The Graduate School of Education has received a $100,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to establish approximately 20 national fellowships for future teachers of science and mathematics on the secondary school level, Francis Keppel, Dean of the Faculty of Education, disclosed yesterday.
According to Keppel, each one-year fellowship will provide a stipend of up to $2,000 for work towards a Master's degree. Since the amount of each award will be determined by need, the final number of fellowships each year may be slightly more or less than the estimated 20. The program "will definitely attract additional college graduates to the teaching of science and mathematics in high school," he said.
Applications for admission to the School of Education are to be automatically considered for the fellowships if the applicant plans to enter the specifield field, Keppel explained. The first recipients of the new awards, to be named the Alfred P. Sloan National Fellows, will be announced in two weeks.
Program Nation-Wide
Keppel emphasized that the program is to be national rather than regional, and added that descriptive posters were mailed yesterday to colleges throughout the country.
In the past, the Sloan Foundation, established by a former president of General Motors, has used its grants to further science and mathematics only on the college and graduate level. According to Keppel, this is probably the first time that a Sloan grant has been awarded primarily to aid secondary school instruction.
The fellowship program though itself extending only two years, will have a lasting effect, Keppel feels, and "will ultimately provide leadership for all high school teachers" in the scientific fields.
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