Award Amount

$30,000 stipend. For 2011–12, there are 280 fellowships available: 120 in Michigan, and 80 each in Indiana and Ohio.

Students awarded a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship will enter a specially designed one-year master’s degree program at a participating university in Indiana, Michigan, or Ohio, upon completion of which you’ll obtain your teaching certification. The program will include preparation for teaching in a high-need urban or rural high school

Deadline

January 12, 2011

Available to

College graduates with a strong background in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) who want to pursue a career in teaching and who agree to make a three-year commitment to teach in a high-need urban or rural high school in Indiana, Michigan, or Ohio.

You must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and either hold a bachelor’s degree or expect to attain your bachelor’s degree by June 30, 2011.

The program is highly selective and seeks to attract the most academically and experientially well-qualified applicants. You must have majored in or have a strong professional background in a STEM field, and you should have a cumulative undergraduate GPA of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Graduating seniors, recent college graduates, retirees, and professionals who are seeking a change of careers are all encouraged to apply.

As a fellow, you must be prepared to begin your graduate studies in the summer or fall of 2011 at one of the 14 participating universities:

Indiana	Michigan	Ohio
Ball State University	Eastern Michigan University	John Carroll University
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)	Grand Valley State University	Ohio State University
Purdue University	Michigan State University	University of Akron
University of Indianapolis	University of Michigan	University of Cincinnati
	Wayne State University
	Western Michigan University

Requirements

• Online fellowship application form
• Your résumé
• Three letters of recommendation
• An official transcript from every college and university you’ve attended, whether for undergraduate or graduate work
• Two 500-word essays: One essay on why you want to teach in a high-need urban or rural school, and one on how you would explain a complicated concept

Applicants for a fellowship in Indiana must also take and pass the Praxis I Pre-Professional Skills Test in order to be admitted to one of the state’s participating master’s degree programs.

Fellows must agree to make a three-year teaching commitment in one of the participating high-need school districts in Indiana, Michigan, or Ohio. Participating high schools, as well as your sponsoring university, will provide mentoring support throughout your three-year teaching commitment.

To Apply

Application for the fellowship itself is free. Each partner university may still charge an application fee for its master’s degree program, although for 2011–12, the partner universities in Indiana and Ohio have chosen to waive their application fees.

For more information or to apply for the fellowship, go to http://www.wwteachingfellowship.org/how_to_apply/index.php.

 

Prior to leaving town for the December recess, Congress gave its blessing to a short-term bailout of the Pell Grant program, the government-funded program that provides grants to low-income students to help pay for college.

The bill provides $5.7 billion to fund the federal student grants through March 4 but stops short of making a full-fledged funding commitment to the program for the entire 2011 fiscal year.

Congressional unwillingness to fully fund the Pell Grant program strikes a major blow to the expanded federal student aid initiatives undertaken by President Obama and the Democratically-led Congress earlier this year.

With Democrats holding the majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, Congress passed legislation early in 2010 that awarded $36 billion in federal funding to the Pell Grant program over the next 10 years and raised the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,550, up from $4,731 in 2008–09.

While that legislation earmarked funding for the program for the next decade, cash appropriations must be authorized each fiscal year and are subject to change.

Last month’s stopgap funding measure, to which Senate Republicans acceded, will provide financing for Pell Grants only temporarily, until new Congressional assignments are finalized in early March. This funding will allow the program to avoid reducing the maximum 2010–11 Pell Grant award by more than 15 percent, nearly $850.

Pell Grants are awarded to low-income students based on a student’s demonstrated financial need. Expanding the Pell Grant program to award more and larger grants has been a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s higher education policy, an initiative meant to offer greater access to college for the country’s lowest-income families.

Over the last couple of years, however, the soft economy and persistent levels of unemployment have led to many more students qualifying for Pell Grant assistance and an increase in the Pell Grant award amounts these students are eligible for — resulting in a program in which costs are quickly outstripping anticipated funding.

“Next year, there will be 8.7 million Pell recipients, and the cost of the program will be about $34 billion,” Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, told The New York Times (“Pell Grants Face Uncertain Future,” Dec. 17, 2010). “It’s more than doubled in five years.”

As the new Republican majority in the House, with its contingent of Tea Party–backed legislators, makes moves to shrink the federal deficit and cut government spending, the ballooning Pell Grant bill is an obvious target.

In the coming months, predicts Rich Williams, the higher-education associate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, “the discussion in D.C. will be about reducing overall funding levels.”

 

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