Wyoming trustees are seeking a grant to help fund a new program to better the College of Education at the University of Wyoming. Apparently, graduates of the program don’t have the proper skills required to teach at Wyoming K-12 schools.
Legislatures and education professionals have brought this up to the UW trustees in July of 2014, which lead to the trustees’ decision to pass the Trustees Education Initiative. A narrative summary of the initiative’s Daniels Fund application was sent October 15th to the State Legislature’s Joint Education Interim Committee.
The announcement they received in June included a $500,000 grant from the Daniels Fund to start the initiative. A second grant would allow the College of Education and the dean of the program, Ray Reutzel, to begin to better the program through more in-depth work.
The Daniels Fund has provided grants throughout Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah through their non-profit organization. The Daniels Fund Board of Directors will consider the application for the new grant on Monday. Reutzel has chosen not to announce the amount the second grant was written for until it has been approved.
If the grant is received, the trustees plan to establish an Education Initiative Board, a Strategic Planning Committee, and a National Advisory Board. They also plan to hire an executive director and support personnel.
The program will begin with a study team looking at a select 10 other college’s programs nationwide and determining which schools have the best parallel programs. A sub committee would then visit those schools, collect data, and bring it back to the Education Initiative Board. Reutzel mentioned that the programs would be applicable to UW, and the Board will look at one or two institutions for all 10 programs.
The initiative will implement a feedback loop with K-12 education in the state, community colleges, and the community in general. The entire program will take 7-10 years considering all the data that must be collected from studying other institutions and installing new practices at UW.
Beyond the grants, UW will receive help from the UW Foundation to support the effort. The University plans to raise at least half of the funds before asking the state to match it, Reutzel mentioned.
By the end, the whole new initiative could cost $15 million, but as of now it’s only a rough, broad estimate.
