FAMU to offer new master of education degree this fall

The FAMU College of Education recently received approval from the Board of Trustees to offer a Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction beginning this fall.

According to the College’s Interim Dean Patricia Green-Powell the program allows FAMU to lead the charge in answering the state’s recent call for all educators to possess knowledge of curriculum development.

“This is an exciting time for the College of Education to address the needs of our school districts, as well as our student population,” said Green-Powell, who hopes to take the program online in the near future. “This is a result of area [K-12] superintendents and their school districts expressing to us their need to have highly-trained teachers in the area of curriculum and instruction.”

The new program has been more than three years in the making and is designed to train future and current educators in a variety of career tracks through several specialization options, including concentrations on instruction, learning and assessment, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These career tracks range from curriculum generalists, specialists and supervisors to district curriculum coordinators, school administrators and non-school based curriculum designers or evaluators.

The curriculum and instruction master’s program is also designed to address the State University System’s goal of increasing productivity and efficiency along with addressing the need for more highly-trained teachers. The program is poised to offer hybrid courses that are structured to provide students with the philosophical and theoretical foundations of curriculum development, and an understanding of instructional strategies that best address the needs of a diverse student population.

The program will also offer an opportunity for enrollees to specialize in educating historically underserved students.

“This program also has a strand that deals with minority and urban education,” Green-Powell said. “We’ve listened to the needs of our students who want to pursue jobs in this area and this program will train them to address the needs of areas highly concentrated with minority students.”

Enrollment and recruitment projections predict that at least 20 students will be enrolled within the first year of the program’s implementation and by its fifth year at least 60 students will have enrolled in the program. There are currently six faculty members who are already credentialed and prepared to serve as inaugural instructors for the program.

Participating students will be required to maintain a cumulative 3.0 GPA, pass the master’s degree comprehension exam, make an action research presentation as a component of a capstone requisite and complete 30 semester hours.