Matching federal grant puts support for CU Teach at nearly $1.8 million

CU Teach alum Ryan O'Block ('12) with students during his own time in the CU Teach program.

The groundbreaking CU Teach program at the University of Colorado Boulder was awarded $878,115 this month by the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI)—matching an equal amount that private donors had contributed to the program during a recent 16-month period.

The private gifts totaling $878,115 for the program include major commitments by Richard McCray, a CU-Boulder emeritus faculty member who started a Learning Assistants program with a vision similar to CU Teach, and from The Anschutz Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and United Launch Alliance. For many donors to CU Teach, it was their first gift ever to the School of Education.

These new funds toward the CU Teach endowment enable permanent funding for a Master Teacher—a critical linchpin for the program’s success—as well as subject-specific classes that enable CU Teach participants to tailor their pedagogical training specifically for math and science course matter.

CU Teach was established at CU-Boulder in 2007 to prepare and mobilize more high-tech students to pursue K-12 teaching careers. Boulder’s is among fewer than 35 U.S. universities (also including UCCS) with programs of this nature, based on a UTeach Model that originated at the University of Texas Austin.

The CU Teach effort parallels the goal of the National Math and Science Initiative, which was established to reverse the recent decline in U.S. students’ math and science educational achievement. Through CU Teach, CU-Boulder hopes to license 50 math and science teachers a year—as a key component of NMSI’s national goal of preparing 100,000 new math and science teachers within the next decade.

To date, 95 CU-Boulder graduates have successfully completed the CU Teach program, and two-thirds of them now teach at K-12 schools here in Colorado.