Newly awarded research grants totaling more than $500,000 will give three faculty and staff members of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs College of Education the potential to boost recruitment and strengthen training of K-12 teachers in southern Colorado.

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs	Lindy Crawford, associate dean of the College of Education, will be principal investigator on a $72,600 grant from Teach Colorado, a Department of Higher Education program. In partnership with the Colorado School of Mines and the Troops to Teachers program, the grant will be used to recruit 10 recent college graduates and five current undergraduate students with math and science backgrounds to pursue careers in secondary education and special education teacher preparation.
Crawford
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs	Randall DePry, associate professor and chair of the Department of Special Education, will be principal investigator on a $240,607 grant from the No Child Left Behind Act to assist military personnel currently working as para-professional educators to become licensed math, science or special education teachers. The program is in partnership with the Mountain West Troops to Teachers office on the UCCS campus.
DePry
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs	John Weathers, assistant professor, will be principal investigator on a $216,680 federal grant from the No Child Left Behind Act to enhance the formative assessment capacity of 84 math and science teachers in Pueblo School District 60. He will work in cooperation with faculty from the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Northern Colorado, and Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service researchers.
Weathers

LaVonne Neal, dean of the College of Education, lauded the successful efforts of faculty and staff in preparing winning proposals to the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

"The total of these grants is approximately 50 percent of the state funding dispersed by the Colorado Department of Higher Education for teacher preparation," Neal said. "This demonstrates the high-quality of the UCCS faculty and staff."