- Year 2023
- NSF Noyce Award # 1748400
- First Name Allison
- Last Name Little
- Institution Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
- Role/Position PI
- Workshop Category Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Chemistry, Life Sciences, Mathematics, STEM Education (general)
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Evaluators/Education Researchers, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs
- Topics Recruiting with Retention in Mind
- Session Length 45 minutes minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Arne Christensen, Hirul Patel
Goals
MassTeach exclusively recruits STEM community college students to become STEM teachers. As a result of attending this session, participants will: (1) have a better understanding of the value of recruiting community college students into STEM teaching to increase teacher diversity; (2) the complexity of supporting community college students after they transfer to university; and (3) challenges of recruiting community college students in a virtual environment.
Evidence
This session will present evidence analyzed by the project’s external evaluator and demographic information collected during the application period. MassTeach Scholars are 28% diverse compared to 8% diversity of the MA teacher workforce. Scholar surveys have provided insight into the challenges of recruiting community college students. Qualitative data have provided insight into the challenges transfer students have in adjusting to university demands, as well as issues with course scheduling that do not appear to be an issue when looking at policies.
Proposal
MassTeach is a Track 1 Noyce Program that began in 2018 and exclusively recruits STEM community college students to become STEM teachers as a strategy to diversify the STEM teacher workforce. The project was in the middle of recruiting its second cohort of Scholars when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As a result of in-person classes being suspended that year, recruitment proved to be challenging. However, while universities returned to have students return to campuses, community colleges remained almost completely remote throughout the time of this project. This session will share lessons learned from recruiting and supporting community college students and university scholars during the pandemic. Additionally, presenters will highlight the supports needed to nurture the transfer students as they enter the university as scholars and how the complexities of community college student lives continue to need to be addressed in order for scholars to be successful. At the conclusion of this session, attendees should be excited and more prepared to recruit more community college students to become Noyce scholars.
