School of Education, Staten Island Campus Receives $85k in Grants

February 15, 2011

Staten Island Campus -

The Staten Island Foundation and Northfield Bank have awarded Dr. Regina Mistretta, Associate Professor at the Staten Island Campus School of Education, a total grant of $85K over the past two academic years.  The donation is being used to offer mathematics and science parental engagement in the innovative program, In Collaboration.  This program provides graduate level pre-service and in-service teachers of St. John’s University’s School of Education, Staten Island campus with the opportunity to research and cultivate parent-child collaborations in mathematics and science by directly working with fourth grade non-public school families. 

The objective of In Collaboration is to benefit both families and pre/in-service teachers.  For families, parents are given the opportunity to strengthen their:

  • Understanding of current mathematics and science curricula
  • Skills at productively collaborating with their child’s learning of mathematics and science

The program’s objective for each pre-service and in-service teacher is to increase their understanding of:

  • How and why parents and children work together the way they do in mathematics and science
  • Their role as teachers in cultivating productive parent-child collaborations. 

Accomplishing such objectives serves to create home-school conditions that are conducive to higher academic achievement.

“The In Collaboration program is one that brings the newly designed Teaching and Learning Labs alive!” says Dr. Mistretta.  “When envisioning the design of these classrooms, both the campus community and outlying neighborhood were populations I wanted to serve.  This program brings those populations together and serves them well with both content knowledge and practical experience.”

The first part of the total grant was donated during the 2009-2010 Academic year and funded two months of the program.  The latest portion of the grant, in the amount of $50k, will help support In Collaboration during the spring and fall 2011 semesters.  The Staten Island Foundation will be back at St. John’s Staten Island campus on February 24th, to present a check reflecting this latest contribution.

For more information about In Collaboration and The School of Education at the Staten Island Campus, please contact Ms. Rosette Allegretti, Assistant to the Dean, The School of Education, at 718-390-4130 or allegrer@stjohns.edu