- Year 2017
- NSF Noyce Award # 1136322
- First Name James
- Last Name Matthews
- Discipline Math
- Co-PI(s)
Mark Jury, Siena College, mjury@siena.edu
Michele McColgan, Siena College, mmccolgan@siena.edu
Lucas Tucker, Siena College, ltucker@siena.edu - Presenters
James Matthews, Siena College, matthews@siena.edu
Need
New York has no certification area for computer science and no state curriculum or guidelines yet there is a need for qualified computer science teachers. One of the important components of our Noyce project is preparing our mathematics teaching candidates to teach computer science and mathematics.
Goals
The goal is to prepare our mathematics teaching candidates to teach computer science. The key activities for accomplishing this is requiring a strong minor in computer science that includes a course on teaching computer science at the pre-college level.
Approach
The goal is to prepare our mathematics teaching candidates to teach computer science. We accomplish this by requiring a strong minor in computer science that includes a course on teaching computer science at the pre-college level. The course on teaching computer science is team taught by several faculty with backgrounds in one or more of computer science, mathematics. and education.
Outcomes
At our institution we have a long history of success producing secondary mathematics teachers. Our Noyce project is requiring our mathematics scholars to complete a strong minor in computer science so they are qualified to teach computer science at the Advanced Placement level. In the 12 years prior to receiving our grant, we only had 4 out of 65 students take these computer science courses despite being strongly advised to consider doing so. During the years of our Noyce grant, we have prepared 22 secondary mathematics teachers and 17 of them have completed the courses that will enable them to teach computer science
Broader Impacts
The computer science goal of the project coincides with the ‘CS 10K Project’ (supported by NSF) which has a goal of producing 10,000 computer science teachers for the pre-college level by 2016. One important result of this project component is providing mathematics teachers in high-needs schools the ability to teach motivating elective STEM courses.
