Singer osep grant

About / News-main / News-archives / singer-osep-grant

June 5, 2007
For immediate release

UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School has been awarded $200,000 a year for four years, from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the US Department of Education. Dr. George Singer, a professor at the Gevirtz School in the Department of Education’s Special Education, Risk and Disability emphasis, submitted the grant proposal in hopes of funding programs that will prepare teachers to serve children with low incidence disabilities.

The primary focus of the proposal is to use funds for recruitment and retention of students pursuing credentials in special education. There is a large shortage of teachers for children with disabilities in California and fully credentialed and well-trained special educators are in high demand. The grant intends to pay tuition and fees for 40 new special education teachers over the next four years, primarily to members of underrepresented groups in the profession. This includes Latino, African American, Native American, and Asian American individuals as well as individuals with disabilities who want to become teachers.

Strong recruitment efforts for minority students will take place during the next three years. As part of the grant faculty and students will recruit students from undergraduate programs at the UC and CSU campuses, and research will be conducted on the effectiveness of the School’s training methods for preparing new teachers to work with students with moderate or severe disabilities.

“It is gratifying to see our program recognized in this way and I'm pleased to be able to help the students out as most of them go into debt to enter a profession that is not high paying,” says Dr. Singer upon learning about the grant.

The OSEP grant is a discretionary award, which provides funds based on a competitive process and formal review of the applicant’s proposal. Based on the review process the department determines which applications best address the program requirements and are most worthy of funding. The competition is for colleges and universities that have been designated as minority serving institutions by the US Department of Education. This designation requires that 25% or more of the students are from minority populations in the US. UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School exceeds this percentage of students of color.

[George Singer is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
– end –

School-wide Links
Courses Apply	Computing Contact