Campus Talk: West Memphis Teacher Is Finalist In $100,000 Educational Proposal Pitch Contest

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WEST MEMPHIS TEACHER IS FINALIST IN $100,000 EDUCATIONAL PROPOSAL PITCH CONTEST: A West Memphis teacher is among the 15 finalists in a national competition to win one of six $100,000 grants to help bring their dream educational proposals to life.

Launched at the 2015 Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, Calif., the $100,000 Dream Big Teacher Challenge offers teachers a chance to compete for six $100,000 educational grants. As a finalist, West Memphis Teacher Marybeth Mugavin said she would use the money to develop a technology lab on campus and train teachers to effectively and efficiently tie the use of the lab into the overall classroom curricula. Almost 100% of the students that attend Weaver Elementary in the West Memphis community live in poverty and have little to no access to technology, Mugavin said.

Through Oct. 31, supporters of the teachers can determine which one will be among the six winners of the $100,000 Dream Big Teacher Challenge, by voting daily at ThankAmericasTeachers.com.

ARKANSAS SEES IMPROVED PARTICIPATION IN ADVANCED PLACEMENT TESTS: CollegeBoard has released the Advanced Placement, SAT, and PSAT/NMSQT scores for the 2014-2015 school year, and Arkansas students continued to show improvement. A total of 25,757 public school students took an AP Exam in 2015, an increase of 0.8% over 2014 and an increase of 21.8% over 2011 (21,149). Because individual students may take more than one AP Exam, in 2015 Arkansas students took 44,951 AP Exams, an increase of 1.2% over 2014.

By participating in AP courses, students can earn valuable college credit if they score high enough. Currently, Arkansas pays for AP participation for students. Students interested in fee waivers for the SAT or PSAT/NMSQT can visit the CollegeBoard website at this link.

GALLUP SURVEY: IS COLLEGE WORTH THE COST? The second national Gallup-Purdue Index identified stark differences in graduates of public, private and for-profit colleges when asked if their degree was worth the cost and raised questions across all institutions about the value of a college degree.

This year’s GPI shows that almost two-thirds (63%) of alumni who graduated from 2006-2015 say they used student loans to help finance their education. Among those who borrowed, the median loan was $30,000. In the face of mounting debt, only half of all alumni (50%) “strongly agree” their university education was worth the cost. This figure varies only slightly between alumni of public universities (52%t) and alumni of private nonprofit universities (47%), but it drops sharply to 26% among graduates of private for-profit universities, who also were more likely to have taken on higher levels of student loan debt.

The survey was launched last year as a response to the call for increased accountability in higher education and does not serve as a ranking or rating system. The first-of-its-kind study will be released annually through 2018. To download this year’s report, click here.

NOT ENOUGH STATISTICIANS TO MEET GROWING WORKFORCE DEMAND: Statistics is one of the fastest-growing degrees in the U.S., but the growth may not be enough to satisfy the high demand for statisticians in technology, consumer products, health care, government, manufacturing and other areas of the economy, an analysis conducted by the American Statistical Association (ASA) finds.

Data recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics shows bachelor’s degrees in statistics grew 17% from 2013 to 2014. This marks 15 consecutive years the number of undergraduates in statistics has risen, increasing by more than 300% since the 1990s. For comparison, the number of undergraduates earning science and engineering degrees grew by 72% over the same period. From 2000 to 2014, master’s and doctorate degrees in statistics also grew significantly at 260% and 132%, respectively.