Global Teaching Project Enrollment Passes 4,000

The Global Teaching Project’s Advanced STEM Access Program’s cumulative enrollment has achieved a major milestone, passing 4,000 students as of the 2026 Fall semester.

GTP’s Advanced STEM Access Program, now in its 10th year, provides promising public high school students in rural, high-poverty Mississippi communities access to advanced STEM courses they need to achieve their full potential, but which their schools otherwise may not be able to offer, due to limited resources and a chronic, and worsening, shortage of qualified teachers.

The program began in the 2017-18 academic year, with fewer than 100 students enrolled in a single course, AP Physics 1, at 9 public high schools.  Since then, the program has grown dramatically, largely due to word-of-mouth among educators.

To date, the program has served students at more than 50 public high schools, offering AP Biology, AP Computer Science Principles, and AP Computer Science Principles, in addition to AP Physics 1.  In the 2025-2026 academic year, enrollment exceeded 700 students.

Many of those students were from communities that not only were among the most impoverished in Mississippi, but in the entire nation.  Yet students from those communities also achieved some of the highest AP scores in the state, earning college credit in the process.

GTP’s Advanced STEM Access Program is, and always has been, free of charge.

The Advanced STEM Access Program is funded by private sources, who cover all program expenses, including supervising instructors, tutors, teacher professional development, books, technology, and residential, university-based learning programs.

Thank you to each of the thousands of students who have worked to achieve a better future for themselves and their communities, and to the committed educators who helped make those ambitions a reality.