UTeach Dallas has received a gift of $500,000 from the O’Donnell Foundation to help increase the number of middle and high school teachers certified to teach math or science.        

The gift will help support the UTeach Dallas endowment and provides flexibility to support scholarships, internships and other aspects of the program.

“We are very pleased that the Foundation has provided support to the UTeach Dallas effort to encourage science and mathematics majors at UT Dallas to prepare for teaching careers,” said Dr. Myron Salamon, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.  “The O’Donnell gift will be matched by the National Mathematics Science Initiative (NMSI) at the end of its current five-year grant to UTeach Dallas.”

NMSI is a broad public-private partnership formed to reverse the decay of national math and science education and prepare students for the rigors of collegiate science classes.  NSMI has helped replicate UT Austin’s original UTeach program in 15 universities across the country, including UT Dallas, the University of Florida,  the University of California, Berkeley, Louisiana State University and others.

President Obama announced in early January that NMSI would receive support to expand to 20 universities nationwide.  The new replication sites for UTeach include, among others, UT Arlington and UT Tyler, bringing the number of UTeach sites in the UT System to four.

UTeach Dallas launched in 2008 and expanded rapidly to include 150 students.  Sixty percent of UTeach Dallas students are seeking certification to teach science, and 40 percent are seeking certification in math.  Although nearly 50 percent of the nation’s teachers walk away from the profession within five years, about 80 percent of UTeach graduates are still teaching five years after graduation.

 “The generous support from the O’Donnell Foundation allows us to target areas essential to the continued success of UTeach Dallas,” said Dr. Mary Urquhart, co-director of UTeach Dallas.  “The flexibility of the funding and the high level of support will help our program reach its maximum potential.”