Grant Boosts Teacher Candidates from Underrepresented Groups

Madison Shaw ’17, a member of SUNY Oswego’s Teacher Opportunity Corps, worked last spring with English language learners at Grant Middle School in Syracuse. Oswego’s TOC program, which seeks to attract and retain students of color to teaching careers, recently was awarded a five-year, $1.63 million grant through the New York State Education Department’s My Brother’s Keeper program.

The New York State Education Department recently awarded a five-year, $1.63 million grant to SUNY Oswego’s School of Education to scale up and enhance its Teacher Opportunity Corps (TOC) program, which seeks to attract and retain teacher candidates from underrepresented groups—particularly young men—in high-need schools.

The $325,000 a year in funding through the state’s My Brother’s Keeper program will more than double the capacity of Oswego’s nine-year-old Teacher Opportunity Corps to serve 50 students, from freshmen through graduate school, and to support graduates in their early years of teaching.

Enthusiastic about the competitive award, Dr. Pamela Michel, dean of the School of Education, said the grant would provide important financial, social and professional support to encourage more students of color to become teachers. She emphasized that the School of Education has long nurtured underrepresented teacher candidates and developed programs that do so with consistency, caring and rigor.

The new grant will support freshmen through juniors—among other new and ongoing initiatives—with experiences in schools in partner school districts, setting the stage for the program’s clinically rich senior year, when teacher candidates do a yearlong residency immersing them in high-need school communities.

For more information, contact educational specialist Nichole Brown at nichole.brown@oswego.edu or 315-312-3098.

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