.png)
TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded the College of Education at Texas State University the Augustus F. Hawkins Center of Excellence grant.
The five-year, $2.74 million grant will establish the Hawkins Center of Excellence in Educator Preparation at TXST. The new center will house Project Accelerated Development of Aides into Professional Teachers, a new innovative growyour- own teacher certification pathway to address critical teacher shortages.
Project ADAPT will create a model to uniquely serve lower-wage instructional aides in Texas for whom university-based teacher education has generally been inaccessible. Candidates will be prepared through integrated course work and extensive clinical learning experiences for rigorous academic content teaching within a supportive learning environment. This approach will foster equitable educational outcomes for underserved K-12 students in highneeds schools.
“Texas State has been a powerhouse in teacher workforce development as the largest univer- sity-based preparer of teachers in Texas. Driven forward by an exceptional faculty, the Hawkins funding will allow us to lift up instructional aides into the teaching profession and to develop a sustainable model for the future,” said Michael O’Malley, dean of the College of Education.
By transitioning aides who are already working in Texas schools into fulltime teachers, O’Malley said that, “this Center of Excellence will meet a critical need for high-quality teachers in our state while also creating social mobility for aides and their families.”
Project ADAPT is expected to serve 185 aspiring bilingual education and English as a second language elementary school teachers over the five-year project, placing 135 as certified teachers by the end of year five and continuing past that year with an additional 20 residents and 20 community college enrollees in progress. The Hawkins grant will support candidates through scholarships, student success coaching, mentoring, teacher residency, school district partnerships and more.
Hawkins Program grants are designed to support comprehensive, high-quality, state-accredited teacher preparation programs by creating centers of excellence at Minority Serving Institutions such as TXST, which is classified as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Hawkins grants help increase the number of, and retain, well-prepared teachers, resulting in a more diverse teacher workforce prepared to teach in the nation’s most underserved elementary and secondary schools and close student opportunity and achievement gaps.
For more information, visit the Hawkins Program website at ed.gov/ grants-and-programs/ t e a c h e r - p rep/ august us-f-hawkins-center-of-excellence-hawkins- program.
