Northern Plains Transition to Teaching, an online graduate teacher preparation program, is now accepting applications.

The Northern Plains Transition to Teaching program, an online graduate-level teacher preparation program leading to secondary teacher licensure, is now accepting applications for a class that will begin April 5.

Preferential deadline for applications is Monday, March 23. Students in the class will be eligible to begin teaching in the fall of 2009.

The NPTT program is designed to help meet the needs of people who are interested in going into teaching after spending significant time in other professional careers, said Jamie O’Callaghan, the program’s adviser. It is also intended to help place qualified teachers in rural, high-needs schools in states like Montana. Those positions have become increasingly hard to fill over the years, O’Callaghan said. The program leads to secondary teacher licensure, which is the same license as that earned with a four-year education degree.

Since the two-year program is taught entirely online, students do not have to be based in Bozeman, or even Montana, to enroll.

The class beginning in April will be the fourth group of students to begin the program this year. Administrators decided to add the extra class because of a high level of interest in the program, O’Callaghan said. It will also be a bit more intensive, O’Callaghan added.

“Normally we don’t allow courses to overlap, but these will,” she said.

For more information, contact O’Callaghan at (406) 994-5662 or [email protected], or visit http://www.montana.edu/nptt.

This story is available on the Web at:

http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/admin/edit/nwview.php?article=6922

Carol Schmidt, editor

Mountains and Minds magazine

Montana State University News Service

416 Culbertson Hall

Bozeman, Montana 59717

(406) 994-1966

Visit us on the Web at http://www.montana.edu