A second master’s degree in the education program at Fort Lewis College was approved Friday by the Board of Trustees.
The Master of Arts in Education: Teacher Licensure would be for students who have earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary licensure disciplines, such as kindergarten through 12th-grade art, exercise science and Spanish, or seventh- through 12th-grade theater, English, math, history and science.
“It’s challenging these days for lots of reasons for students to finish in four years,” said Richard Fulton, director of teacher education. “We found that only 7 percent of students finished both their major and teacher’s licensure in four years in these areas.”
The challenge has been in timing and testing, he said in the proposal, which showed that students must take 147 credits to earn both the degree and the license, while it takes only 120 hours to graduate with a bachelor’s degree.
Before they can receive their license in these disciplines, budding teachers must prove they have mastered the content in their major area of study by passing a Program for Licensing Assessment for Colorado Educators or a PRAXIS series of tests to measure their knowledge and skills in the discipline.
“Sometimes students have been taking their Colorado Content exams in their junior year on the current program, when they haven’t even taken all the classes for the major yet,” Fulton said. “There are more and more demands on public school teachers, and all of our regional competitors – Adams, Western (state universities) and (Colorado) Mesa (University) – are shifting to this model.”
To earn the degree, after graduating with their Bachelor of Arts or Sciences, students would begin a two-year program for their master’s degree. They would learn classroom management, teaching techniques and complete their student teaching the first year, then complete their first year as a teacher while conducting research and working with master teachers for continued professional growth.
“We felt that the current program waters down the content the students need to be effective teachers,” Provost Barbara Morris said. “The benefit to Colorado will be producing excellent teachers.”
Students planning to go into elementary or early childhood education or future music teachers will be able to obtain their teacher’s license in four years.
The teacher licensure will be the college’s second master’s degree, joining the teacher leadership Master of Arts, which will welcome its second cohort in August. The new master’s program is scheduled to begin in August 2017.
“The faculty has been throwing around other ideas for master’s programs,” Morris said, “but there aren’t any more in the pipeline.”
abutler@durangoherald.com