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IT Faculty Scholarships and IT Faculty Recruitment:
The Boeing Company Funds $20,000 in Grants for Educator-to-Educator' IT Educational Outreach
The Boeing Company has generously funded two separate grants ($10,000 each) for the National Workforce Center for Emerging Technology (NWCET), Educator-to-Educator IT Institute (E2E), "E2E IT Faculty Scholarship Program" and "IT Faculty Recruiting Project for Community and Technical Colleges." IT faculty and teachers throughout Washington State cannot always take advantage of IT professional development due to limited or non-existent professional and personal funds. Since IT educators need to keep abreast of current IT industry and educational trends, this scholarship fund will help ensure that there are qualified educators current in new IT developments. "The Boeing Company & E2E IT Faculty Scholarship Program" will be available to K-20 IT educators Summer 2001. Applications and process information will soon be posted to the E2E website. Once the IT educators have been granted scholarships, their selection and progress will be tracked and posted on the E2E website. In recent years, higher education has been significantly challenged to recruit and retain qualified IT faculty who can afford to work with the modest fiscal resources that higher education has to offer. E2E has developed, and is in the process of testing, a method of successfully recruiting retainable IT faculty. Increasing the number of IT faculty who choose a long-term career in IT education, will lead to a more manageable class size for IT courses. This would then enable Higher Education institutions to meet the increasing demand for IT courses, programs, and degrees. Washington State industry is realistically concerned about having a skilled, competent, and expanded IT workforce. The IT Faculty Recruiting program can positively affect the casual relationship between a larger IT faculty pool, serving more students, and ultimately achieving that expanded IT workforce. The financial support of The Boeing Company will result in a solid contribution to the solution of keeping IT K-20 educators current in their field and developing a way to correctly identify IT faculty candidates. |