Utahns considering careers in education have a new choice of where to study for their teaching certificates.
After months of discussion and review by other college officials, the University of Phoenix has received the go-ahead to start its secondary-school teacher certification courses this fall. The Utah Board of Education approved the university's program Friday."The Phoenix has risen," board chairman John Watson said.
The University of Phoenix will offer night classes that prepare students for certification within two years, education programs coordinator Boone Colegrove said. Aspiring teachers can begin their first course as early as September.
To enroll in the teaching certification program, you must have a bachelor's degree in a secondary-school subject such as biology, English or math, Colegrove said.
Students will attend classes one night per week and join a formal study group for an additional five hours each week, Colegrove said. They pay for one course at a time, with the whole teaching certification program amounting to a total cost of approximately $10,000.
The University of Phoenix is a private school where the average student's age is 34, said Susan Mitchell, dean of the university's School of Education. Many people come to a Phoenix campus when they are ready to change careers -- and teaching is a profession that attracts people who "want to make a contribution to the next generation," she said.
In Utah, the university has 2,200 students seeking master's degrees in business, guidance counseling and other fields at its campuses in Salt Lake City, Murray, Ogden and Provo. Phoenix also has schools in California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.
After the Utah Board of Education began considering the University of Phoenix teacher training program in October 1997, it sent an on-site review committee to interview Phoenix students and faculty. The committee gave its findings to the State Advisory Committee on Teacher Education, SACTE, but several members of that state panel did not approve the proposed teacher program. They voiced concerns that Phoenix did not meet Utah's standards for such programs.
After further review, SACTE and the Utah Board of Education found that the standards themselves were subjective, even nebulous, and it was hard to measure whether a school lived up to them. During Friday's meeting, the state board vowed to have the standards rewritten in clearer, objective language.
Board members encouraged Phoenix's administrators to start offering their teacher certification courses and work on fully meeting state standards for teacher training programs within the next year.
"We know that what makes the biggest difference to a child is a good teacher in the classroom," board member Janet Cannon said. "A good teacher means more than smaller class sizes and computers or anything else."