Since the fall semester of 1998, a committee of university faculty and local school system administrators has collaborated to design an alternative teacher certification program to meet the teacher shortage needs of the Hamilton County, Tennessee, schools. Areas of identified shortages include science, mathematics, and foreign languages at the middle and high school levels and special education at all levels. The collaboration was successful with the selection of the first cohort group of 12 candidates for alternative certification in 1999. The papers in this collection were presented at a symposium focusing on alternative teacher certification. Taken together, these papers form a case study that tells an ethnographic story while describing each stage of the collaboration. The papers are: (1) "The Vision: Establishment of Need of the Alternative Certification Program" (Mary P. Tanner and Thomas E. Bibler); (2) "The Action: Planning & Development of the Alternative Certification Program" (Cynthia M. Gettys and Kathleen S. Puckett); (3) "The Teaching Team: Planning & Teaming" (Jane T. Brower, Cynthia M. Gettys, and Lisa Goode); (4) "The Collaboration: Partnership & Implementation of the Alternative Certification Program" (Joyce E. Hardaway and Lonita D. Davidson); (5) "The Goal: Urban Impact" (Bonnie Warren-Kring); and (6) "The Evaluation: Cohort I Participants Evaluate the Alternative Certification Program" (Kristen Childs, Debbie Donohoo, and Callievene Stewart). (SLD)