Many mathematics teacher educators can describe a familiar pattern across universities and professional meetings. We repeatedly surface the same urgent problems: declining enrollments in mathematics teacher preparation, fragile clinical partnerships, increasing restrictions on teacher preparation pathways, and inconsistent induction support of our graduates; however, the learning from these conversations often remains localized. As a result, we often unintentionally duplicate work across multiple institutions with similar recruitment interventions, course redesigns, or field experience features in parallel, with limited visibility into what peers have tried, what succeeded, and what stalled. And all too often, these conversations are repeated across contexts with limited collective progress or shared learning.

This article documents one response to that pattern with a community that has formed among institutions that are part of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) for athletics, along with other interested partners. The SEC⁺ Mathematics Education Community (SEC⁺ MEC) is a standing collaboration among mathematics teacher educators across SEC universities and additional partners aimed at coordinating problem solving around mathematics teacher supply and recruitment, preparation quality, and early-career support.

What the SEC⁺ MEC Is

Many professional collaborations are conference-dependent, organized primarily around annual conferences or convenings. In contrast, SEC⁺ MEC is intentionally structured as conference-adjacent rather than conference-dependent. While we do hold annual conferences which often provide important touchpoints, SEC⁺ MEC operates as a continuous network with a shared agenda that persists beyond any single meeting. The network has met through monthly or quarterly virtual meetings over multiple years, with yearly fall semester in-person convenings to consolidate progress, build shared products, and set forward-looking goals. The SEC⁺ MEC emphasizes a sustained virtual structure and annual convenings as a coordinated response to persistent teacher shortages and enrollment pressures.

In-Person Convenings and the Next Planned Meeting

To maintain continuity and reduce “start-over” cycles, SEC⁺ MEC has held four in-person meetings funded by the SEC Faculty Travel Program as follows:

1. University of Kentucky (2022) – an early summit establishing shared problem frames and cross-institution learning routines.
2. University of Florida (2023) – a second annual summit that broadened participation and sustained a common agenda focused on increasing the pipeline of secondary mathematics teachers.
3. Louisiana State University (2024) – a third convening that continued the network’s focus on recruitment and program design while strengthening cross-institution peer mentoring and shared planning.
4. Auburn University (2025) – the fourth annual meeting focused on strategies to increase the recruitment and supply of mathematics teachers and set goals for the coming academic year.
5. University of Mississippi (2026) – the fifth meeting is in the planning stages for an October 23-24, 2026 convening.

See a reflection about our SEC+ MEC collaborative group.

Across these meetings, the consistent design principle has been simply to carry forward the work. Rather than producing a single conference session outcome, each convening explicitly sets an agenda for the next cycle of virtual meetings and shared efforts. Small groups are organized with designated leaders to move the work forward in particular areas, providing updates at subsequent virtual meetings.

What We Have Worked on Together

Across institutional perspectives, SEC⁺ MEC has emphasized three problem spaces that show up repeatedly across universities:

• Recruitment mechanisms and pathways: Including routes for non-traditional candidates and career changers.
• Early program experiences and advising structures: Making mathematics teaching visible, rigorous, and attractive, especially through early coursework and advising structures that shape whether students enter or leave the pathway.
• Shared external funding and scholarship: Including collaborative grant writing and researchable innovations that can be evaluated and disseminated.

Our annual convenings provide concrete snapshots of how these themes become working sessions. These convenings include programming such as a best-practices discussion, as well as time spent discussing topics such as the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, of which several SEC institutions are members, and recently AI in mathematics teacher preparation, while also identifying themes and setting goals for the following year.

Illustrative Innovations Shared Across Institutions

A key purpose of SEC⁺ MEC is to exchange transferable design features rather than merely showcasing local programs. Four examples from the collaboration that may be of interest to AMTE members:

• Funded, accelerated pathways for teacher candidates were developed through breakout Zoom meetings across an academic year, with active Noyce grantee PIs mentoring multiple university teams developing NSF Noyce grant proposals. Several universities were successful in obtaining awards.
• Mentor-teacher leadership models that intentionally develop accomplished classroom teachers as field experience mentors while also strengthening their leadership capacity through sustained professional learning modules and multiple strategies in how field experiences are structured.
• Cross-institution course redesign through shared syllabi was an initiative where faculty shared syllabi from introductory mathematics education courses and engaged in structured comparison of readings, field experience models, and instructional approaches. This process led to targeted revisions across institutions, including the integration of new readings, redesigned field experiences, and the addition of co-teaching structures informed by peers’ successful implementations.
• SEC-wide virtual collaborations among students and faculty have been held each semester for several years, where students have the opportunity to hear from national speakers and collaborate, exchange ideas, and connect across institutions. Students have found it motivating to see that their peers at other institutions are experiencing many of the same issues they are.

These examples matter because they demonstrate how the community has attempted to reduce duplicative effort. Instead of multiple institutions independently inventing a pathway or mentor-teacher network, the community enables faculty to compare features (e.g., program duration, support mechanisms, partnership structures, candidate recruitment strategies) and adapt designs more thoughtfully and efficiently.

What We Learned About Duplication

In our experience, duplication happens for understandable reasons. Institutions face similar constraints, respond to similar accountability pressures, and often have limited time to scan the landscape beyond their own institutional context. SEC⁺MEC helps reduce duplication in practical ways:

1. Structured comparison. Members share program features in a way that invites analysis, not just celebration of accomplishments. What population is being recruited? Which barrier is being addressed? What evidence exists so far? What implementation conditions were required?
2. Peer mentoring across institutions. Faculty members gain access to colleagues who have already navigated similar political, curricular, and school-partnership constraints, which can accelerate implementation and help avoid potential pitfalls.
3. Continuity and accountability. Each annual convening ends with explicit next steps and a forward agenda, and quarterly or semester virtual meetings keep the work from resetting.

Implications for AMTE and the Broader Field

We offer three implications for mathematics teacher education communities beyond the SEC⁺ MEC:

• Treat “conference work” as multi-cycle improvement work: If a problem is persistent and our mathematics teacher supply certainly is, then a single annual session is rarely enough. Standing networks with continuity can make learning cumulative and improve outcomes.
• Prioritize portability and share design features, not just outcomes: The most usable knowledge for other programs is often the architecture of an intervention (e.g., supports, staffing, partnerships, candidate requirements, costs, and certification constraints) rather than a description of a particular program or pathway.
• Invest in collaboration infrastructure: The difference between good conversation and shared action has typically been infrastructure. Our recurring meetings, shared artifacts, and multiple leadership roles help sustain the agenda across cycles.

Next Steps

The network’s direction is to keep moving from shared conversation to shared outputs. Our network uses convenings to finalize themes and set goals for the coming academic year, with plans that include broader engagement such as spring virtual meetings to support teacher candidates and early-career teachers, and ongoing collaboration. We frame the fall semester summits as a way to pool insights and brainstorm actionable solutions to increase the pipeline of mathematics teachers, improve outcomes, and learn from our efforts.

Summary

SEC⁺ MEC illustrates how a regional, athletic conference-aligned collaboration can become a sustained professional learning community and improvement network. It is one designed to reduce duplication, accelerate adaptation, and build collective capacity. We share this effort not as a finished model, but as an invitation to the field. That is, if other regions or associations are experimenting with standing collaborations, the field benefits when we document how the collaboration is structured, what it produces, and why it reduces reinvention across cycles.