FOR RELEASE: Aug. 9, 1999

Times Mirror Awards CSUN $100,000
for New Literacy Program

If the program proves to be effective, the foundation has promised the university another $50,000 to continue the project in a third year.

³This is a wonderful opportunity for the university to develop a program that will ensure that our students, tomorrow¹s teachers, will have the skills to go out and meet the needs of an increasingly diverse community,² said Jorge Garcia, dean of the College of Humanities, which with the College of Education and CSUN¹s Los Angeles Times Literacy Center, will administer the program.

The goal of the program, called Los Angeles Times Literacy Preparation Project, is to train students through an intensive curriculum that ties their own mastery of literacy subjects to critical literacy theories and teaching practices.

The course work will be developed jointly by faculty from the colleges of Humanities and Education and the Los Angeles Times Literacy Center. A student practicum will be part of the project to help undergraduate and graduate students apply literacy theories to the classroom. The university also will organize a literacy seminar for emergency-credentialed teachers that will involve scholars, educators and parents.

Naomi Bishop, director of CSUN¹s Liberal Studies program and a coordinator of the Los Angeles Times Literacy Preparation Project, said faculty were excited about the project.

³This fall, for the first time in a number of years, undergraduate students preparing to be teachers will really think about the application of what they are learning in the classroom,² Bishop said. ³We¹ve never dealt with the issues of literacy in training elementary teachers. It¹s a breakthrough for us to be able to bring up the subject and then link it with the idea of service learning (course work that involves the community) and tie it all into the real world experiences of our own students. They have a lot of knowledge already before they come to us, and we will be able to apply that experience in the classroom.²

The new program will work with the College of Humanities¹ 275 Plus program, an initiative that seeks to push more high-promise students, those that have demonstrated the attributes to become effective teachers, past the 2.75 GPA requirement for admission into teacher credential programs and graduate schools.

University officials hope the project will serve as a model for a potential five-year blended program for teacher training in the California State University system that has been advocated by CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed.

The practicum requirement also ties into Gov. Gray Davis¹ call for community service requirements for college students.

³We were wondering how to get service learning into a curriculum that is already jam packed,² she said. ³The grant allows us to do some planning and develop support so the concept can be incorporated into our program. We will be able to set up a model for including service learning that we will incorporate into other concentrations as well, such as the arts, music and mathematics.²

Each year, more than 500 undergraduates enrolled in the pre credential program in the College of Humanities¹ Liberal Studies program go on to obtain their teacher credentials. Through 275 Plus, the college can potentially prepare as many as 500 more candidates every year for credentialing programs.

³The establishment of the Los Angeles Times Literacy Preparation Project, means the university will train a significant group of these undergraduates in a literacy concentration before they enter the classroom as teachers,² Garcia said.