- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1748400
- First Name Allison
- Last Name Little
- Discipline Biology, Chemistry, Math
- Co-PI(s)
Jennifer Hanselman, Westfield State University, jhanselman@westfield.ma.edu
Erold Bailey, Westfield State University, ebailey@westfield.ma.edu
Hirul Patel, Quinsigamond Community College, hpatel@qcc.mass.edu
Daron Barnard, Worcester State University, dbarnard@worcester.edu - Presenters
Allison Little, MA Department of Higher Education, alittle@dhe.mass.edu
Need
MassTeach is built on creating explicit partnerships between three community colleges and three state universities in Massachusetts to create seamless transfer pathways for STEM students to attain a secondary education license to teach in a partner high-needs school districts. Our K-12 partners have been involved since the proposal phase to inform the project about which subject areas they have trouble filling. This information has driven the STEM fields each community college has recruited applicants from and has helped to strengthen our partnerships with K-12 districts because they realize we are here to help address their needs.
Goals
1. How does the MassTeach scholarship program support STEM teacher preparation and quality? How effective are MassTeach Noyce scholar teachers as compared with other new, first-year teachers? 2. What is the quality of MassTeach Noyce scholars? experiences as related by recipients, campus staff, and other stakeholders (e.g., district personnel)? 3. How does the MassTeach program impact the partnering institutions of higher education, particularly their approach to educator preparation and related systems of support?
Approach
MassTeach is seeking to diversify the STEM teacher pipeline by exclusively recruiting Noyce Track 1 Scholars at the community college and helping them to seamless transfer to a partner university. This is important because if we want to change the racial demographics of the Massachusetts teacher workforce, which is 92% white and educating a student population that is 40% non-white, then we have to be strategic and relentless in creating strategies, programs, and changing the perception of education to welcome underrepresented minorities into teaching. Since our community college population is our most diverse population of higher education students, MassTeach is exclusively focusing its recruitment efforts there.
Outcomes
We are anticipating an increase in the number of Latinx and black STEM teachers in Massachusetts by recruiting at community colleges. This framework is starting at three community colleges, three state universities and will scale across the system next year.
Broader Impacts
MassTeach has broader impacts beyond producing more high quality STEM teachers. MassTeach will diversify the STEM teacher pipeline in Massachusetts and will disseminate its work to impact teacher diversity as a model for other higher education institutions or systems. The grant will accomplish this by explicitly recruiting from an untapped resource of potential teachers by creating and strengthening a transfer pathway for community college students. In Massachusetts, the community college student population is the most diverse higher education student body–including underrepresented minorities, low income, and first generation students–and provides an untapped recruitment pool for potential teachers who can better understand the experiences of a similarly diverse K-12 student population who are enrolled in Massachusetts’s local high needs school districts.
