The New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning (NJCTL) was honored as one of only 10 institutions recognized by PhysTEC’s 5+ Club for the 2020-21 academic year. Physics Teacher Education Coalition’s (PhysTEC) “5+ Club” is a group of institutions that have graduated five or more physics teachers in a given year.
Most colleges and universities graduate fewer than two trained physics teachers a year, with the majority graduating none at all. Over the past 12 years, 282 teachers have completed NJCTL’s physics endorsement program, about 24 per year.
The presidents of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), Sylvester James Gates, Jr. and Jan Landis Mader lauded NJCTL’s achievements.
“We commend NJCTL on its outstanding contributions to the education of future physics teachers,” they wrote. “Graduating more than five physics teachers in an academic year puts NJCTL in the 99th percentile of all U.S. colleges and universities. We congratulate NJCTL for its excellence in physics teacher education and for serving as a national model for STEM teacher preparation. NJCTL’s excellent physics teacher preparation program is a service to the state of New Jersey.”
PhysTEC, a flagship education program of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), aims to improve the education of future physics teachers by transforming physics departments, creating successful models for physics teacher education programs, and disseminating best practices. The project has funded more than 40 sites to build physics teacher education programs.
(See www.phystec.org for more details.)
The PhysTEC program is supported by the National Science Foundation and the APS Campaign for the 21st Century.
NJCTL is a nonprofit that is providing a simple, scalable solution for our nation’s STEM teacher shortage and the great social injustice that comes from depriving underserved students access to STEM education. NJCTL was founded in 2006
by NJEA.