June 29, 2005
NC QUEST Grant Offers Training
East Carolina University’s College of Education has been awarded a $210,827 grant that will offer professional development opportunities to math and science teachers who work in low-income school districts.
The grant from NC QUEST (Quality Educators through Staff Development and Training across North Carolina) was awarded through the UNC Division of University-School Programs and the Center for School Leadership Development. Funding for the “Rural Initiative in Math and Science” project came from federal resources designed to promote initiatives of the national No Child Left Behind Act.
ECU will offer training to 30 middle and high school instructors in Bertie, Lenoir and Hertford counties. On-going professional development options will include tuition for university courses, six hours of content and pedagogy meetings, materials and on-site coaching. Members of the ECU College of Education’s Rural Education Institute and the Center for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, ECU’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Science, the ECU’s Department of Biology worked with these county school systems to submit the grant proposal.
ECU was one of four new partnerships to receive funding, along with UNC-Wilmington, Western Carolina and Winston-Salem State universities. Appalachian, Fayetteville State and UNC-Greensboro universities also received grants to continue comparable projects. Awards were based on evaluations by a national review panel.