National Grant Awarded for Special Education, Bilingual Education
Cal Poly faculty and staff have been awarded more than $2 million to recruit and train teachers in special education and bilingual education.
A Cal Poly team of faculty and staff members in the School of Education has been awarded a $2.1 million Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant from the U.S. Department of Education for Cal Poly’s Teaching for Inclusivity and Equity Residency (TIER) project.
The TIER project will create a residency program in the School of Education that will recruit and train 44 new teachers in the areas of special education and bilingual education and place these teachers in local school districts.
Through the residency program, teaching credential candidates will complete their teaching credential and their master’s degree while receiving a stipend throughout the program. These candidates will commit to teaching for at least three years in one of the TIER project’s partner districts, which include the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, Santa Maria Joint Unified School District and Lucia Mar Unified School District.
“Our partner districts and all of us in the School of Education recognize the need for educators who are representative of the communities in which they teach and are culturally responsive,” said Briana Ronan, associate professor in the School of Education and the principal investigator for the grant. “We hope that this program and the funds received from the Department of Education can help us recruit individuals from the Santa Maria and Five Cities areas and help them become the best possible teachers for the children in those communities.”
