A new group of 11 K-12 education leaders committed to professional growth will join the Saginaw Valley State University Gerstacker Fellowship program in 2020. Among them is Vicksburg’s Laura Chang, who was selected as Michigan’s teacher of the Year in 2018-2019.
As part of the initiative, the teachers, principals, and program administrators from across Michigan will receive concentrated leadership training over a one-year period. The experience will include a trip to Japan in June.
This trip will send participants to educational institutions, where participants learn about international educational systems and corporate settings. There, they discover how leadership plays out in different cultural and economic settings.
The program was established in 2005 with a $1.5 million endowment from the Rollin M. Gerstacker Foundation of Midland. Participants are known as Gerstacker Fellows. They meet monthly on weekends.
Experts in the field instruct the group on subjects such as organizational leadership, ethics, finances, communication, human resources, entrepreneurship and education with a global perspective.
Travel costs to and from Saginaw for Chang are funded by a grant from the Vicksburg Community Schools Foundation’s Bardeen Teacher Incentive program.