GGSE Launches Alumni Fellowship Fund

Most alumni of UC Santa Barbara 's School of Education — known now for over a decade as the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education — were able to support themselves in graduate school through partime jobs and modest fellowships. With state funding cuts causing tuitions and fees to rise 50% in the past three years alone — and with more tuition hikes projected — that is no longer the case. Today's students studying to be teachers, educational researchers, and school and clinical psychologists must often take out tens of thousands of dollars in debt to achieve their advanced degrees.

Given the fact that Americans who choose eduction as a career make significantly less than their peers in most other professions, this degree of debt can be burdensome, even crippling. A grass-roots group of Gevirtz School alumni is working to change this picture. Led by David C. Forman (photo at left), member of the Board of Directors of the UCSB Alumni Association and Chief Learning Officer for the Human Capital Institute, these GGSE alumni recognize the impact the school has made on their own lives and are eager to give back. Their goal is to establish a Gevirtz School of Education Alumni Fellowship Fund. "We envision this program being driven by a number of small or modest contributions," says Forman. "Extend opportunity to others by contributing anything you can."