I was in the middle of writing a post on how early and often we should be teaching CS in our schools but had to jump in with a quick hit here.

As any reader here knows, Hunter was the first institution with state approved CS Teacher Education Masters and Certificate programs. Siena had the first Bachelors program (Hunter doesn't have undergraduate education programs that lead to state certification).

We've been graduating certificate students for a couple of years now. Those are professional teachers - working under another certification area who are earning the new New York State CS credential. We now have around 40 certificate graduates who are either state certified or qualified to be state certified if they haven't filled out the state application. It was cool that we were the first but more importantly that NY is getting qualified CS teachers.

We passed another milestone the other day. Our first two Masters students graduated this past June and I just heard from one of them that she now possesses New York State Certification to teach Computer Science. She should be the first newly minted Masters grad to have earned certification.

Another cool milestone passed.

I expect that in the coming years, the demand for Hunter's certificate program will go down as demand for the Masters program goes up. We'll see if I'm right.

For now, just wanted to share a bit of cool news.