The Master of Arts in Teaching is a 39-credit hour program designed to provide initial teacher certification for those with bachelor's degrees in selected fields. Students choose either an elementary or secondary content strand according to their area of emphasis and take 33 credit hours (11 courses) of classes.

After all of the required coursework has been successully completed, students undertake a six credit hour student teaching internship where they will spend 15 weeks in a public school classroom. This in-depth clinical experience in the public school system provides the opportunity to plan, teach, and manage a classroom under the supervision of experienced and certified personnel.

The Master of Arts in Teaching degree involves initial certification, and therefore, is subject to policies and procedures beyond those found in other graduate programs.

MAT Students can pursue certification in the following areas:
Art (Pre K-Adult)
Biology (9-Adult)
General Science (5-Adult)
English (5-Adult)
Physical Education (PreK-Adult)
Health (5-Adult) only with Physical Education
Family & Consumer Sciences (5-Adult)
Mathematics (5-Adult)
Chemistry (9-Adult)
Social Studies (5-Adult)
Elementary Education (K-6)
Spanish (5-Adult)

• Entrants must have completed a bachelor's degree with an overall 2.75 GPA* and a 2.5 GPA in the content courses for the area in which certification is sought. Also required are:
• Completion of at least 50 percent of all content area work required for certification, with grades of C or better
• Completion of ENGL 101, ENGL 102, and COMM 202 with grades of C or above in each course
• A passing score on the Praxis I and the Praxis II Content Specialization Test for the certification content area. More on Praxis testing can be found at www.ets.org.