The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education, through its Comprehensive Program, has awarded a $205,485 grant to Wittenberg for projects connected with Wittenberg’s new Master of Arts program and the Springfield-Wittenberg Teacher Institute.

The grant will help to foster an innovative collaborative effort to improve teaching outcomes in real classrooms. This $375,193 project is funded 55 percent by FIPSE, with the remaining 45 percent funded by Wittenberg University and other sources.

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) recently filed statewide data for a federal report on the quality of teacher education reflecting favorably on the 51 teacher education institutions in Ohio.

Wittenberg was one of 15 Ohio colleges to be ranked in the first quartile achieved summary on the national Praxis II teacher examination with passing rates of 95-100 percent.

The Springfield-Wittenberg Teacher Institute first began in 1998 as a partnership between local public schools and Wittenberg. Its goal is to focus the efforts of professors of education and schoolteachers to improve teaching, learning and educational research at the university and public school levels.

The Master of Arts in Education curriculum began this fall with a similar purpose.“We designed the program to create courses that would make a positive impact on the school system while further developing our educational curriculum at Wittenberg,” said Robert Welker, professor of education and graduate studies director.

“I think the great grant reviewers at FIPSE were taken by the idea that we’re tying teacher preparation more directly to student learning,” he added. “We are confident that our joint program will help address the problems being faced in our school system today.”