With more than 45 years of classroom and administrative experience, Dr. Sharon Porterfield will add a familiar role to her distinguished career in education: recruiter.
Porterfield, recently named dean of the Stillman College School of Education, is tasked with revitalizing the program to produce more certified teachers and to position students from other majors into teacher pipelines.
Graduating more certified teachers will help address the shortage of K-12 educators in Alabama, which has seen a spike in teachers leaving the field earlier than before and a sharp decline at the other end of the funnel; the rate of students earning a college degree in education has fallen 58% since 2003, according to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education.
There are a myriad of issues affecting the declining pool of teachers, such as burnout, pay, state testing, and the COVID-19 pandemic. State and local school administrators are trying to address these issues through temporary teaching certifications, sign-on bonuses and incentives for STEM educators.
Teacher education programs play an important role in stemming this shortage, both in recruiting new students into elementary and secondary education majors, retaining and graduating them, and equipping students in other majors for a career in teaching.
Original source can be found here.
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