Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax; 713/743-8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 17, 2004

Contact: Eric Gerber
713/743-8189 (office)
713/617-7130(pager)
egerber@uh.edu

Houston Teachers Institute, a collaborative enterprise between the University of Houston and Houston Independent School District to strengthen knowledge of academic disciplines among HISD teachers, has been awarded a $30,000 grant from Bank of America and $15,000 in matching funds from the Powell Foundation.

A brief ceremony acknowledging the grants will be held at 4:45 p.m. Thursday, April 1, in the Ezekiel Cullen Building at UH.

The funding will provide support for HTI’s 2004 seminars. HTI offers a yearly program for HISD teachers who develop their subject skills by attending special seminars on campus taught by UH professors. The teachers will then incorporate what they learn at HTI into their own curricula. Additionally, the resulting lesson units will be directly distributed to HISD schools and made available online for all teachers. Approximately 130 teachers are selected each year to participate as Institute Fellows.

“This generous grant from Bank of America and the matching money from the Powell Foundation will allow us to continue enabling teachers to enhance their knowledge in their specialized fields,” said Paul Cooke, HTI director. “The teachers benefit, the students benefit and, ultimately, the entire community benefits.”

Upon completing the HTI term, each teacher receives a $1,000 honorarium from the Institute and 32 credit hours from the Texas Association of the Gifted and Talented. The HTI program began in 1998 under the auspices of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

For more information about HTI, visit the Web site http://www.uh.edu/hti/.

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.