UNC Pembroke is partnering with five rural North Carolina school districts to address teacher shortages in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) field.
The public university is launching a grant program for aspiring STEM teachers, offering to cover their education costs in exchange for students promising to teach in high-need areas upon graduation.
Tracy Mulvaney is the dean of UNCP's School of Education. She said teacher shortages in the southeastern part of the state are twofold.
People with science and math degrees tend to go into fields that have more lucrative pay than teaching (especially in North Carolina, which ranks 46th in the nation on average teacher pay). Plus, rural areas already have issues attracting teachers in general compared to their more urban counterparts.
"Teaching is not a highly paid profession and it's a calling," Mulvaney said. "That impacts rural communities even more, because if you have a smaller pool to pull from they have to have the desire to want to be a teacher. And it's not for everyone."
"(Rural, remote areas) tend to have a higher need for teachers, unless you're kind of growing your own." Mulvaney continued. "And that's what this program is really focused on doing."
The program is funded by a $320,000 grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The grant covers students' tuition and fees, housing, meals, books as well as provides money for lab equipment, technology, and a professional conference.
However long students stay in the scholarship program is how much time they have to pay back in service through teaching. It's similar to the UNC System's NC Teaching Fellows program, which provides forgivable loans for aspiring, elementary, special, or STEM education teachers.
But whereas NC Fellows partners new teachers with schools across North Carolina, UNCP's program is specifically for districts with a high poverty index. Robeson County, where UNCP is located, has the highest poverty rate in the state. The program's other partnership districts are Whiteville City Schools, Columbus, Sampson, and Scotland counties.
Mulvaney said it makes a big difference when students trained in rural areas teach in that same community.
"Working with those affiliated with the Lumbee Tribe and the huge and rich and beautiful culture that we have in Pembroke and in the whole region that we're serving of American Indian students and teachers training to be students," Mulvaney said. "They can understand a lot of the sociopolitical and cultural norms and mores that are happening in those communities much better than someone who is transplanted there."
UNC Pembroke is the only state-designated Historically American Indian University and is one of six historically minority-serving institutions in the UNC System.
The university's first STEM teaching cohort will have ten students. Mulvaney said the hope is the program continues and she's looking at leveraging ways to sustain it.
"We have a lot of long-term subs or students on residency licenses," she said. "Our goal is to provide a pipeline of traditionally-trained undergraduate students in STEM education and continue to move that forward. So, this is a little test for us."
WUNC partners with Open Campus and NC Local on higher education coverage.
