Office for Professional Development in Education
The Office for Professional Development in Education provides professional development opportunities in areas such as the following:
The Boston Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project, builds the leadership, programs, and research needed for teachers to help their students become successful writers and learners. To that end, BWP conducts an annual summer institute attended by the most experienced teachers in the area, followed by project-sponsored programs in the teachers’ own schools and neighboring schools and districts.
The Massachusetts Studies Project is an outreach project for educators and students. Its mission is to ground students in their communities by localizing the curriculum. The MSP supports education reform to enhance lifelong learning in three ways: Massachusetts-related information and curriculum materials through databases on the Web that encourage community research and involvement in relevant experiences; professional development training for teachers to integrate technology and relate resources to curriculum frameworks; and development of instructional materials and resources where not already available.
COSMIC is a joint venture of the Graduate College of Education and the College of Science and Mathematics at UMass Boston. The mission of COSMIC is to advance high quality teaching and learning in science and math for all students at K-12, university undergraduate, and graduate levels. The goals of COSMIC are to provide support for science and math teachers, develop and evaluate curriculum and assessment materials, provide professional development, strengthen the pipeline toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, conduct research on the effectiveness of our interventions, and create partnerships with school districts, industry, government, and non-governmental organizations.
The Center for Technical Education was established in 1983 to meet the needs of prospective vocational educators in metropolitan Boston by offering courses leading to vocational education and vocational special needs licensure, as well as courses in technology education.
