With

this 2015 Dunham Fund $200,000 grant, North Central College will expand its Teach

First and Dunham

Scholars Program to

include a unique population of aspiring educators. To help address a constant

shortage of qualified bilingual teachers, administrators from East Aurora

School District 131 will work with North Central to recruit their most talented

bilingual paraprofessionals (i.e. classroom support staff) most of whom hold

bachelor’s degrees in areas outside education, and enroll them in NCC’s teacher

licensure program. NCC will offer a more affordable, part-time teacher

licensure program and will extend eligibility for the Dunham Fund Educational

Scholarship to these School District 131 paraprofessionals. If recruitment and

enrollment is successful, NCC would begin to work toward a cohort model in

which courses would be taught on-site in East Aurora.

North Central’s “Teach First” program began as a partnership with

East Aurora School District 131 to encourage East graduates, who would be

first-generation college students, to pursue the field of teaching with the

hope that they would return to their home school district as educators. Since

2011, the Dunham Fund has supported Teach First to launch other students in the

Aurora area into a successful teaching career, hopefully within the Dunham Fund

service area. From 2012 through 2015, the Fund has continued its support of Teach

First with an additional Dunham Scholars model and the expansion of the program

to recruitment in 21 area home and high schools and to students that are not

first-generation.