The Education Department – Secondary licensure program offers a Bachelor’s to Master’s Fast Track Program option for Lewis University undergraduate STEM (Biology, Chemistry, Math or Physics) majors. All qualified STEM majors may take advantage of this Fast Track Program option. The Fast Track Program option allows qualified undergraduates to complete the graduate MA in Education in less time than would be possible if the two programs were taken separately. Nine graduate hours may be used both to complete the Bachelor’s degree (120 hours) and to satisfy specific course requirements for the Master’s program. The total number of required graduate credits (39) will remain the same. Students apply for admission to the Fast Track Program option by submitting an application to the program director for secondary education licensure program when they have reached completed 75 credit hours and have achieved an overall GPA of 3.0. If approved, Fast Track secondary teacher education licensure candidates will also need to submit two letters of recommendation and successfully complete the Education Department Graduate Writing Exam. With planning, the MA in Secondary education with an endorsement in their selected STEM field could be awarded within one and half years of graduating with the Bachelor’s degree. Students who take nine credit hours of selected graduate courses in Secondary Education in their senior year and earn a grade of “B” or better in each of those courses will have to complete only 30 more credit hours to earn the MA.

Listed below are graduate courses in the MA in Secondary Education program which students enrolled in the Fast Track Program option may take during their senior year. Listed in parenthesis next to each is the undergraduate course for which it substitutes.

A student in this Fast Track Program option may apply no more than three of these courses toward their undergraduate Bachelor of Science major in Secondary Education.

Candidates may choose from the following courses for graduate credit while completing their undergraduate degree:

ENLE 51000 Foundations of Bilingual and English Language Learner Education
SCED 51000 Frameworks in Education
SCED 51200 Instructional Strategies and Learning Communities for Adolescents
SPED 55700 Exceptional Learners in Inclusive Communities
TLDE 50400 Integrating Educational and Assistive Technology into the Classroom