SALT LAKE CITY — The Teachers College at Western Governors University’s (WGU) School of Education has been named as a continuing partner in Beyond100K, a multi-sector network addressing the national imperative to train science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers.
Beyond100K (formerly named 100Kin10) launched at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative: America event, with an original goal to prepare and retain 100,000 STEM teachers by 2021. Today, Beyond100K includes more than 300 of the nation’s top academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies, and government agencies who together foster trust across the organizations and facilitate networked problem-solving to tackle the biggest challenges facing STEM education.
“For over a decade, Beyond100K has galvanized partners across industries and sectors to work in concert and with strategic focus to address the STEM teacher shortage,” said Dr. Stacey Ludwig Johnson, senior vice president of WGU and executive dean of the School of Education. “WGU has been excited to be a contributor and partner in this work, and we look forward to the expansion, improvement, and retention of the best of the nation’s STEM teaching force.”
As part of its renaming in September 2022, Beyond100K announced a new goal of preparing and retaining 150,000 new STEM teachers over the next 10 years – almost 50 percent more than the 108,000 STEM teachers the 100Kin10 network successfully prepared in its first decade. In its next phase, Beyond100K will place a special emphasis on preparing Black, Latinx, and Native American teachers to create a sense of belonging for students who have traditionally been excluded from STEM opportunities.
“We are eager to build upon our work over the past ten years with partners such as WGU’s Teachers College, as we prepare and retain STEM teachers who will create classrooms of belonging to support all students to learn and grow,” said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, founder and executive director of Beyond100K. “These educators are the magic to unleashing the limitless potential of a generation of problem solvers.”
In the past 20 years, WGU’s School of Education conferred more than 70,000 degrees to educators across all 50 states – including more than 11,900 STEM teaching degrees. According to Lightcast, a U.S. labor market source platform, WGU’s Teachers College was the top producer of STEM degree conferrals in the nation in 2021, with 1,275 STEM teaching graduates that year.
WGU’s Teachers College programs have been continuously accredited since 2006. They are currently accredited by both the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) and the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP), a prestigious combination of accreditations. To learn more about WGU’s Teachers College and its academic programs, visit wgu.edu/online-teaching-degrees.
