The vision of the Alternative Teacher Certification Program is to assist in providing a new resource for the development of quality teaching in a community of learning that attends to the special cultural diversity needs of the area's children.

     While the mission of the College of Education is to prepare effective teachers, counselors, diagnosticians, and school administrators, who successfully address the problems of schools and other youth service agencies, ATCP focuses specifically on teachers and their needs. In line with this vision, the Alternative Teacher Certification Program was developed in an effort to provide a high quality alternative route to teaching for adults in transition, thus providing a new and untapped human resource to community; our emphasis is on creating learning communities who realize the need to attract and retain teachers.

    Through our On-Campus program, and now our Online program, our mission encompasses small rural districts in need of bilingual, math, and science teachers and other areas of documented need. The duality of delivery methods provides accessability to all interested students. (The online program is made possible by grants from The University of Texas TeleCampus and the United States Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement's; Transition to Teaching Grant: Connecting Teaching to Learning.)