About 4,300 students are enrolled in the Teachers College at Western Governor University (WGU), which accounts for little more than one half of the entire student population of WGU.

It’s interesting to note that one of the founders of WGU, former Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer, said that he, along with other founders, initially believed that the College of Information Technology would see the most significant growth at WGU. Over time, however, Geringer and his colleagues have been pleasantly surprised to watch the Teachers College take on that role at WGU.¹

Grants and Scholarships

A number of important milestones have contributed to the growth of WGU’s Teachers College. For one, in 2003, WGU received $10 million from the Department of Education to boost its overall development, which has amounted to $2 million per year up through September 2007. Also in 2003, WGU was awarded another $3.7 million from the DOE for a "Transition to Teaching Grant" to help Nevada and Texas school districts meet their growing demand for new teachers. WGU has also been active in the Department of Defense "Troops to Teachers" program, offering $1,500 supplemental scholarships to help active-duty military and veterans become teachers.

Most recently, WGU, in partnership with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, received a $3 million grant from the Department of Labor to increase the national pool of qualified rural teachers, particularly in the hard-to-fill disciplines of mathematics and science. The grant will allow WGU to provide financial, academic and clinical support for teacher candidates, including scholarships of up to $7,500 for qualified students.

Accreditation Enhances Credibility

But just as important as federal dollars and scholarship programs, the Teachers College reached a prestigious milestone when it was accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) last year. This accreditation validated that WGU’s competency-based programs meet one of the highest criterias by which professional education programs are evaluated.

Meeting Traditional Accreditation Standards Through Distance Education

Janet Schnitz, executive director of the Teachers College, notes that NCATE accreditation definitely enhanced the credibility of the Teachers College. Educators across the country now recognize that an institution such as WGU, with a unique and different teaching and learning approach, can, indeed, meet NCATE standards. "Distance learning has reached a point of maturity that has made it acceptable," Schnitz says, adding that gaining NCATE accreditation has helped to open a door for the next level of online learning innovation to move forward.

Schnitz explains that WGU has started to have more interactions with state education departments since becoming NCATE accredited. "It’s almost like we have come of age now," she says. "We just did a preliminary site visit with California and they want us involved more at the state level. They want more of a liaison interaction with us; they want us to come in and sit on their committees. This is not only based on the fact that others can learn from us, but from the fact that you can be different and still succeed. You can still meet that standards that they expect you to meet."

Quality and Consistency are Key

Since Schnitz joined WGU during the summer of 2003, her mission has been to maintain and boost academic quality and consistency across all of the Teachers College undergraduate and graduate programs. In order to achieve that mission, she has worked closely with WGU’s Education Program Council and Assessment Council, two capable and experienced groups of educators who have helped to mold the college and the institution into what they are today.

Meet the Program Council

The Education Program Council consists of seven members plus Schnitz. Program Council member John Conyers, for instance, is a former superintendent of the third largest school district in the state of Illinois, School District 15. In 2003, School District 15 became the third school district in the nation to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The prestigious award is the nation’s highest honor for quality and performance excellence. Schnitz explains that Conyers is helping the Teachers College in the area of Total Quality Management and how to utilize data-driven, decision-making processes.

Program Council member George Ann Rice was the associate superintendent, Human Resources Division, at the Clark County School District in Las Vegas. Rice had district-wide responsibility for the recruitment, selection, placement, induction and retention of more than 16,600 licensed teachers, 1,000 administrators and 9,000 support staff employees.

Member Melvin Hall is a professor of Educational Psychology and Educational Leadership at Northern Arizona University. "He deals with rural and minority populations," says Schnitz. "He helps us with under-served populations as well as through his expertise in the northwest accreditation process." Member Michael Blocher is a professor of Educational Technology at Northern Arizona University. "He is a leader in distance education and has helped us improve our delivery systems and our attention to learning communities for students," Schnitz explains.

Other Education Program Council members include Darline Robles, superintendent of schools for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and Richard Lesh, Rudy Distinguished Professor of Education from Indiana University. Robles has expertise in the hiring of teachers and in diversity issues that come along with the territory of working with large school districts. Lesh is an expert in the delivery of mathematics programs and has a wealth of experience in electronic delivery systems and design.

Rounding out the Council is Craig Swenson, who joined WGU as its new Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs in May 2006. Swenson was former Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Phoenix system and president at Apollo Publishing and Learning.

"The Education Program Council is basically an outside validation for our programs," Schnitz adds. "These are people who are still active in the field, who are still active in the national organizations, who are influencing hiring decisions in school districts, and who are still working with different higher education delivery models. We rely on them to help us set the relevant competencies we should be looking at."

The Assessment Council

In addition to the Education Program Council, a WGU institution-wide Assessment Council plays a major role in how the Teachers College continues to develop its competency-based programs. "The Assessment Council looks at the validity and reliability of our assessments and their delivery across the whole university," says Schnitz. "With our staff psychometricians, they help us develop the kinds of models we will use."

Currently WGU uses three kinds of assessments: objective-based, performance, and, in the case of the Teachers College, actual demonstration assessments. "We supervise in the field an internship program for demonstration teaching," says Schnitz, adding that the Assessment Council came up with the structure of this model and is always continuously developing and improving upon the model. "They go in on a regular, rotating schedule and pull out the results from the assessments from different programs and look down at the item types and item results. They throw out items or throw out whole assessments as not being valid or reliable in order to get the kind of results that we are looking for. They will come back to us and say ‘this has too few items, or these items are not measuring the competencies that we think they should, or this one is not tied into and validated by the work you are doing in practice, so you need to figure out how to get these more closely aligned.’ The Assessment Council is critical to what we do."

What’s Popular?

The most popular Teachers College degree program at the undergraduate level is the B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (K-8), which, according to the WGU website, "teaches you the content knowledge and teaching skills to become a certified elementary teacher or middle school generalist. At the graduate level, the M.A. in Mathematics Education (K-6, 5-9, or 5-12) is currently attracting the most students. This degree "prepares you to certify in secondary mathematics, a high-demand second teaching field. Or, at the elementary level, you will complete a professional development program in K-6 mathematics."

"There is a large need for math teachers, and we have been particularly successful in recruiting math students to the university," Schnitz claims, adding that the Teachers College math program is aligned with National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards. Schnitz notes, however, that retaining some of the newly admitted students in this particular program has become a challenge because some of these students come in either unprepared mathematically or they "think that it is going to be a cakewalk because it’s online. We still get students who think online is easier. That does not play out when they find out how much writing is involved and that there’s rigor in the program. It is not a cakewalk to come into WGU and get a degree by any stretch of the imagination."