UF and Florida State University announced Wednesday that they will each receive ,5 million in grant money and state matching funds to revamp their math and science education programs.
The extra money will allow UF to create a new math and science undergraduate minor in the College of Education, said Tom Dana, director of the UF School of Teaching and Learning.
Dana will lead UF's new program, which is called FloridaTeach, along with Alan Dorsey, chairman of UF's physics department.
UF and FSU will each receive up to ,2.4 million over five years from the National Math and Science Initiative and ,1 million each from the Helios Education Foundation.
The Florida Legislature will match the funds, bringing the total for each school to about ,5 million.
UF Provost Janie Fouke and FSU President T.K. Wetherell accepted the grants at a meeting with Mark Rosenberg, chancellor of the State University System.
"It's a great way for the academic world to serve the public and help our nation's economy," Fouke said in a news release.
In addition to UF's new minor, a special facility will eventually be set in the center of campus for math and science education students to study together, Dana said.
Until then, a temporary facility for those students will be located in Norman Hall, he added.
The college will also use money from the grants and from private donations to offer more scholarships for students who commit to someday teaching math and science.
Before the grants, UF only offered a master's program for students to become math and science teachers.
Dana said the program didn't attract many students because they didn't want to spend extra time or money in school after they graduated, especially when they had jobs waiting for them beyond school.
"We realize that having such a program is very limiting," he said. "We're not doing a very good job."
For example, he said only about six people each year pursue a specialty in science teaching at UF.
Meanwhile, officials have estimated that the state needs about 2,000 more science teachers in its public schools, he said.
Dana said he's confident UF's new program would successfully graduate a much higher number of math and science teachers within a few years.
A similar program created at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, called UTeach, has doubled the number of the school's graduates with math and science teacher certificates, the release states.
Eighty percent of those graduates who began teaching four years ago are still teaching, compared with a 60 percent retention rate over four years nationally.
In March 2007, the National Math and Science Initiative invited other universities to submit their own proposals aiming to replicate the benefits of UTeach.
Out of 52 higher-education institutions that applied, 12 schools, including UF and FSU, were chosen to receive grants.
