October 22, 2010

Contact:   Stacey Schmeidel, Associate Vice President for College Communications, 704/894-2798

Davidson College has been awarded a grant of $200,000 from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to support the college's partnership in the Charlotte Teachers Institute.

The Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) is an initiative designed to strengthen teaching in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools by cultivating content-knowledge, creativity, leadership skills, and collaboration within and among Charlotte's public school teachers. Through seminars, led by college/university faculty, CMS teachers learn new content, work collaboratively with other teachers, and develop new curricula for their students. CTI exists as a partnership among CMS, Davidson College, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and is made possible by a joint commitment of resources and energy from all three Institute partners and through the generosity of private funders.

"The generous support from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will enable the Charlotte Teachers Institute to provide more innovative programming, and it will ensure CTI's high-quality, professional development reaches more public school teachers, providing a benefit to their students," said Molly Shaw, M.Ed., founding director of CTI. "This is a transformational gift that will help improve public education in Charlotte in the short-term and for the future."

"The strength of CTI lies in the collaborative partners," added Davidson College President Tom Ross. "Its sum is greater than any one individual institution playing a part. This investment by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will benefit the teachers, students and communities of the Charlotte area for many years to come."

"In a highly competitive evaluation process involving strong proposals from across the country, the CTI distinguished itself as a top tier organization with the potential to have lasting impact on CMS teachers and students," said William Keator, Vice President for Programs at the Foundations.

About the Charlotte Teachers Institute

CTI, the first initiative of its kind in the state of North Carolina, is based on the Teachers Institute approach begun more than 30 years ago by the Yale National Initiative in New Haven, Conn., and since executed in cities around the country. Each Institute links one or two institutions of higher education with a school district that serves a significant proportion of students from low-income communities. Institutes focus on the academic preparation of school teachers and on their application in their own classrooms of what they study in the Institute.

Through intensive, semester-long seminars, led by faculty from UNC Charlotte and Davidson College, CMS teachers learn new content, work collaboratively with other district teachers, and develop curriculum units for their own classrooms. UNC Charlotte and Davidson College faculty members serve as seminar leaders, and 10-13 CMS teachers participate in each seminar. Seminars reflect the leaders' fields of expertise, address the content demands of participating fellows, and create a collegial environment dedicated to group discussion and exchange.

About Davidson College

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,900 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.

About the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations

Based in Jacksonville, Florida, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations are a nationally oriented family foundation that honors the contributions and philanthropy of American businessman Arthur Vining Davis. The grant to support the Charlotte Teachers Institute was made available through the Foundations' Secondary Education funding program, which awards grants to new and innovative professional development programs that strengthen teachers and their teaching in grades 9-12. The Foundations also have programs in private higher education, religion, health care and public television. Additional information can be found at www.avdf.org.

###