Agnes Scott Faculty Vote to Discontinue Masters in Teaching Degree
Decatur Metro | May 21, 2010In a note to alumnae yesterday, Agnes Scott College President Elizabeth Kiss announced that the college’s faculty had recently voted to discontinue the Masters of Arts in Teaching degree at the end of the 2010-2011 school year and “focus exclusively on our undergraduate minor in educational studies, established in 2008″.
In her letter, Kiss notes that while the program has been around since 1992, and the quality of the program remains “superb”, its viability has been influenced by the following factors:
- Changes in the teacher certification process, especially Georgia’s decision to authorize quick routes to certification through the Teacher Alternative Preparation Program (TAPP), making full-time M.A.T. programs less appealing and affordable;
- Increasing competition from new, less expensive online programs;
- Elimination of the Georgia HOPE Teacher Scholarship Loan Program in the state budget, which up until this year provided all of our Georgia M.A.T. students nearly $10,000 in forgivable loans;
- Continuing cuts in state and local funding for education, making it more difficult for Agnes Scott to place M.A.T. graduates who are seeking teaching positions.
Kiss closes by stating that Agnes Scott remains committed to educating future teachers, and is looking at future partnerships for undergraduates between colleges and continuing projects like the Fugees Academic Boot Camp for refugee children.
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A real shame. It seemed to be an excellent program for those who could manage the cost and the time required. A particularly intellectual and mentoring approach to becoming a teacher.
GRAMMAR POLICE!
It’s “ALUMNAE” not ALUMNI. Alumni is the masculine.
Aw hell.
Thank you, nelliebelle!!
Didn’t the teaching program include both men and women? I thought the graduate programs did. So I’m not sure Alumni is incorrect on this one.
Yep, found this on the program description page:
We welcome a very diverse group of both men and women into our program. Please read more about our program and see our FAQ page. If you have additional questions, send them to .
Time to change it back, DM!
Dang it! I knew that it was co-ed, and ALMOST challenged the point. Thanks Daren!
Why don’t you look and see what ASC calls itsgrads?
http://www.agnesscott.edu/alumnae
Time to change it back again.
There are very few male graduates of that program, BTW. And the email mostly went to us alumnae on the alumnae house list from what I can tell- for some reason, I don’t think they track the MATs they way they do the rest of us. Besides, why can’t few men deal with being referred to in the feminine when we are ALWAYS stuck with the masculine? Man, I am bored.
GRAMMAR POLICE!
It’s I don’t think they track the MATs “the” way they do the rest of us. Besides, why can’t “a” few men deal with being referred to in the feminine when we are ALWAYS stuck with the masculine?
OK, it’s really TYPO POLICE, but I couldn’t resist!
Also, I think it is O.K. to change usage rules for our own language as it evolves, but I think that with Latin, we are stuck with the classical rules of usage, no matter how tiresome.
Yeah, it’s hard for dead languages to evolve!
The letter was sent to alumnae of the undergraduate program at ASC, which includes women only. The same letter is not sent to graduates of our MAT program nor to those who complete the Post-Bacc Pre-Med program. So it should be alumnae.
Time to put this one to bed.
Too bad you focused on the grammar issue …and not the TOPIC!!!!!
Thank you AG for all the successful years.