Teacher Corps Programs
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Ozarks Teacher Corps
Community Foundation of the Ozarks, Springfield, MO
Missouri's Ozark Teacher Corps: The Ozarks Teacher Corps was established in 2010 in conjunction with the Community Foundation of the Ozarks' Rural Schools Partnership. Accepted students commit to returning to their hometown or a similar rural Ozarks community to teach for at least three years. Corps members receive an annual scholarship and participate in a wide range of seminars, where they learn about a variety of rural topics. The overarching goal of the program is to develop teacher-leaders who will serve as catalysts for positive change. With a placement rate of 93%, the Ozarks Teacher Corps has been lauded nationally by media such as Education Week, Council on Foundations, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio.
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CLASS
California State University-Chico, Chico, CA
The Computational Literacy Across Secondary Settings (CLASS) is a program of California State University, Chico offering accelerated and innovative pursuits to achieving a Masters of Arts in Teaching & credential in English, mathematics, science, or special education in California. The program is an outgrowth of the University's RiSE residency program and is funded through the Department of Education. The funding is in support of their Teacher Quality Partnership program, to assist and ready soon to be educators in high-needs areas. Support, both monetary and professionally, is provided for new teachers through their first two years of teaching. Chico State is a key partner in our North California Hub.
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Black Belt Teacher Corps
The University of West Alabama, Livingston, AL
Black Belt Teacher Corps-Teach for Alabama: The University of West Alabama’s Black Belt Teacher Corps gives teacher education majors funding for their own education and provides additional dollars to jump-start educational initiatives in the schools where they will teach. The program receives significant financial support from the Alabama legislature. Students participate in the program for two years and commit to teaching in a Black Belt community for no less than three years. Since its inception, 15 teachers have been place in high poverty rural Black Belt schools. In addition, the success of the program has led to increased state funding to expand the initiative to attract non-traditional students. Learn more about this exemplary effort, which emerged in part from a Rural Schools Collaborative planning grant. UWA is the host partner of our Alabama Hub.
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Great River Teacher Corps
Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL
The Great River Teacher Corps (GRTC) program was launched by Western Illinois University. The GRTC recruits and develops highly talented teachers to work in schools in West Central Illinois. In alignment with Western Illinois University’s mission, the Great River Teacher Corps is grounded in a regional perspective. The GRTC is a student-centered undergraduate program with a service component where participants are required to participate in value-added placed based learning activities that will focus on issues in rural schools. Administrators of the GRTC program have created partnerships with ROE’s, district superintendents, and local communities in 22 counties to ensure their participation in both recommendation of applicants and the hiring of GRTC graduates. The GRTC is also participating in the RSC/Grand Victoria Foundation Challenge Grant Program
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TARTANS Rural Teacher Corps
Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL
Monmouth College TARTANS: TARTANS (Teachers Allied with Rural Towns and Neighborhood Schools) is a rural teacher corps initiative coordinated by Monmouth College Educational Studies Department. Educational Studies professors at Monmouth College believe the program prepares future rural teachers to establish themselves as "visionaries" in their communities. Because teaching is more than just working in a classroom, TARTANS strives to help strengthen the relationship between the school and the surrounding community. Learn more about this effort. This project received a capacity building grant the Galesburg Community Foundation, our Western Illinois Hub anchor, and is participating in the RSC/Grand Victoria Foundation challenge grant program.
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EIU Rural Teacher Corps
Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL
Eastern Illinois University Rural Teacher Corps: The EIU Rural Teacher Corps is open to freshmen through seniors who are education majors with an interest in teaching in a rural community. The EIU Rural Teacher Corps currently has 55 participants, with 22 receiving some level of scholarship support. This program is facilitated by Dr. Brian Reid, an adjunct faculty member at EIU, Rural Schools Collaborative advocate, and chair of the Central Illinois Rural School Partnership. EIU is also participating in the RSC/Grand Victoria Foundation Challenge Grant program. Learn more about this program.
