The Center for Distance Education at Mississippi State University has built a Master of Arts in Teaching Middle Level Education (MATM) program, which is an alternate route program offered completely online. It prepares educators to teach all subjects in grades 4-6 and at least one subject area in grades 7-12. 
Dekota Cheatham, MATM outreach coordinator, said the program will allow people a second shot at becoming a teacher without requiring them to start all over in the College of Education.
“If someone is in their junior or senior year of a degree plan and they are unhappy with their major of choice, they can complete their program of study as planned, graduate on time and then come to us for graduate school. We could have them certified in as little as one semester,” Cheatham said.
There are financial opportunities available to those who want to become teachers through an alternate route program. The federally-funded scholarship known as TERMS (Teacher Education for Rural Mississippi Schools) gives $5,000 to those agreeing to work in one of the 72 partner districts for at least three years in grades 4-8. 
This aims to promote teacher retention and serves as an incentive for people to become teachers.
Dana Seymour, MATM program director said MATM came into existence because the state of Mississippi has a teacher shortage, which is larger in the rural areas.
“We wanted to increase the number of teachers in these districts but we also knew that it would be really difficult if you lived in a really rural area to come to State,” Seymour said, “and so we knew it had to be a distance program, it had to be online so that people who live in those communities could get their teaching license and that was the thinking behind putting it all together.”
The MATM officials wrote a grant to the United States Department of Education and requested to help MATM train teachers for rural areas, which was approved and funded by the grant.
“A lot of districts that score very poorly on surveys are poor districts. A lot of their teachers are from Teach for America teachers who come down for two years and then they leave, and so when you have a school district that is struggling and every two years half of their teachers leave and they start all over, it is difficult to keep any continuity going of student gains, so that is something for us that we decided — if we are going to put teachers in these areas, they need to be from there, they need to have roots there so that they stay,” Seymour said.
Project investigator Anastasia Elder said the program offers an alternate route to teaching by providing an opportunity for a career in teaching for those students who may have majored in fields other than education.
“For mostly economic reasons, Mississippi has scored low relative to other states, but this program can help education in the state in a couple of ways. One is that we are committed to educating well future teachers and to trying to place them in districts that need them most because there are troubled districts that have problems recruiting and retaining teachers. Another way that this program will benefit education in Mississippi is that it offers free professional development to all the teachers in those troubled or failing districts.  These workshops and professional development sessions are given by MSU faculty and help to increase the quality of practice for all Mississippi teachers,” Elder said.
 Cheatham said in addition to the scholarship, TERMS recipients will also receive $5,000 in technology to use in their classroom This helps the district because donations are made for technology to the school district once the MATM teacher is placed.
“Teacher Loan Forgiveness is a big help to many seeking alternate route programs. Depending on what you teach, you can get a certain amount of your student debt forgiven by teaching for five consecutive years,” Cheatam said. “We are in year three of a five-year budget. We’ve met our goals thus far and plan on continuing to do so. Our spring 2014 cohort consists of 31 people. Granted, not all of these people will make it to the internship phase, but we are hoping to place around 40 teachers in Mississippi schools this fall. The most successful aspect of our program is teacher quality.”
For a complete listing and other information about the program, those interested can visitdistance.msstate.edu/matm.