Junior Marlena A. Elmore Awarded a Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 26, 2006 — The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has announced its award of a 2006 Teaching Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color to Marlena Elmore, a Williams College junior, from Milton, Mass.

She is one of 25 college juniors from 16 participating institutions who will receive up to $22,100 after three years of public school teaching.

Fellows must complete a summer project between their junior and senior years. With help from their mentors, students gain hands-on experience with children. This year’s projects are to be presented at a summer workshop from August 3-6 in Washington, D.C.

Elmore will participate in the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers in Andover, Mass., this summer before working with Summerbridge Cambridge, a not-for-profit program for inner city middle school students.

During the fall semester of her junior year she studied at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., taking education and teaching methodology courses. At Williams, she is majoring in American studies. She has also been awarded a Williams College Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

In a nation where it is estimated that more than half of the 50 million children to be enrolled in public schools by 2014 will be children of color, only 10 percent of all public school teachers are of color themselves.

“With the profound demographic shifts in public classrooms across the U.S.,” said Miriam Aneses, director of the program, “the Fellowships address the need for more people of color in the teaching profession.”

Since it was first created, the program has awarded fellowships to 300 college students. Part of the Charles E. Culpeper Human Advancement Program, the Fellowship is attempting to increase the amount of highly qualified teachers of color in public education.

Founded in 1940, the Fund works to enact social change through grants organized around democratic practice, sustainable development, peace and security, and human advancement.

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Williams College is consistently ranked one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in this research. Students’ educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment, which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted. Founded in 1793, it is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college is located in Williamstown, Mass. To visit the college on the Internet: www.williams.edu

news: Montano

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Published May 26, 2006