The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is one of seven higher-education schools statewide working to increase the number and diversity of teachers in K-12 schools.
As part of the Grow Your Own program from the Tennessee Department of Education, UTC will be given a $100,000 grant to pay the full tuition for a total of 12 current teaching assistants paraprofessionals and other employees in the Hamilton County and Marion County school systems.
“Our partnerships with Hamilton and Marion counties, through this initiative, allows us to further strengthen our collaborative efforts to increase diversity and prepare highly effective teachers,” said Renee Murley, director of the School of Education at UTC.
Once the students earn their degrees, they will be eligible for a teaching license and hired in the county school systems, she said.
Expanding the diversity of teachers statewide is a major goal of the Grow Your Own program.
“We’d like to see diversity and numbers out in the field. We believe teachers should represent the students that they serve,” Murley said.
The program begins in January 2021 and ends in June 2022.
The schools selected to receive the Grow Your Own grants are:
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Austin Peay State University
- Lincoln Memorial University
- Lipscomb University
- Tennessee State University
- Tennessee Tech University
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville
