years, various entities have been trying to bring a significant amount of diversity into higher education through the student body, the faculty, and the administration. After many years of exclusion, a committed, dedicated effort over almost 20 years has begun to bear fruit, although progress has not caught up with the need.” People of color comprise nearly 40 percent of the nation’s population, but only 16 percent of teachers.
Educators around the country now recognize the recruitment and retention of teachers of color is a pressing issue in schools and universities that will persist throughout the century. In creating the Institute, Wise’s original intention, which is today still its guiding force, was two-pronged. “First to enhance educational diversity by deepening the pool of talented students of color who enter the teaching profession. And second, to create a cadre of highly trained new educators to take on challenging social and curricular issues in their classrooms.”
To date, more than 100 students have earned doctorates, and more than 700 have received or are working toward master’s degrees. In what is perhaps the most telling statistical reflection of the program’s success, a survey of the IRT class of 2002 five years later found that 93 percent were still employed in education fields.
“We are proud of the remarkable accomplishments of the IRT, one of several educational outreach programs based on the Andover campus. The fundamental purpose of the program—fusing excellence and inclusion—fits perfectly with our overall institutional mission,” said Phillips Academy Head of School Barbara Landis Chase.
Each year, IRT recruiters seek 100 bright students from diverse backgrounds, who are committed to bringing new ideas and practices to education. Once identified, these college seniors and recent graduates are divided into two groups. The larger of the two groups, the Associate program, works closely with IRT mentors and counselors during the fall as they apply to and select graduate programs.
The smaller group of 30 spends four weeks on the Phillips Academy campus in an all-expenses paid summer workshop. They prepare for the Graduate Record Examinations (GREs), draft application essays, and interview with representatives from graduate programs who form an impressive consortium of 43 graduate schools committed to the IRT program. “During the summer workshop, our students begin to imagine themselves as the change agents that they desire to become. Through their study of critical and cultural theory and classroom discussions, they begin to map out new teaching practices and theorize about educational change. It is a transforming experience,” added Chera Reid, director of the IRT.
Graduate schools belonging to the consortium include a wide range of public and private institutions such as the University of Michigan, Princeton, University of Connecticut, Stanford, University of Virginia, Columbia, Brown, Yale, UC Berkeley, and Purdue. Dr. James Henkel, associate dean of the University of Connecticut Graduate School and vice provost for research and graduate education, said, “The IRT is the single most important entity for producing doctoral students from underrepresented groups in the humanities, fine arts, and education. When these students come with the IRT label, they are extraordinarily desirable to doctoral programs and we compete rigorously for them.” Nearly all IRT students have gone on to graduate schools, most with generous offers of tuition and fellowship support for up to six years.
The IRT’s origins and home at Phillips Academy are logical extensions of the school’s long-time commitment to core values fostering excellence and diversity, as articulated in its founding charter to educate “youth from every quarter,” and taking seriously its goal of being a private school with a public purpose. Andover has long been identified with pursuing diversity and equality as moral imperatives. In fact, start-up funds for the IRT came from committed alumni who strongly believed this effort should be a part of the Academy’s social mission. Wise created the IRT in 1990, because, as dean of faculty, he knew well the difficulty of hiring talented candidates of color for the teaching profession. He recognized that this problem was national in scope. Today, 60 percent of IRT graduates teach at the university level, and 40 percent in primary and secondary public education.
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