BARD COLLEGE MASTER’S PROGRAM IN TEACHING TO HOLD OPEN HOUSE ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 One-Year Program Offers Students the Opportunity to Earn Teaching Certification and Master’s Degree, While Advancing Their Studies at the Graduate Level

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program is holding an open house on Saturday, February 18. The event will provide an opportunity for prospective students to meet faculty and learn more about this new one-year program, in which students earn teaching certification in English, biology, history, or math, and a master’s degree in teaching, while advancing their studies at the graduate level. Members of the first class to graduate from the program, in June 2005, will be in attendance, as well as current MAT students. The MAT Program is open to recent liberal arts graduates and older adults ready to begin a second career. The final application deadline for the 2006-07 academic year is March 15. The open house takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Shafer House on the Bard College campus. Refreshments will be served. For more information or to register, please call Cecilia Maple at 845-758-7145 or e-mail [email protected]. Bard’s Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program, which takes a year for students to complete, was established in 2003 to address critical issues in the training of teachers of grades 7–12. The program emphasizes subject-matter mastery for teachers, integrated clinical training, and the ability of new teachers to advance and implement innovative teaching methods in the classroom. Many secondary school teachers in the United States do not hold an undergraduate degree in the subject they teach, and rarely in the course of their training are prospective teachers asked to integrate subject matter and pedagogy courses in a clinically meaningful way, or to research and practice new approaches to teaching. The MAT Program builds on Bard’s long history of innovation in education, from its Institute for Writing and Thinking teacher-training programs to the groundbreaking Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) in New York City. The core of Bard’s yearlong MAT Program is an integrated curriculum leading to a master of arts degree and teaching certificate in adolescent education in one of four subject areas: English, mathematics, biology, or history. In future years the program will be expanded to include certification in other fields, including art, physics, chemistry, foreign languages, and music. Applicants must have completed an undergraduate degree in liberal arts with a major in the elective discipline. Bard MAT students are required to complete six graduate level courses in their elective discipline, while taking education courses that challenge them to apply the results of research and pedagogical analysis to classroom teaching. In each phase of their MAT experience, students must pursue a research question that engages them in the kind of reflective practice that is essential to teaching effectively and growing professionally. Linked to advanced study in their field, the education curriculum helps MAT students to consider how they learn, and how alternative approaches to teaching and learning provide broader access to academic competence. Throughout the 12-month program, all courses are closely integrated with teaching experiences, beginning in the summer as tutors, followed by extensive field experience. Bard has partnerships with mentor teachers in local public school districts, including Red Hook, Chatham, Onteora, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston, as well as six Autonomous Zone schools—a group of experimental public middle and high schools in New York City. Unique to this program, the MAT mentor teachers in the public schools are active partners for school change, engaging in their own classroom research as part of their sustained involvement with the MAT Program. Through a grant from The Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, the MAT Program offers full fellowships to select students who are committed to working in New York City public high schools. The Petrie fellowships are part of the MAT Program’s research and training partnerships with New York City public schools. Petrie fellows must commit to work in New York City public high schools for five years after graduating from the MAT Program. In addition, the program offers fellowships to returning Peace Corps volunteers. For more information on Bard College’s MAT open house or to register, please call Cecilia Maple at 845-758-7145 or e-mail [email protected]. Prospective applicants should contact Ric Campbell at 845-758-7145 or [email protected] for information and application materials. Visit the Bard College MAT Program website at www.bard.edu/mat. # # # (2/02/06)

Website: https://www.bard.edu/mat

This event was last updated on 02-20-2006

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