Educators Rising Campus Day

Monroe hosted the second annual Educators Rising Campus Day on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in The Hangar on the second floor of the ULM SUB. Over 200 students, administrators, and personnel from eight school districts and 11 partner high schools learned more about being professional educators. Partner school districts in attendance included Caldwell, DeSoto, Franklin, Madison, Monroe City, Morehouse, Ouachita, and Richland.

“We are incredibly pleased to see the growth of this program and our campus visit day event. We have more than doubled our enrollment in pre-educator coursework and our attendance at this event from last year to this year,” said Dr. Amy Weems, ULM Assistant Professor of Education.

The crowd was welcomed in an opening address by ULM President Dr. Ron Berry, who encouraged the students on their path to becoming educators. “If you look around, one of our biggest needs as a state is teachers.

Teachers who care about other individuals and want to make a difference in their lives, who want to create their futures. So please stay with it. We desperately need you,” said Berry.

The day continued with sessions and activities for the students including the opportunity to participate in a service-learning project by helping assemble “LEAP Survival Kits” that will be distributed to approximately 90 local 4th grade classrooms. These students are part of ULM’s Centennial Scholars Program, who will make up the incoming freshman class of 2031, the University’s 100th year.

“We are so thankful for the support of our service-learning project from the campus visit day participants, our ULM family, and the community,” said Weems. “We know these LEAP survival kits and the inspirational videos we are creating will help our Centennial Scholars during standardized testing week,” she said.

The closing keynote speaker was Kimberly Eckert, who currently serves as the Dean of

Oxford Teachers College at Reach University. An educator for 15 years, Eckert was a 2020 Global Teacher Prize finalist, 2019 NEA Social Justice Activist of the Year national finalist, the 2018 Louisiana Teacher of the Year, and the inaugural Louisiana Public Interest Fellow for her work developing a state-wide Educators Rising Program for targeted recruitment of a diverse and culturally responsive teacher pipeline.

In her speech, Eckert recounted experiences from a recent trip to Kenya. She spoke about the educational challenges faced by teachers and students there and what American educators can learn from them. She closed by saying that she would love for all of the students to join her in the profession of becoming a teacher. “Because even though you may be one part of your community now, whenever you become a teacher, you become part of a much larger community, and none of us are alone. All of us have so much to share, and we do it all through the willingness to serve an entire community,” said Eckert.

The afternoon closed with a signing ceremony featuring graduating high school seniors who have committed to attend ULM or Louisiana Delta Community College (LDCC) in the fall to pursue a degree in education. LDCC has a “two plus two” agreement with ULM which allows students to transfer to ULM after two years at LDCC and receive a teaching degree.