GC&SU first to adopt economic pilot program

The Georgia College & State University department of economics has a new addition.
GC&SU is, currently, the only university in Georgia to receive funding for a pilot project designed to create mentoring relationships between college students and high school teachers with the goal of strengthen economics education in Georgia schools.
The program is currently underway: GC&SU students have met the teachers with whom they will work and, according to Dr. John Swinton, the students and teachers will continue to meet throughout the remainder of the school year.
The Center for Economic Education at GC&SU, in cooperation with the Georgia Council on Economic Education, undertook the project with funding from the Goizueta Foundation. Economics majors Brannon Burnes of Eatonton and Rachael Sosebee of Warner Robins are paired with high school teachers Mike McCabe at Baldwin High School and Denny Maddox of Houston County High School, to lend support for economics instruction.
Swinton said that the program will affect GC&SU in several ways.
“For one, it will strengthen the ties between the university and high school educators in central Georgia. Our students are wonderful ambassadors. They take with them all that we have taught them. They are also a reminder that the university is a resource for everyone,” Swinton said. “Second, the program will strengthen GC&SU’s commitment to the education process. The state is asking more of its teachers and of its students. A third impact is that the project exposes our students to the educational process from a new perspective.”
Swinton said the program might even encourage students to teach in the future.
“They have been students for virtually their entire lives. For what is probably the first time, they will see the classroom through the eyes of an educator. But even if they do not choose teaching as a career, it will give them a greater understanding of what teaching is about”
Swinton said that GC&SU should be concerned with both the students on our campus as well as future students.

“GC&SU is a reservoir of knowledge and expertise. As educators we need to be concerned both with our students on campus now and those students who will grace our campus in the future,” Swinton said. “It behooves us to help the teachers in high schools and grade schools meet the challenges they face.”
The program will match students who are majoring in economics to teachers who are teaching economics in their high school classrooms.
“The goal of the program is to provide these teachers with material and insight that will help them develop effective and engaging lessons for their students,” Swinton said. “Because many teachers who find themselves teaching economics in high school did not have a background specifically in economics, they are likely to benefit from the material the Center for Economic Education has to offer and the experiences our students have to share.”
The students will be a resource for teachers and will assist them in preparing lesson plans that provide economic content. They will elaborate on economic concepts that may be unfamiliar or unclear to the teacher. The students will meet regularly with the teachers and write a report at the end of the school year.
One day Swinton hopes that other universities will adopt the program started here at GC&SU.
“Because many of the other colleges and universities in the state have Centers for Economic Education and we are all affiliated with the Georgia Council on Economic Education, there is every reason to believe that many of them will want to, at least in part, replicate the program. We all have the shared goal of assisting teachers in their efforts to provide students with a solid economic education before they get to college.”
In turn, the teachers will develop lesson plans that incorporate economic material and also meet regularly with the students, document the development of classroom material and assess the effectiveness of the partnership in developing lesson plans and classroom material and produce a written report at the end of the program.
Swinton said that the best part of this, is in fact, being a pilot program.
“As with any pilot program, it is impossible to identify a best part. Pilot programs are meant to identify what will work and what will not work. We have a lot of hopes for the program,” Swinton said. “In some areas the project may not bear fruit and in others it may exceed expectations. We have to let the program run its course and see what happens.”
The Goizueta Foundation, established in 1992, is a private, general purpose, grant-making foundation whose function is to assist organizations that empower individuals and families through educational opportunities to improve the quality of their lives.
For more information about the pilot program, contact Dr. John Swinton at (478) 445-2591.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 6 2004. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry