IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Cal State San Bernardino has received a $3.3 million federal grant that it will use to increase teacher diversity in the Inland Empire.
The five-year grant from the Department of Education will pay for ExMILE – Excellence as Multilingual Innovators and Leaders in Education – a program meant to increase the number of credentialed Spanish bilingual teachers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to a statement on the university’s website.
The donation was presented recently to the James R. Watson and Judy Rodriguez Watson College of Education.
Currently, the Inland region’s teacher workforce is 60 percent white, and 20 percent Latino, while 65 percent of its K-12 students are Latino or Hispanic.
“This grant allows us to make an impact by increasing and diversifying the number of bilingual educators in the region, a very much needed profile due to teacher shortages,” said Jordi Solsona-Puig, assistant professor of education, in the statement.
The program now offers bilingual credentials for elementary teachers through Watson College of Education’s Spanish Bilingual Authorization option, but it will expand to include all teaching credentials, according to the statement.
