- Year 2018
- NSF Noyce Award # 1660713
- First Name John
- Last Name Stewart
- Discipline Physics
- Co-PI(s)
Matthew Campbel, Nancy Spillane, Jeffrey Carver, and Gay Stewart
, West Virginia University - Presenters
John Stewart, West Virginia University, jcstewart1@mail.wvu.edu
Need
This project is a partnership between West Virginia University (WVU) and the Preston County School District. Both districts have high levels of poverty, causing disparity in graduation rates. This proposal will support at least 25 additional new high school teachers with $14,500 scholarships annually, up to two years. It leverages the internal expertise in the WVU Center for Excellence in STEM Education, coupled with the implementation of a UTeach replication site (WVUteach), to fulfill an institutional commitment to increase the number of STEM teachers produced both in the short and long term.
Goals
In its third year, WVUteach is exceeding its recruitment targets; its introduction to teaching class is currently oversubscribed with 76 students exploring STEM teaching. However, attrition due to the financial challenges all too common to WV students is a barrier to program growth. Financial challenges are often encountered because WV students do not receive adequate preparation at the high school level to enter calculus their freshman year. This extends their time to degree which causes them to exhaust their four-year scholarships before graduation. WVUteach-Noyce will provide a financial solution for some students in the short term while WVUteach provides the long-term solution of a better trained STEM teacher workforce. WVUteach-Noyce scholarships to highly qualified students will not only directly increase the number of STEM teachers graduated, but will also promote the programmatic growth of WVUteach that will ensure WVU and private donors fund the program at its maximum capacity.
Approach
WVUteach-Noyce implements a promising strategy for preparing teachers to serve in high-need classrooms and will aid in its dissemination. The project supports the rapid expansion of WVU’s new four-year STEM teacher preparation program, WVUteach, by providing scholarships to STEM majors to go into teaching while also implementing a partnership to provide relevant cultural competence, pedagogical knowledge and disposition to our students and the mentor teachers that will support them as they learn to teach in high-need Appalachian schools. Both lead to sustainable outcomes that will be addressed in this proposal. WVUteach is supported by a leadership team with a proven record of successful recruitment and retention of STEM teacher candidates, particularly in the high shortage areas of physics and chemistry.
Outcomes
The project will support 25 desperately needed math and science teachers while integrating a promising professional development activity for teaching in the high needs classroom into the UTeach curriculum.
Broader Impacts
The 25 teachers (and the support for the growth of the program which will produce more teachers) will dramatically impact the educational outcomes of the children of West Virginia. The micro-messaging professional development, if proven efficacious, could be disseminated to all UTeach replication sites.
