Eastern Oregon University > Scholarships to attend EOU > Teach Grant

Teach Grant

In exchange for receiving a teach grant, you must agree to the following:

  • You must serve as a full time teacher for a total of at least four academic years within eight years after you complete or otherwise cease to be enrolled in the program(s) for which you received TEACH Grant funds.
  • You must perform the teaching service as a highly qualified teacher at a low-income school or educational service agency.
  • Your teaching service must be in a high-need field.
  • You must provide the U.S. Department of Education with documentation of your progress toward completing your service obligation.
  • If you do not meet the requirements of your service obligation, all TEACH Grant funds you received will be converted to a Direct Unsubsidized Loa. You must repay this loan in full, with interest charged from the date of each TEACH Grant disbursement.

More info: StudentAid.gov/teach

To learn more about the TEACH Grant, please visit the following website:

Student Eligibility requirements are:

  1. Complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), although you do not have to demonstrate financial need.
  2. Be a U.S. citizen or eligible non-citizen.
  3. Be enrolled as an undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, or graduate student in a postsecondary educational institution that has chosen to participate in the TEACH Grant program.
  4. Be enrolled in coursework that is necessary to begin a career in teaching or plan to complete such coursework. Such coursework may include subject area courses (e.g. math courses for a student who intends to be a math teacher).
  5. Meet certain academic achievements (e.g. scoring above the 75th percentile on a college admissions test or maintaining a cumulative GPA of at least 3.25).
  6. Sign a TEACH Grant Agreement to Serve or Repay(Agreement).

It is very important that you read and understand the conditions of the TEACH Grant at the websites listed above. It is a unique grant which you may have to pay back if you do not meet its specific conditions.

If you are interested in applying for the TEACH Grant after reading all of the information on the website(s), please contact the College of Education at 541-962-3772 or email ed@eou.edu. Let them know that you are interested in the TEACH Grant, and they will direct you to either Kylie Evans (for undergraduate students) or Kristin Johnson (for graduate students). They will then forward your information to us in the Financial Aid Office.

We will contact you via email at your EOU email address with instructions about what to do next.

In most cases, if you qualify for the TEACH Grant, it will be available the term after your request is received. (i.e. if you request it during Fall term, it will be available Winter term).

The TEACH Grant will pro-rate each term based on the number of credits for which you are enrolled. For instance, if you are a full-time student, it will pay 100%; if you are a half-time student, it will pay 50%. Please note: The service obligation does not change if you receive less than a full-time disbursement, nor does it change if you only receive the money for part of a year.

Questions?

Please contact the Financial Aid Office.

Email messages will only be sent only to your Eastern Oregon University email address. These messages contain important information about your financial aid that cannot be sent to an external email address. The Financial Aid Office expects email to be read by students in a timely fashion.

Please visit the Information Technology Knowledge Base or call the helpdesk at (541) 962-3111 for information about setup and use of your Eastern email account.

TEACH Grant Service Requirement Fulfillment

More than half of the classes you will teach during each school year must be in a high-need field. Historical teacher shortage areas that qualify for TEACH service requirements can be found in the Teacher Shortage Areas Report.

High-need fields are

  • Bilingual education and English language acquisition,
  • Foreign language,
  • Mathematics,
  • Reading specialist,
  • Science, and
  • Special education, as well as
  • Any other field that has been identified as high-need by the federal government, a state government, or a local education agency, and that is included in the annual Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide Listing.

If you plan to teach in a high-need field that is included in the Nationwide List, that field must be listed for the state where you teach either at the time you begin your qualifying teaching service or at the time you received a TEACH Grant.

Note: Other category includes 1,387 recipients who completed teaching requirements. The remainder either had their grants suspended, discharged, or cancelled. TEACH grant recipients will move in and out of different status categories over time. For instance, upon graduation, a participant typically moves from in school to teaching or intend to teach. ( 7 MB PDF)

 GAO: A Third of TEACH Grants Convert to Loans. But Why?