FIU selected to nominate Woodrow Wilson Fellowships

Florida International University has been selected to join an elite group of only  47 U.S. universities to act as nominating institutions for the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color. Other nominating institutions of higher education include Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke and the University of Michigan. FIU was chosen from a pool of 159 applicants.

The designation allows FIU College of Education to nominate two undergraduate students of color from the university who are interested in earning a master’s degree in education and initial teacher certification at one of the receiving institutions. Successful nominees will receive a $30,000 fellowship.

“FIU has been chosen as a nominating institution because of our richly diverse student population, the caliber of our undergraduate students and faculty, and our rigorous academic standards,” said Charmaine DeFrancesco, associate professor in the College of Education and the FIU liaison for the fellowship program.

“The College of Education has been asked to coordinate the FIU nomination efforts in part because of our experience and professional expertise in recruiting, educating and preparing exceptional master teachers,” DeFrancesco said.

Tomorrow’s students urgently need teachers of color. Nearly half of the nation’s students (44 percent) are students of color, but the latest data shows that just one of every six teachers (16.7 percent) is a teacher of color. Current trends indicate the percentage of teachers of color will fall to an all-time low of 5 percent of the total teacher ranks, while the percentage of students of color in the K-12 system will likely grow to 50 percent. The Woodrow Wilson Rockefeller-Brothers Fund  Fellowships aim to address this gap by recruiting, supporting and retaining individuals of color as K-12 public school teachers.

To be eligible for the fellowships, students must be individuals of color from a minority or typically underrepresented group in the teaching field –African American, Asian, Hispanic and Native American – and committed to pursuing a graduate degree in the teaching field. Nominees must have a minimum 3.0 GPA and be U.S. citizens or have permanent residency status. Fellowship recipients are required to commit to teaching for three years in rural or urban schools with diverse student populations where teaching is typically very challenging.

“We believe that FIU’s designation as a nominating institution will be a critical catalyst for the university becoming a receiving institution in the future and having the opportunity to train some of the nation’s top students of color,” DeFrancesco said.

For more information about the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color, please contact Charmaine DeFrancesco at 305-348-3163 or at defrance@fiu.edu .