A Brief History of the Delaware Valley Education Consortium
In 1993, a group of representatives from the Career Services offices at a number of regional colleges and universities with teacher education programs came together to jointly begin planning the first ever Greater Philadelphia Teacher Job Fair. This group was named the Delaware Valley Education Consortium (DVEC).
The Consortium, currently composed of 23 Philadelphia institutions of higher education, originally existed solely for the purpose of sponsoring what became an annual teacher job fair. The Consortium has acted as an intermediary in the teacher job search process by providing candidates the opportunity to meet employers from not only the Delaware Valley but from employers across the United States. The DVEC sponsored its first teacher job fair on March 30, 1994. One hundred employers and 1,680 candidates participated in this first fair.
Over the years, both the number of candidates and the number of employers have grown. Currently, approximately 200 school districts/employers and approximately 2,000 teacher candidates attend the annual event. The fair is open to both graduating students and alumni from consortium schools, as well as candidates from other schools.
The event has held fairs at several member campuses, notably Villanova University for the first event, West Chester University and Neumann University. Other venues have included former Fort Washington Expo Center and Valley Forge Convention Center, the Wachovia Center (now the Wells Fargo Center), and the current venue, Greater Philadelphia Expo Center at Oaks.
In 2003 the group began to award scholarships to students at member institutions, and today annually awards up to six $2,500 scholarships to education majors from member schools who have one year until graduating and/or receiving their teacher certification (either undergraduate juniors or first-year graduate students). The scholarship is named in memory of the original chair of the scholarship committee, Hannah Amgott from Widener University (click here to learn more about the scholarship and about Hannah Amgott). The scholarships are awarded annually at our May meeting, which was held for many years at the William Penn Inn but has now relocated to the Commonwealth Chateau at Sugarloaf of Chestnut Hill College.