college of education | spring 2001

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Teacher Preparation 
Report Card

Mission

Founded in 1855 as an autonomous public institution of higher learning, Michigan State University is a research-intensive, land-grant university. The College of Education at MSU has a mission of leadership, scholarship and service in education; faculty prepare professionals for leadership roles in education, seek to understand, reform, and improve education, and examine issues of education across the lifespan.

Teacher Preparation Program

MSU’s five-year teacher education program combines disciplinary teaching majors and/or minor concentrations and teaching certification courses followed by a full-year teaching internship in a public school. This post-baccalaureate internship year combines classroom experience with 12 credits of graduate coursework. In 1999–2000, 542 prospective elementary and secondary teachers completed internships. Students are recommended for Michigan elementary or secondary teacher certification.

Student Characteristics

Eighty-seven percent of the students admitted to the teacher education program for fall 1999 were traditional undergraduates with 13% admitted as post-baccalaureate students. Ninety-six percent of the students in the program are from Michigan and 92% are full-time students. The mean composite ACT score of students admitted for fall 1999 to the elementary program was 23, and the mean composite ACT score for those admitted to the secondary program was 25. Upon admission (fall 1999) the mean overall grade point average for both elementary and secondary education students was 3.2 on a 4.0 scale.

Application and Admission

To be eligible for consideration for admission to the teacher education program, students must complete an application which includes writing an essay, must have a minimum overall grade point average of 2.5, and must have passed all portions of the Michigan’s Basic Skills test. These are among the criteria considered for admissions. Admissions are competitive and enrollment is limited. Students are typically admitted into the program at the beginning of their junior year.

Internship Year Admission

Before beginning the internship, students must have (1) completed all teaching major and/or teaching minor(s) as well as all undergraduate teacher certification coursework and university requirements; (2) been awarded the bachelor’s degree; (3) earned a grade point average of 2.5 or above in each of the following: university overall cumulative grade point average, teaching major, and/or teaching minor(s); 

(4) earned a grade point average of 2.5 or above for pre-internship, professional education courses required for teacher certification, with no individual grade below 2.0, (5) completed the technology requirement; (6) passed the required State of Michigan certification tests for elementary teaching or the appropriate major and minor subject area tests for secondary teaching; and (7) met all professional behavior criteria.

Accreditation

 MSU is accredited by the North Central Association, and the Michigan Department of Education Periodic Review has approved the teacher education program. MSU’s College of Education has candidacy status with the Teacher Education Accreditation Council.

Key Program Features

  • All education courses are taught in sections of approximately 25 students.

  • Support for learning to use information technology in teaching is integrated into the education course sequence.

  • Concerns for diversity, equity, achievement, and standards are interwoven throughout the required sequence of teacher education courses.

  • One course early in the education sequence includes a required service-learning component.

  • Multiple undergraduate pre-internship field experiences (approximately 175 hours) build connections between theory/ research and the practical situations that teachers face.

Fifth-year Internship

  • Teacher candidates serve 30-week (900-hour) internships that are staged to provide gradually increasing scope, intensity, and responsibility under the supervision of an on-site classroom teacher and a field instructor.

  • Interns are assigned to MSU field instructors at a ratio of 6 to 1.

  • School–university partnership and connections for intern teaching sites are achieved by organizing the mentor teachers, field instructors, course instructors, and program coordinator into a secondary/subject area team and three elementary teams with course section size of 25 interns per section.

  • Interns complete 12 credit hours of graduate-level professional study during their internship that may be applied to a master’s degree program.

Notable Accomplishment

For seven consecutive years, the 2002 U.S. News and World Report ranking of 182 graduate schools of education rated MSU’s elementary and secondary education programs as the best in the United States.

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