$1.2M Grant Will Help Schools Address STEM Teacher Shortage

ST. CLOUD -- Three higher education institutions are teaming up in an effort to produce more STEM teachers. St. Cloud State University, the St. Cloud Technical and Community College and Anoka Ramsey Community College are sharing a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Becky Krystyniak is a Dean at Anoka Ramsey. She says they'll be targeting incoming freshmen this fall at all three schools who haven't decided yet what they want to do for a career.

We're going to be looking at the students in their first year of college.  Having them start by doing some outreach, going and working in the schools, working with youth in some sort of STEM area, getting them interacting with K-12 students, to see if that passion comes forward.

The grant money will be used to give those students a full-ride scholarship for their last two years of education, which they will have to complete at SCSU.

Local high schools say SCSU needs to produce three times the number of STEM teachers than what they are already producing just to meet the demand. They have a 100 percent job placement rate for graduates who teach math, physics and chemistry.