INDIANAPOLIS — Marian University and Ivy Tech announced a partnership Wednesday to recruit and train more teachers in the state of Indiana.
As part of the program, students will start in high school to begin pursuing an associate degree at Ivy Tech before transferring to the Klipsch Educators College at Marian, where they will earn a bachelor's degree with a teaching certificate.
The final step of the program is to pursue a master's degree at no cost and participate in a one-year paid clinical residency in an Indiana classroom. the entire program would cost $45,000, not including potential financial aid.
The program is designed to make the path to education more affordable and accessible for prospective teachers, especially those who are minorities.
According to Klipsch Educators College Dean LaTonya Turner, Ph.D., 40 percent of today's school population is students of color — a proportion that is not mirrored in teacher population. To change this, Marian is partnering with Ivy Tech campuses in Indianapolis, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Evansville, Lafayette and Lake County to pilot the program. It will start with 100 students in fall of 2021 with a goal of 50 percent of them being students of color.
The goal is to enroll 500 students by 2025.
"It is incumbent upon our universities, both public and private, to aggressively recruit highly qualified and talented individuals to lead Hoosier classrooms," Turner said in a release. "The Klipsch Educators College recognizes the need for teachers of all backgrounds, and we are focusing on our efforts to prepare the best and the brightest to help drive student success."
"We know students of color benefit when they have the opportunity to learn from educators who look like them. Our most recent data show fewer than 15 percent of educators graduating from college come from a minority population," said Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Teresa Lubbers. "There's a clear disconnect between the classroom need and our current pipeline of educators coming out of college."
Indiana has faced a teacher shortage for several years. This program will help keep Indiana students in the state to become Indiana teachers.