Licensure

Graduate Admissions & Advising Scenarios

The following scenarios are representative of the complex choices faced by adult students seeking a program appropriate to their professional goals. In some cases, Salem State’s graduate education programs offer multiple routes to the same or similar goals. The Graduate School is eager to work with you as an individual to help you map the best way to your destination.

Scenario I: From Textbook Publishing to Elementary School Teaching
Flora Hernandez completed her undergraduate degree in English at Tufts University. She worked as a copy editor for Houghton Mifflin’s college division, focusing on educational textbooks, for 5 years and then decided she wanted to leave the world of publishing and work “on the front lines” as an elementary school teacher. For the past two years, she has been a substitute teacher at a local elementary school.
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Scenario II: A Computer Engineer Wants to Teach Math
Roberta Graham has had a productive first career in computer engineering. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts with a major in engineering and several years’ work experience at a Route 128 dot.com firm. Roberta is concerned about the need for more math and science teachers in middle and high schools and also about the continuing need to recruit more young women into math and science careers. She learns from a general advisor in the Graduate School that she has two options for pursuing a program leading to an initial teaching license in mathematics.
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Scenario III: An Early Childhood Teacher Faces a Choice
Albert Williams has an undergraduate degree from Salem State College in early childhood education. He applies his initial teaching license in early childhood education to his work as a Head Start teacher in a nearby city. Albert comes back to Salem State to the Graduate School, looking for a master’s degree program that will prepare him for a professional license. He isn’t sure if he wants to stay at Head Start and perhaps work toward an administrative position, or move to a teaching position in a public school. He makes an appointment to meet with the coordinator of the early childhood program. Depending on Albert’s career path, the coordinator tells him, he has two choices.
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