COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – San José State softball's Ashley Goard has been awarded $2,500 in tuition from the College Football Playoff (CFP) Foundation and Dr. Pepper as part of the Go Teach Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway, announced by the Mountain West Conference on Wednesday.
Goard, a sophomore from Rancho Murrieta, Calif., is an English Prep for Teaching major and a first baseman on the softball team who had 79 put outs and three home runs along with 14 RBIs in her freshman campaign.
This is the third year of the Go Teach Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway, which is part of a collective six-year effort between the CFP Foundation and Dr. Pepper, awarding more than $1.5 million in tuition to student-athletes looking to become teachers. This fund is in addition to Dr. Pepper's Tuition Giveaway program and includes all 10 FBS conferences, the University of Notre Dame and HBCU's. Each year, up to 150 student-athletes will be awarded $2,500 in tuition, and 11 grand-prize recipients will receive an additional $10,000 tuition grant – one student per conference.
"We need more teachers in the pipeline to support the growing need for a diverse and well-qualified teacher workforce," said CFP Foundation Executive Director Britton Banowsky. "Our Go Teach project is an important initiative to us as we encourage student-athletes, who we know make amazing leaders, to pursue careers in education. Dr. Pepper's tuition support will go a long way to ensure we have great teachers in the future."
The CFP Foundation and Dr. Pepper are dedicated to growing the Go Teach initiative to place qualified teachers in classrooms nationwide. Launched in 2018 through a pilot program at the University of Texas at Austin, the Go Teach initiative quickly expanded to a dozen schools by the end of 2019. Today, more than 15 schools are participating in the Go Teach program and identifying creative ways to help student-athletes move into the teaching profession. The CFP Foundation is the largest sports entity supporting K-12 educators in America. For more information about the CFP Foundation, visit cfp-foundation.org.
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