The Elementary Certification Program at Duke University, the first program to be approved under North Carolina's innovative alternative certification route, is a small but significant step toward the improvement of teacher education. This innovative program offers prospective early childhood teachers with liberal arts backgrounds an intensive field-based teacher preparation program. The program was designed and conducted in a collaborative effort between master teachers in a local school system and Duke's teacher preparation program. The program incorporates an intensive semester of internship in a model school setting. The internship is designed along the medical, or clinical, training model. Interns are given the opportunity to conduct research on a special topic of interest in collaboration with a professor of their choice. The program admits a maximum of 10 teachers a year. (Courses involved in the internship are listed in Figure 1.) (RH)