Since its founding as Chattanooga University in 1886, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has developed an institutional excellence, which rests on an unusual blend of the private and public traditions of American education. The mission of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is the education of students: to assist in the enlightening and disciplining of their minds and their preparation for ethical and active leadership in civic, cultural, and professional life. The educational experience at UTC goes beyond the traditional classroom and laboratory as befits an institution where service is also a high priority and whose identity as a metropolitan campus is firmly established. UTC faculty members bring their professional expertise to bear on the concerns of the larger community. Moreover, the University takes advantage of its metropolitan location to provide firsthand learning experiences to students through career related work experience.

The mission of the College of Education and Applied Professional Studies is to prepare qualified practitioners to be professional leaders in various roles within educational institutions and professional agencies, both public and private. The College seeks to combine quality and innovation in its programs, relating intellectual life to the contemporary problems in the professional fields they serve and creating centers of service to those professional communities.

The College takes pride in its position as a program that has managed to remove the often touted "disconnect" of professional teacher education from the educational setting through authentic, deep and systemic changes in what we do, how we do it, and with whom we work, This has been largely accomplished through a partnership with the Hamilton County Schools that is primarily focused on the integration of the two systems around the preparation of professional educators and the support of the school system's reform initiatives.

This partnership has begun to afford a group of K-16 educators a strong motivation to create something new. They know that the worlds of preparation and practice will have to come together in ways that have never been tried before. Massive amounts of professional development will be required for K-12 faculty and higher-ed faculty, and that technology will drive the 21st century triad of change, complexity and competition in ways that we can not yet completely understand.

This partnership manifests itself in numerous major intersects from professional development schools which provide full-time placements for students as juniors and again as seniors to technical support for school planning and improvement initiatives. Touted as one of the most unusually comprehensive partnerships, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded UTC/HCS grants in four major federal initiatives. In 1999, we were the only partnership in the nation to be funded in the four categories: Title II Quality and Title II Recruitment, GEAR-UP, and Teacher Technology.

A unique aspect of the College of Education and Applied Professional Studies is the attachment of special programs. Most of these are direct partnerships with the local school district, while the others connect with and support teacher training programs, AmeriCorps/ America Reads members tutor children who are at risk or school failure in twelve Hamilton County Schools. Corps members assist with the improvement of reading levels of students while serving as tutors and mentors. PRISM is a joint endeavor with the Hamilton County Schools funded by a federal TRIO grant. This grant program brings high school students to campus, where they participate in research projects under the direction of UTC faculty in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. Institutes for local math and science teachers and institutes for faculty in the College of Education and Applied Professional Studies are an integral part of this program. The Title I School Support Services, in concert with the Tennessee Department of Education, provide support planning in Title I school-wide projects for approximately 17 school districts and over 60 schools in southeast Tennessee each year.

The Challenger and Children's Centers provide opportunities for field experiences for UTC students as well as providing model programs in their respective areas. The Challenger Center provides simulated apace missions, allowing middle school students to apply math and science concepts to real life, and provides teacher training and curriculum materials for classroom use. Two staff members are teachers on loan from the school system. The Children's Center, accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), provides a developmentally appropriate early childhood education program for the 75 children enrolled in the Center. The Center provides preschool experiences for a limited number of HCS students with special needs.

The first Professional Development Schools were organized in 1994 in order to provide junior-level students with an early and broad field experience so that they might better understand the culture and organization of schools.

Students are assigned full-time at the PDS I school and attend classes on site. Coursework from the University is delivered through a team of professors who co-teach 15-18 hours on site. Activities related to the coursework are practiced by the students in their respective site classrooms.

The success of the PDS I experience led the College in 1997 to redesign the student teaching program to reflect this close working relationship between UTC full-time faculty and selected schools. In Professional Development School II, the student completes a second full-time semester-long placement. PDS II allows UTC to effectively partner with school sites who "buy in" to teacher training as an entire school. The Professor-in-Residence at each school, a full-time UTC faculty member, is able to develop partnerships specific to each school's need and offer a wide variety of services from the University. The responsibility for evaluation resides with the PDS II on-site faculty, and Tennessee's Framework for Evaluation is used as the evaluation instrument and is administered by K-12 faculty,

A new initiative, the Alternative Certification Program, was forged in partnership with the Hamilton County School System in response to a continuing need for qualified teachers, especially in high school math and science, special education, foreign languages and ESL. A non-traditional program of study was designed to meet the specific needs of the Hamilton County Schools. This alternative licensure program requires that entering students have achieved a bachelor's degree with a GPA of 2.5 or higher. The students must meet content area requirements for the specific area of certification they choose and agree to participate in and complete the entire Alternative Certification Program of study, including any additional coursework or training indicated by test scores and/ or on-site evaluation. Entering students are agreed upon by UTC and the Hamilton County Schools jointly. Upon completion of the program, they must agree to teach in the subject area designated for a period of three years after the internship year. UTC and the Hamilton County Schools are one of the 28 partnerships to be awarded a Title II Teacher Recruitment Grant (TRI-IT!) to fund this project for the next three years.

The newly funded GEAR-UP project provides academic support to all the seventh graders and their parents in three Hamilton County middle schools. The support will continue with these families for five years. The goal is higher academic expectations and acquisition for these at-risk students. The Title II Teacher Quality Project (Urban IMPACT) will create the opportunity for licensure candidates to gain expertise in teaching in urban settings through coursework and field placements, Regarded as a promising teacher dropout prevention strategy, the school system and university will jointly develop the curriculum and coordinate held placements in successful urban schools.

As a result of these and other jointly run initiatives, the school system and the University share the services of a grant writer who provides technical support in seeking funds to support and expand the partnership. The inclusion of these special programs in the College enhances the faculty and students by their link to the "real world." This step outside the traditional role of colleges of education as purely academic units allows us opportunities for Connection to the world of practice that are subtle yet powerful.

Mission

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is one of the four major campuses of the University of Tennessee. It's metropolitan mission and major focus is on excellence in undergraduate education and in selected areas of graduate study. The University's wide diversity of degree program has attracted a current enrollment of 8,500 plus students from 74 Tennessee counties, 41 states, and 41 foreign countries.

The College of Education and Applied Professional Studies offers baccalaureate, masters and specialists degrees and serves approximately 1500 undergraduate and 400 graduate students.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest college on campus, serving 2,530 students in 20 majors. It provides 80% of the coursework to teacher education students and provides the academic content major to all secondary education candidates.

The Hamilton County Department of Education (HCS) provides, through its 81 elementary, middle and secondary schools, education to 40,000 students. The system has been engaged in a three-year-long standards-based instructional reform project for which it has received national recognition. It ha also been recognized for its character education and magnet schools program.

Key Partnership Representatives:

Bill Stacy, Chancellor, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Jesse Register, Superintendent, Hamilton County Schools
Mary Tanner, Dean, UTC College of Education and Applied Professional Studies

For more information on these exemplary practices, contact:

Dr. Mary Tanner, Dean
College of Education and Applied Professional Studies
Phone: (423) 755-4249
E-mail: >mary-tanner@utc.edu
Fax: (423) 755-4044
212 Hunter Hall, Dept. 4254
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403

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