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Teach For America founder to speak at School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Jan. 10, 2001
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Wendy Kopp, founder and president of Teach For America, will lecture at Indiana University next Thursday (Jan. 18) at 4 p.m. in the atrium of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA). Her lecture is free and open to the public.
Teach For America, an AmeriCorps program, places over 900 most-promising college graduates each year in two-year teaching positions in the country's most distressed urban and rural communities. Nineteen IU alumni have served in the Teach For America program.
Kopp, who founded Teach For America in 1989 as a senior at Princeton University, will address "The New Social Entrepreneurialism" during her visit to Bloomington. She is the youngest person and first woman to receive the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor Princeton confers on undergraduate alumni. Kopp was recognized in 1994 as one of Time magazine's "40 most promising leaders under 40." She has received honorary degrees from Princeton, Connecticut College and Drew University.
Since 1989, Teach For America has fielded over 5,000 recent college graduates in 15 distressed communities, ranging from South Central Los Angeles to the Mississippi Delta and the South Bronx. Volunteers in the program commit to intensive training in educational theory and hands-on practice with veteran teachers prior to their two-year terms as public school teachers. SPEA has been an official partner in Teach For America since last April.
The program encourages applicants from all college majors, and it attracts over 3,000 applications each year for its 500 positions.
"Our experience has shown that students committed to something outside themselves, to causes or issues in the broader interest of humanity or the natural world, find an academic home in SPEA. Such students not only thrive in our programs, but go on to have the kind of impact they envision as professionals and as citizens," said Rich Nourie, director of graduate recruitment in SPEA. "We provide Teach For America with skilled undergraduates, motivated to make a difference in the community and our country as a whole.
"We hope that after two years of service with Teach For America, some of these diverse, committed individuals will continue their development as leaders of public service in our graduate programs at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs," Nourie said.
(George Vlahakis, OCM, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu or Sandra Bate, SPEA, 812-856-5490, sbate@indiana.edu)