Coastal Carolina University has been accepted as a member of the Project 30 Alliance, a national educational reform organization that promotes collaborations between schools of arts and sciences and schools of education to raise the quality of teaching and teacher preparation within institutions of higher learning.

The organization, comprising 29 universities across the nation, was formed in 1988 through an initiative sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. A unique feature of the Project 30 Alliance is an intellectual agenda for teacher education that requires the full collaboration of faculty from arts and sciences with faculty in education.

The intellectual agenda focuses on five major themes: subject matter understanding; general and liberal education; pedagogical content knowledge; international, cultural and other human perspectives; and recruitment of underrepresented groups into teaching. Through joint consideration of these themes, faculties can work productively toward effective and durable curriculum design.

"Membership in the Project 30 Alliance represents one additional and important step by the university in fulfilling its all-campus commitment to preparing teachers of high quality and in serving teachers already in the profession," said Dennis Wiseman, associate provost at Coastal.

Coastal is working on an institution-wide agenda outlining the university's commitment to improving the quality of K-12 teaching in South Carolina. Membership in the Project 30 Alliance provides a mechanism for implementing or expanding the initiatives on each of the campuses.