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Master Teachers / Teacher-in-Residence Funding & Recruiting Strategies

Look for external funding for your TIR. Several physics departments around the country have successfully leveraged corporate, foundation, and government support for one or more TIRs.

• Seattle Pacific has funding from the Boeing Corporation.
• James Madison University has funding from the Toyota USA Foundation.
• UTeach at the University of Texas at Austin employs seven Master Teachers, with funding from a large variety of sources.
• Brigham Young University’s Physics Department has hired a permanent TIR with a faculty line that was transferred from the Education School.
• The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee funds its TIRs, who are not specifically in the sciences, through a Teacher for a New Era grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
• California State University San Marcos employs “Distinguished Teachers in Residence” for two-year visiting faculty assignments in the College of Education.

Use community outreach efforts to recruit TIRs. Finding a Master Teacher with the expertise you need at a particular time and then convincing him or her to leave the classroom for a year or more can be a challenging and time-intensive process. Universities have found excellent TIRs in many different places.

• The University of Minnesota has already recruited two TIRs through their outreach program Physics Force.
• Colorado and Western Michigan have recruited TIRs from their Teacher Advisory Groups.

Look for a TIR among people already involved with your institution. Look to successful completers of your program or participants in workshops or summer institutes you have offered. Many will be accomplished teachers and some may be the risk taker you need for your TIR. Don’t overlook those who might be working as adjuncts or in a grant-funded position at your university.

• Arkansas hired a teacher who had completed her undergraduate degree and Master’s in Teaching several years previously.
• Florida International University’s 2007-2008 TIR is also a doctoral candidate in Mathematics, Science, and Learning Technologies, as well as director of two math and science education programs at the university.
• Towson and Arizona have both hired TIRs who were already adjunct faculty members.

Have your TIR mentor his or her replacement. School districts and principals are often, and understandably, reluctant to release a Master Teacher for a year. Your TIR can mitigate this to some extent by working with his or her replacement to make that teacher as effective as possible. Arizona and Ball State were both able to offer teachers coming out of their programs as TIR replacements, which helped greatly with their relationships with local schools and districts.

If you will be using a one or two year cycle, rather than a permanent position, use your current TIR to recruit your next one. Master teachers usually have lots of contacts in the local physics teacher community, and may be able to suggest some good candidates. TIRs have recruited their successors at Ball State and Arkansas.

Don’t forget the conventional recruiting strategies. Website job postings, mailings, and good old word of mouth are all effective TIR recruiting strategies.

• See Minnesota’s TIR job listing.
• Ball State faculty contacted winners of the Indiana AAPT Section’s Physics Teacher of the Year Award. They also hired a TIR who is now chair of both General Education and Physical Science at a local two-year college, and is now developing a physics degree program that is transferrable from the two-year college to the university (see also Collaboration).
• Towson faculty emailed all teachers on Baltimore County Schools’ “Elementary Science Leaders” list, and were granted permission to post the TIR job on the Baltimore City Public Schools system’s internal listings.
• AAPT’s Physics Teacher Resource Agents (PTRAs) are an excellent pool of Master Teachers.