Effective Strategies for Recruiting African American Males into Undergraduate Teacher-Education Program

In 2011, the U.S. Secretary of Education launched a national campaign urging black males to choose teaching as a career with the ambitious goal of adding 80,000 black male public school teachers by 2015 (Teach Campaign, 2011). This campaign, coupled with recent reports, suggests students should encounter a wide diversity of teachers (Boser, 2011; Byrd et al., 2011). Arguments have been made that teacher diversity should include gender, race, and socio-economic status (Angus & Oliveira, 2012). This study focused on an important aspect of this problem: African American males.;This mixed-methods sequential descriptive study inquired about effective strategies for recruiting African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs. The study employed multiple data collection methods: reviewing the literature, accessing institutional websites and other online recruitment materials; sending an inquiry letter, and interviewing those responsible for recruiting prospective teacher-education undergraduates. Four research questions guided the study.;1. What strategies are presented in the literature as best practices for recruiting males and African American males, in particular, as undergraduates into teacher-education programs?;2. What strategies do institutions use to recruit males and African American males, in particular, into undergraduate teacher-education programs?;3. What do program leaders perceive as effective strategies, and barriers to those strategies, for recruiting males and African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs?;4. Based on the research results, what effective strategies and barriers to those strategies are identified for attracting African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs?;The literature review disclosed that the Call Me Mister programs were the most active and successful in attracting African American males into teacher-education. The websites of a random sample of undergraduate teacher-education programs (N = 1,500) revealed that few traditional colleges and universities (2%) used their websites to attract undergraduate males into teacher-education programs and fewer targeted African American males (1%). The interviews (N = 7) identified several effective strategies in use: offering institutional scholarships; finding other financial support; recruiting actively; forming community partnerships; achieving a critical mass; and seeking internal institutional support. Building upon these strategies, a series of recommendations are put forth for leaders of teacher-education programs to consider.