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, 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 to where approximately 200 school districts/employers and approximately 2,000 teacher candidates attended the annual event. The fair was 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 the former Fort Washington Expo Center and Valley Forge Convention Center, the Wachovia Center (now the Wells Fargo Center), and the most recent venue, the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center at Oaks.
In 2003 the group established a scholarship for students at member institutions, and over the years this grew to award up to six $2,500 scholarships annually to education majors from member schools who had one year until graduating and/or receiving their teacher certification (either undergraduate juniors or first-year graduate students). The scholarship was 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 were awarded annually at the Consortium’s May meeting, which was held for many years at the William Penn Inn but then relocated to the Commonwealth Chateau at Sugarloaf of Chestnut Hill College.
In Spring 2024, the DVEC has made the difficult decision to dissolve and will no longer be hosting the Greater Philadelphia Teacher Job Fair. As such, the job fair will not be held in Spring 2024 or moving forward. We are running one final round of the scholarship.