GREENSBORO – It’s no secret – enrollment in teacher education has declined markedly across North Carolina’s public universities over the past five years.

Yet nearly all of us can name a teacher who made a difference in our lives.

“I think we can all go back in our early years and pick out two or three people as teachers who made comments to us or grabbed us by the arm or the ear … and put us on a different path,” Chancellor Harold Martin of NC A&T State University says in the accompanying video.

Many students at NCA&T had such a teacher who steered them toward college, Martin says, and they want to follow that mentor and serve their communities. Opportunities abound in fields such as math, chemistry, biology, special education and counseling, he says.

“Teacher education is still a big area of opportunity for student interest on our campus,” Martin says.