April 14, 2003

Awards and Honors

Moir honored for work with beginning teachers

By Jennifer McNulty

Ellen Moir

Ellen Moir, director of the UCSC New Teacher Center, received the Distinguished Teacher Educator Award from the California Council on Teacher Education (CCTE).

The award recognizes a teacher educator whose work helps improve the preparation, induction, and professional development of educators. Recipients must work at a university, college, community college, or educational agency other than a K-12 school district or county office. It was presented March 27 during the organization’s 2003 conference in San Jose, the theme of which was "Honoring Wisdom, Judgment, and Trust through Reflective Inquiry."

Moir, the founding director of the New Teacher Center (NTC), was honored as a visionary with an unfailing ability to anticipate the needs of beginning teachers. Her dedication to teacher preparation is matched by a tenacious spirit and a keen political awareness, supporters said.

The NTC is a leading national resource for new teacher and new administrator professional development. It oversees the Santa Cruz New Teacher Project, which has provided support to more than 9,000 new teachers in California, offering professional guidance and the support of a teaching mentor to teachers during their first two years in the classroom. The NTC has pioneered the development of trainings, workshops, and institutes that focus on the needs of new teachers and administrators.

The center’s record of success in the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay areas has helped it expand its reach into Silicon Valley and throughout the state. New national partnerships are under way in Alaska, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and the NTC consults with school districts in several other states to support efforts to develop high-quality teacher and administrator induction programs.

The center’s success is bolstered by Moir’s outstanding record of raising private and government funding for the NTC. The center recently received $750,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and $1 million from the Goldman Sachs Foundation to help expand the national reach of the center.

With the Carnegie funds, the NTC will partner with several college and university education departments to build a bridge of support for new teachers that reaches from college preparation through the first two years in the classroom. The NTC induction model will be implemented by school districts, and the model will be incorporated into college and university preservice programs. Collaborating across institutional boundaries is the next step in providing seamless support that will ultimately improve teacher development, teacher retention, and student achievement, according to Moir.

The center’s development of outstanding programs is matched by its dedication to conducting solid scientific research on the needs of new teachers and administrators and on the effectiveness of support programs. Researchers have found that high-quality teachers are the single most important factor in student achievement. They’ve also found that school districts that invest in high-quality support programs for new teachers have higher teacher retention rates. Typically, about half of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years of service, but the Santa Cruz New Teacher Project has a documented retention rate of 95 percent.
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