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STEM-Focused Teacher Education
Missouri S&T, Rolla, MO
Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri, is well known for its excellent engineering programs. But the university’s STEM-focused atmosphere is also benefitting students in Missouri S&T’s new department of teacher education and certification. At Missouri S&T, students seeking high school teaching certification earn a bachelor’s degree in their content area while taking the education courses required for certification. Over 100 students are currently pursuing educator certification in elementary or a secondary content area such as math. Many of those students started in another discipline, but switched to education after realizing their desire to give back to communities and teach a subject they enjoy. Currently, 40 S&T graduates from the last ten years are teaching in Missouri public schools, most of them in the rural areas surrounding Rolla, Missouri.
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University of North Dakota's I-REED Project & Rural Partnership
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
The University of North Dakota, a participant in the 2021 Catalyst Grant Initiative, also hosts the Rural Partnership scholarship program, which helps not only rural North Dakota teachers, but also those teachers’ schools, because the program focuses the teachers’ graduate research on their hometown schools. Since 2015, the Burgum Foundation – established by alumni Rick and Jody Burgum – has been a philanthropic force in the state, focusing on North Dakota’s backbone of rural communities in the causes it supports. The organization’s latest effort, in collaboration with UND and the College of Education & Human Development, is titled the “Partnership for Rural Education in North Dakota.”
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Appalachian Future Educators
Morehead State University, Morehead, KY
The Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University and its Appalachian Regional Education Hub proposes a community connections program to enhance its newly launched Appalachian Future Educators (AFE) Scholars Program. The program’s purpose is to enhance the pipeline of qualified educators and educational leaders returning to the 22 rural counties in our historical service region. We believe this program is a first important step in strengthening partnerships with school districts in identifying, recruiting, and mentoring students from the region so they can return and give back to their home communities as rural educational leaders. The AFE Scholars symbolizes Morehead State’s renewed commitment to its historic mission as “a Light to the Mountains.”
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The Proud Rural Teacher Initiative
University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Platteville, WI
The University of Wisconsin-Platteville School of Education's Proud Rural Teacher Initiative participated in the 2021 Catalyst Initiative, which provided additional support for the School's larger rural reimagining process. During this process, the School of Education's whole curriculum and teacher pathway opportunities were refined to focus on UWP's rural roots and locale. The program consists of local community engagement, place-based education training, and intentional rural teacher storytelling.
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University of Wyoming Rural Teacher Corps
University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY
University of Wyoming was a pariticpant of the 2021 Catalyst Initiative, which provided the support and impetus for partners in the region to come together and establish the state's first Rural Teacher Corps. The University's RTC brings together undergraduate pre-service teachers interested in working rurally and asks them to find a mentor teacher to help guide their pathways into the classroom. Corps members participate in rural-focused learning activities and community engagement events.
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ED ASTRA
The Rural Education Center of Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
The Rural Education Center, or REC, of Kansas State University’s College of Education has created an organization designed to support future rural educators. Education Advocates Supporting Teachers in Rural Areas (ED-ASTRA, or Teaching Stars, a take-off of the State of Kansas motto) is a new group focused on students interested in teaching in rural areas. ED-ASTRA encourages students, especially rural students, to complete the K-State College of Education’s teacher preparation program with the goal of returning to their home district or a rural area to teach. Besides building a community of rural-focused future teachers, part of members’ responsibilities would involve visiting rural schools to promote teaching as a career.
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Oregon Rural Teacher Corps
Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, OR
Eastern Oregon University’s College of Education participated in the 2022 Catalyst Initiative to create the ORTC as part of their overall Teach Rural Oregon initiative, which focuses on recruiting, training, and supporting educators in Oregon’s rural and isolated districts, and is run in partnership with the local Wallowa Region 18 ESD. The ORTC is a hybrid Master of Arts in Teaching experience where students meet and learn as a cohort virtually while serving in their rural communities, and then come together in-person at key junctures in their MAT journey.
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2022 Catalyst Initiative Participant
University of Mary, Bismark, ND
Coming Soon!
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2022 Catalyst Initiative Participant
Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, Dubuque, IA
Coming Soon!
