...and for New Haven


Contents:


Partnership

The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is founded on the premise that, as an educational institution, the main resource that Yale University has to offer its home community is its faculty. Furthermore, within the larger relationship between Yale and New Haven, no partnership is more mutually beneficial than one with the local public school system.

When Yale and New Haven established the Institute in 1978, their plans were based on ten years of successful experience with a program in History education. Thus, the Teachers Institute exemplifies a 25-year tradition of teachers at Yale working collaboratively with their counterparts who teach in New Haven schools. In approach, the Institute is designed to respond to the needs and interests that New Haven teachers themselves identify. It stresses that teachers from Yale and from New Haven are professional colleagues with a strong common interest in the teaching of their subjects in the humanities and the sciences.

From the outset, teachers have played leadership roles in planning and conducting the Institute; they have insisted that its program be demanding, and effective in strengthening teaching and learning in New Haven schools. The theme of the Institute is therefore to increase the preparation of teachers and to assist them in developing new materials for school courses.


Challenge

Yale has undertaken an initiative to raise an adequate endowment and thereby make the Teachers Institute the first such collaborative program to be established permanently within any university. The Endowment Fund and the shared commitment to this activity will ensure that the Institute always benefits New Haven and Yale, and continues to serve as a model for programs in other communities across the country.

To assist and encourage this fund raising, the DeWitt Wallace- Reader's Digest Fund awarded a seminal, $2 million endowment challenge grant, which must be matched dollar for dollar. In addition, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $750,000 challenge grant toward the Institute s endowment, which requires that by July 1995 four dollars be raised to secure each dollar of their offer. Overall, the Institute is seeking a $5 million endowment for its work in the humanities, and $2 million to provide its work in the sciences a similar financial stability.

Gifts for endowment or cash reserves qualify as matching for these challenges. Opportunities exist for named gifts to be made within this initiative. For example, the Mary B. Griswold Endowment Fund for the Institute honors her service to Yale, New Haven, and education.


Promise

Locally: Over forty percent (40%) of all current New Haven middle and high school humanities and science teachers have participated as Institute Fellows. More than 300 individual teachers have completed the Institute, many of them more than once. More than 70 Yale faculty members have led seminars and given talks in the Institute, many more than once. Through 93 different seminars, New Haven teachers have developed 747 curriculum units, which are taught widely in school courses by Fellows and by other teachers who have not participated directly in seminars.

Studies have shown that the Institute has increased teachers' preparation in the subjects they teach, raised their morale, and encouraged them to remain in teaching in the local, urban school district. Teachers report how, through the Institute, they have become more effective with their students, and how student learning has been enhanced.

Nationally: The Institute has been recognized as a pioneering and successful model of university-school partnership by the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the College Board, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, the American Association for Higher Education, the U. S. Department of Education, and the Business-Higher Education Forum, among other organizations.


The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is one of the most effective school-university partnerships in America. This partnership has direct impact in the classroom with school and university faculty members working together to strengthen student learning.

-Gordon M. Ambach
Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers

This is an enormously important program that brings the resources of the University to teachers in the schools in a way that recognizes their own professional stature. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is leading the way to improve teaching and education.

-Ernest L. Boyer
President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

The Institute powerfully represents the unity of academic interest among those who teach in the university and those who work with younger folk. The Institute was one of the first school-university partnerships, and its permanence gives a new target for those who follow on to reach.

-Theodore R. Sizer
Chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools

As we look to future support of collaborative programs, we believe, in the spirit of Jim Vivian, that America s efforts at educational change must begin in the classroom.

-Donald M. Stewart
President, The College Board


For information about opportunities to contribute to the Endowment Fund, please contact:

James R. Vivian, Director
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
P. O. Box 3563 Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut 06520
(203) 432-1080.