The College of Education at Cal State Long Beach has been awarded a $300,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Education to help minority students gain admittance to graduate school.
The two-year grant will go into effect immediately. In addition, it will increase instructor candidates’ awareness and respect for cultural and linguistic diversity.
Teachers in some schools are not equipped to address the needs of students learning English as a second language, according to Corinne Martinez, a COE professor.
Martinez said the department had a strong chance of receiving the grant.
“Given the demographics of Long Beach and given the fact that we are a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and that 27 percent of the undergraduate population is Latino, put us in a different category,” she said.
This particular grant was specific to Hispanic-Serving Institutes. There are 208 across the country, and according to Martinez, CSULB was one of the few colleges that applied for the grant.
According to Shireen Pavri, COE associate dean and
special education professor, in the 2008-09 academic year, COE faculty and centers received 11 federal grants, most from the U.S. Department of Education. Martinez said the number of grants received for the COE has increased.
According to the CSULB Web site, the grant was awarded through the Department of Education’s fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, which focuses on projects that will expand graduate-level academic offerings at colleges with a significant number of Hispanic students.
The title of the CSULB project is “Developing Teachers as Instructional Leaders in a Graduate Program at a CSU Hispanic Serving Institution.” Martinez is a co-principle investigator for the project with Trini Lewis, an associate professor in the department of teacher education.
Martinez also said that considering there are grants of $1 million, the $300,000 is not a big deal when it comes to money, but she added, “It certainly is a big deal in terms of the focus of the grant.”
“The grant is significant because it focuses on increasing the number of Latino graduate students, and it will also help to meet the needs of English language learners in our secondary schools,” Martinez said. “The grant will help increase the number of Latinos that enter graduate school in general. We are interested in providing support to increase the likelihood they will actually graduate within the two- to three-year period.”
Furthermore, Martinez said the COE will recruit a cohort of Latino and other minority students to the graduate program.
“A good amount of the money will be spent on that,” Martinez said. “Other portions of the grant will focus on the development of a teacher and leadership institute, and these graduates will be participating in that.”
Martinez also compared CSULB’s situation to other schools in the area.
“Many of the surrounding schools in this particular community have a large portion of English-language learners, and we may not have teachers not equipped to address their needs,” Martinez said.
Moreover, she said that by enriching the existing curriculum of COE, the college is hoping to address that problem as well.
“The demand for teachers equipped to address the needs of English Language learners has always been there,” Martinez said.