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2022 Catalyst Initiative Participant
University of Indianapolis CELL, Indianapolis, IN
The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) has designed a model for the Rural Teacher Corps (RTC) that we intend to share with Indiana's Institutions of Higher Education. CELL is a unique organization to host an RTC as we don't enroll or educate students but we work with IHE's throughout Indiana. We have specifically collaborated with Butler, UIndy, and Marian University over the course of the past year to identify ways to connect rural institutions with the urban institutions in order to provide and share resources. CELL is also developing a rural student support curriculum that could be layered into an EPP program to provide additional assistance and awareness to students that intend to teach in rural communities.
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Maryland Accelerates Program
Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD
In 2019, Frostburg State University (FSU) was awarded a five-year, $4.1 million Teacher Quality Partnership grant from the U.S. Education Department (Grant No. U336S190008) for the Maryland Accelerates Teacher-Leader Residency Program. The project is designed to launch and refine an innovative partnership that is focused on solving problems inherent with teacher recruitment, preparation, induction, support, retention, and advancement through the collaborative implementation of a comprehensive teacher career continuum. Diverging from higher education’s traditional teacher preparation focus on the early stages in a teacher’s career (i.e., recruitment and preparation), Maryland Accelerates strategically partners with local education agencies (LEAs) to also address new teacher induction, professional learning, and development of career ladder frameworks for retention and career advancement. Through this work, Maryland Accelerates offers a new perspective for the development of a region-wide infrastructure to support the teacher workforce, customizing supports to serve high-need, rural communities.
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Arkansas Teacher Corps
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
The Arkansas Teacher Corps is a partnership between the University of Arkansas, the Walton Family Foundation, the Arkansas Department of Education, and Arkansas public school districts to recruit, train, license and support diverse Arkansans as empowered teachers. ATC fellows complete a seven-week summer training institute before teaching for three years in a partner school district in the Arkansas Delta, during which time they engage in ongoing professional development and personalized 1:1 coaching. Fellows also receive a $5,000 stipend (in addition to a full-time teaching salary), differentiated Praxis testing support, and holistic social-emotional support.
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Rural Teacher Fellowship Program
Ohio University, Athens, OH
Coming Soon!
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2023 Catalyst Initiative Participant
Knox College, Galesburg, IL
Coming Soon!
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2023 Catalyst Initiative Participant
Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN
Coming Soon!
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2023 Catalyst Initiative Participant
University of Maine, Orono, ME
Coming Soon!
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2023 Catalyst Initiative Participant
East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
Coming Soon!
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Rural Schools Partner Benefit Program
Valley City State University, Valley City, ND
The Rural School Partner Benefit Program is designed to create a “dynamic and sustained university-school district partnership that will promote collaboration between the University and partner schools with a focus on student learning and educator preparation.” This effort will include both school district and university faculty and teacher candidates. One of the very first formalized partnerships is between Valley City State University and the Lisbon Public Schools. Dr. Steven Johnson, Lisbon Superintendent of Schools and RSC Advocate, shared the details of the partnership. “The focus will be on offering our students more dual-credit opportunities and preparing future teachers while updating current LPS staff with graduate credit. Johnson added, “We will collaborate to place VCSU graduates in our school while helping them supervise and assess preservice teachers in clinical experiences.”
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Southern Illinois University Grow Your Own
Southern Illinois University, Carobondale, IL
Southern Illinois University Grow Your Own: Southern Illinois University, Carbondale received an Illinois-based Grow Your Own Grant to establish a rural teacher corps with an emphasis preparing special education teachers for the southern Illinois region. Currently, 19 students are part of a cohort that is receiving a variety of special resources and training. The project originated from a partnership with the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools. The SIU Grow your own project is also participating in the RSC/Grand Victoria Foundation Challenge Grant program. Learn more about this effort.
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Quincy University Rural Teacher Corps
Quincy University, Quincy, IL
Quincy University Rural Teacher Corps: Quincy University's program is in its second year. Students receive scholarship support and make a commitment to teach in a rural school in the Greater Quincy region. Students have the unique experience of teaching in a summer academy that serves school-aged students in the Quincy region. The program received major support from the Illinois-based Tracy Foundation, and it is participating in the RSC/Grand Victoria Foundation Challenge Grant program. Learn more about Quincy University's effort.