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  Session: Sustainability of Physics Teacher Prep Programs
  Paper Type: Invited
  Title: Sustaining a Physics Teacher Preparation Program at a Major Research University: Challenges and Strategies
  Meeting: 2014 Summer Meeting: Minneapolis, Minnesota
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 9:30AM
  Author: Laurie McNeil, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
919-962-0963, mcneil@physics.unc.edu
  Co-Author(s): None
  Abstract: Most research-intensive universities do not regard teacher education as being a strong part of their missions, and students who choose to attend them rarely do so with the intention of becoming high school teachers (and may not receive much encouragement from faculty to select such a career path). Further, only a small fraction of students will choose to major in physics. This means that a physics teacher preparation program at a major research university might expect its output to constitute less than a tenth of a percent of the students who receive undergraduate degrees in a given year. For such a program to be sustained, it needs (at least) two things: bigger partners, and ancillary missions. I will discuss how at UNC-CH we have formed strong partnerships across the science departments, and have embedded our program into the educational life of the College of Arts & Sciences, allowing it to thrive even though we graduate only a small number of (excellent!) physics teachers.
  Footnotes: None
  Presentation: AAPT07_2014sustain_teacher_prep.pdf

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