August 3, 2009

School of Education receives $11.4 million in federal funding

Federal grants of more than $11.4 million were recently awarded to two divisions within Johns Hopkins’ School of Education. The Division of Public Safety Leadership will use its funding to develop training programs for the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while the Department of Special Education will focus on teacher recruitment.

The Division of Public Safety Leadership received $9.8 million to support leadership development initiatives in Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The division will take the lead in engaging other School of Education departments and university entities in supporting ICE. An additional award of $300,000 from ICE will support the establishment at Johns Hopkins of the Center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In September, the new center, along with the School of Education’s Center for Technology in Education, will begin offering a national seven-course executive development ICE Fellows Program.

The Division of Public Safety Leadership was also awarded an $830,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the International Association of Fire Chiefs to conduct research, develop an assessment tool and design curricula to enhance regional coordination among law enforcement agencies responding to critical incidents and catastrophic events. The division will partner with the Center for Technology in Education and the Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association on this project.

In addition, the United States Department of Education awarded a grant of $475,000 to fund the Johns Hopkins University Secondary Support Initiative within the School of Education’s Department of Special Education. The goal of this project is to improve the recruitment, preparation and support of highly qualified teachers of secondary students with high-incidence disabilities. This effort will aid special education teacher preparation programs in meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Laura Boughton, project director, said, “We’re very excited about this opportunity to bring together general and special education teachers to focus on evidence-based inclusive programming that will enhance the quality of instruction of our graduate students and ultimately the students they teach.”