The 'Marshall Plan' -- Teaching Program Immersed Students in Rural Michigan Life

Throughout its history, the College of Education has often experimented with the way it prepares teachers. One of the most interesting phases of that experimentation began even before the college was formed as part of a project that eventually became known as the “Marshall Plan.”

The period of innovation began in 1943, the year Professor Troy Stearns joined the faculty of what was then the Department of Education at Michigan Agricultural College. Stearns was hired as part of a Kellogg Foundation effort to promote and develop a program of rural education and full-time community-oriented student teaching.

Finding quality teachers for rural communities was a major concern of the day, and from 1944 to 1946 the foundation supported efforts to place teachers in these areas by funding $100 scholarships for student teachers, paying half of Stearns’ salary, as well as his travel and living expenses to develop a program.

What Stearns came up with was placing groups of students in a rural town for a school term and exposing them to and immersing them in the everyday life of the community. In the first year, he took students to Charlotte, Michigan, and in 1945 moved the program to Marshall, 50 miles south of campus. Soon thereafter, the program became known as the Marshall Plan.

The program, according Victor Noll in his 1968 book, The Preparation of Teachers at Michigan State University, was a hit with students. “The ‘Marshall Plan’ was very successful and highly esteemed by students and faculty. After 1946 students, almost entirely elementary education majors, received no money to help them defray expenses. Yet, the requests always exceeded the number who could be accommodated.”

One student who was accommodated was Arlyie (Dietrich) Campbell, who arrived on the MAC campus in 1949 with the goal of becoming a teacher. In her sophomore year, Stearns made a presentation in one her courses about the Marshall Plan and she quickly applied and was accepted. In the fall of 1951, she headed for a term in Marshall.

“What a wonderful experience,” she said. “It was fabulous. I just loved the experience and I’ll never forget it. It was quite an experiment because the university hadn’t had students live off campus like that before.”

Campbell said student taught at the local elementary school, and she and four other students lived with a local family. Local and school officials also often helped, and even the superintendent hosted students in his home. The mornings and some afternoons were devoted to teaching, she said, and the other afternoons and the evenings were used for field trips and visits to community activities and agencies.

“The program gave all of us a hands-on experience,” said Campbell, now retired and living in East Lansing. “We lived in the community, we found a place to live and went out and not only student taught but did community service.”

The community component was important to Stearns, who spent a day with the students once a week, a met with each of them at least four times during the term. As part of the program, he made sure the students became involved in volunteer work helping with Girl Scouts or raising money for the community chest. The students received 18 credits for student teaching and all the other academic work.

In all, more than 170 students participated in the program. It was discontinued in 1954, but by then the Marshall Plan had already influenced teacher preparation at MSU, Noll wrote, because “it was incorporating many of the advantages of the plan in the experience of most of its students. The plan had crystallized and strengthened the long-standing conviction of the leadership in education on the campus that the values of full-time community living, along with student teaching were so great that they should be made available to all.”