1. Content-based education is the foundation of UMBC’s teacher-preparation curriculum. UMBC does not offer an undergraduate degree in education. Students accepted for the education department’s certification program must complete a four-year, arts-and-sciences disciplinary major, as well as all coursework required for certification.

2. A “2+2+2” agreement with the Montgomery County school system and Montgomery College recruits future teachers in high school, follows them through two years in the community college system, and enables them to finish their degrees and earn teaching certification at UMBC.

3. The Maggie Hrabowski Scholarship Fund, established by the Homer and Martha Gudelsky Family Foundation in memory of President Freeman Hrabowski’s mother, who taught in Birmingham, Ala., public schools for more than 40 years, provides annual scholarship awards to outstanding undergraduates and graduate students in education.

4. The Sherman Family Teacher Scholars Program, modeled on other major scholarship programs at UMBC, will bring more outstanding students into the teacher-education pipeline. After graduation, Sherman Teacher Scholars will teach in a high-need Maryland school for at least two years.

5. Teachers enrolled in UMBC’s Project SUPPORT (School-University Partnership for Preparing Outstanding Responsive Teachers) Program have helped bring about a remarkable turnaround in some of the lowest-performing schools in the Baltimore area.

6. The Maryland Geographic Alliance, based in UMBC’s Department of Geography and Environmental Systems and funded by the National Geographic Society, holds geography workshops with teachers throughout the state and has helped write Maryland’s curriculum standards for geography.

7. The AT&T Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments initiative assigns UMBC computer science and information technology students as one-on-one mentors to secondary school teachers, enabling the teachers to incorporate new technologies in their approaches to teaching.

8. UMBC’s Elementary Science Integration Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, develops innovative programs that connect hands-on science with reading, writing, and other curricular areas. Wendy Saul, ESIP director, also created “Search It Science,” a Web-based database of science-related books for children.

9. Project Reach, a dance department program funded by the Macht Foundation, supplements schools’ dwindling budgets for arts-related programming by bringing dance performances and workshops to Baltimore-area schools.

10. A National Science Foundation grant will place UMBC “Fellows” (advanced undergraduates majoring in math, science, or engineering) in several high-need city school classrooms to work one-on-one with students and provide supplemental content, technical assistance, and IT support to middle school math and science teachers.