FMU Trustees approve resolutions to help combat teacher shortage
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Thursday night, the Francis Marion Board of Trustees unanimously approved three resolutions, two of which they hope will help combat the K-12 teacher shortage across the region, state and country.
Trustee Mark Moore introduced the resolutions. He said that resolution 01-18, for the Master of Education in Teaching and Learning, would be especially helpful in recruiting teachers from fields outside of education.
“We heard from Dean Meades Holcomb from the School of Education (about this resolution),” Moore said. “Basically, there is a significant shortage of K-12 teachers throughout the state, in particular the Pee Dee Region. This is aimed at addressing that need by offering certification for individuals who already have a four-year degree in the needed subject areas. So it allows students who have studied other majors, outside of education, to pursue the education degrees and address that shortage.”
Moore said that the resolution ratifying the new option of Teacher Certification in the Bachelor of Science in History and the Bachelor of Arts in History would also address the shortage, within the specific field of social studies.
“We heard from Dr. Scott Kaufman, chair of the History Department, about Resolution 02-18,” Moore said. “There is a critical shortfall for social studies teachers across the state. They actually did a poll of superintendents and more than half of the respondents indicated that they’d be hiring five social studies teachers in the next five years. Again, to meet the shortfall, this is a program for certification to allow the history department to produce more folks who would be available to teach those subjects.”
During his president’s report, Dr. Fred Carter thanked the board for approving those resolutions, which will allow the university to meet the teacher shortage head-on.
“Each of those programs play an important role in enhancing and expanding our curriculum, especially those two that will broaden what we’re doing for the school districts and supporting K-12 education efforts,” Carter said.
Carter told trustees that progress was being made on the mechanical engineering program and that university administration would soon begin work to develop the curriculum.
“The faculty has recently sent me the mechanical engineering feasibility study, recommending approval of mechanical engineering feasibility and I’ve accepted that study,” Carter said. “We will over the next year move in a direction of developing mechanical engineering and we’ll work with the faculty to develop the curriculum and get it passed by academic affairs, the senate and ultimately the faculty. Shortly thereafter, we’ll bring that back here as a board resolution. That will likely be providing the board’s support of one of our appropriations requests for next year be money to fund the mechanical engineering program. I think that will be an enormous complement to our industrial engineering program as we continue working on developing a comprehensive department of engineering on this campus. I think we’re only a few short years away from being able to do that.”
Not to be outdone by education and engineering, the nursing program at FMU anticipates several resolutions making their appearance before the board soon, Carter said.
“Dean Wittman-Price has told me that she is anxious to move ahead with some nursing specialties and I support her efforts 100 percent,” Carter said. “So, within the next couple of board meetings, you’ll see that we’ll introduce a couple of resolutions relative to moving ahead with some of those nursing specialties. Specialties that I think are needed statewide but especially in the Pee Dee Region. So stay tuned one that one; we’re very excited about that.”
