(Nov. 13, 2018) -- The UTSA Academy for Teacher Excellence (ATE) and Northwest Vista College (NVC) have established the Latino-Teacher Academy Learning Community (Latino-TALC) project with $3.75 million in federal funding from the United States Department of Education through the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program.
The five-year project aims to provide a smooth transition for teacher candidates from Northwest Vista College to UTSA, increase Hispanic teacher graduation rates, and to ultimately diversify the teacher pipeline.
About 70 percent of students in UTSA’s teacher preparation programs came from community colleges, said Lorena Claeys, lead principal investigator and executive director and research associate in the Academy for Teacher Excellence.
This partnership will strengthen student support services including academic, faculty-student engagement, student leadership, and personal psychosocial-emotional support.
“Latino-TALC will provide teacher candidates support as they navigate from a learning community to a professional learning network as they embark into the teaching profession,” said Claeys.
The main goals of Latino-TALC include:
As part of the Latino-TALC project, researchers will reach out to local high schools to enroll, prepare, support and graduate a higher number of certified Hispanic teacher candidates to teach bilingual education, English as a second language, mathematics and science in public schools.
“It’s important to have greater teacher diversity to reflect the culturally diverse population they teach,” said Claeys. “Latino students and other students of color have limited access to role models during academic development and research shows that all students benefit academically by having a teacher of color instructing them.”
Claeys is working with co-principal investigators, Belinda Bustos Flores, UTSA professor and associate dean of professional preparation, assessment, and accreditation, Norma Guerra, associate professor and associate dean for undergraduate studies at UTSA and Margarita Machado-Casas, professor and chair for the Dual Language Department at San Diego State University on this project.
“Latino-TALC project is grounded in our research that has been disseminated over the last 15 years, which will greatly ensure the success of the teacher candidates and the program. We plan to continue examining and refining our present model through this project, so we can continue being leaders in this area,” according to Bustos Flores.
Claudia Verdín, professor of mathematics, and NSF MIM Scholarship Program Director, is the co-principal investigator at Northwest Vista College.
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AlamodomeThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
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The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to promoting access for all. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
