“Rhodes Scholarship” Program Comes to GSE

When the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation set out to create a "Rhodes Scholarship" for teachers, one of the schools they turned to was Penn GSE.

Penn was selected by the Princeton-based foundation as one of four sites nationally to host the new Leonore Annenberg/Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship program.

Described as a national "Rhodes Scholarship" for teaching, the program is designed to encourage Penn graduates in arts and sciences fields or related professions like engineering or finance to seek long-term teaching careers in high-need public school classrooms.

Candidates who agree to teach for three years in low-income schools will each receive a $30,000 stipend and one-year of graduate education at one of four of the nation's top teacher-education programs. Funding is provided through a $5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation and a $1 million grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Annenberg Teaching Fellowship programs are also based at Stanford University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington.

Faculty from Penn's School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Education will be involved in the curriculum development and nomination process, ideally seeking candidates who show a commitment to high-need communities, education, and schoolchildren. Penn students who have participated in academically based community service programs through Penn's Netter Center for Community Partnerships will be encouraged to apply.

The first fellows will be named in spring 2009, begin their master's work later that academic year, and start classroom teaching in 2010. The fellows will work closely with local school districts to get classroom training during their graduate course work. Over three years, the program is expected to produce 100 Annenberg Fellows, 25 at each of the participating universities.

The Annenberg Foundation also launched an inaugural state fellowship program in Indiana, with plans to extend such programs to all 50 states. Both the state and national programs have been developed with these goals: to overhaul teacher education programs, bring strong teachers into high-needs schools, attract the best candidates to the profession through high visibility of the fellowships and reduce the teacher attrition rate through intensive preparation and on-going mentoring.

The fellowship is named for Leonore Annenberg, the president and chairman of the Annenberg Foundation and a former chief of protocol of the United States.

Participating institutions were selected based on the innovative nature of their teaching preparation, existing partnerships with high-need schools and their commitment to follow-up mentoring and rigorous evaluation. A midpoint assessment of the program's progress and long-term tracking of the fellows will allow education schools nationwide to learn from the project.