El Paso, Texas – The History Department at the University of Texas at El Paso announces a new online advising resource for students preparing to teach history and social studies in the secondary schools. In one convenient place, the site presents information about undergraduate degree plans, graduate courses, state certification, and the process of finding a job.
"Future teachers make up about sixty percent of our student population and their GPAs are higher than those for the majors as a whole,” explains Dr. Keith A. Erekson, who oversees teacher education in the department and helped develop the site. “These students therefore make up the largest and brightest segment of our student body and we realized that we needed to do more to help them navigate the various and overlapping requirements placed upon them by the department, university, and state of Texas."
Seniors in the program who received a sneak preview of the site attest to its usefulness. “The links that are included are awesome and full of information,” said Israel Delgado, “however what I really like is that the actual degree plan is posted for everyone to see.” Angie Holguin explained that “students usually have to go to different departments and speak with different people to get all the information necessary to get the details of the social studies/history teaching degree. So this website can save a lot of students’ time by giving them the opportunity to find the majority of needed info on this website.” Gerardo Luna added, “I wish they had something like this when I first started at UTEP because the whole process was very confusing."
CONTACT:
Dr. Keith A. Erekson - email | website