- Year 2022
- NSF Noyce Award # 1851631
- First Name Beverly
- Last Name Smith
- Discipline Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics
- Co-PI(s)
Mohammad Moin Uddin & Scott Kirkby
- Presenters
Mohammad Moin Uddin, East Tennessee State University
Need
There is a critical shortage of STEM teachers in high-need fields, especially in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, in the southern Appalachian region. This Noyce Track 1 Teacher Recruiting program at East Tennessee State University was designed to alleviate this need.
Goals
Is the summer internship program an effective method to recruit STEM students into a teaching career?
Approach
The 5-week long internship program is administered in partnership with local nonprofit educational organizations, namely the Gray Fossil Site, the Hands- On Museum, the Langston Center, the Upward Bound Program at ETSU, and the ETSU Renaissance Camp on the ETSU campus. We had a small intern program the first summer of this grant (summer 2019). Because of the pandemic we did not run an internship program during the summer of 2020, and only a small program in the summer of 2021. Thus far seven students completed Noyce internships.
Outcomes
At both the beginning and the end of the summer, we ask the interns to take the questionnaire about attitudes concerning teaching produced by the APS (Marder, Brown, & Plisch, 2017). We look for a difference in the responses before vs. after the internship. The most important finding of the survey was that students’ interest to be a middle or high school teacher increases five-fold after completing the internship. One former Noyce intern completed the MAT program and is currently teaching Chemistry in a high-need school, and one is currently enrolled in the MAT program.
Broader Impacts
We anticipate that the ETSU Noyce program will create a group of teachers who will be able to inspire future generations of STEM professionals in Northeast Tennessee region.
