This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The VCU Noyce Initiative is a collaborative project between Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Education and its College of Humanities and Sciences, in partnership with Richmond City, Henrico County, Chesterfield County, and Hopewell City Public Schools. The project is supporting and preparing 32 undergraduate students to be effective secondary science teachers in high-need schools. Undergraduate students are recruited in their junior year and initiated into teaching through an internship program at a summer enrichment camp for middle school students from high-need schools. Throughout their academic training, students are mentored by university faculty. During their senior year, they participate in undergraduate research that focuses on the scientific process and develop accessible, low-cost experiments that are disseminated to all NSF Noyce Scholars. The program prepares 18 "master science teachers" (Noyce Teaching Fellows) using the research-based Santa Cruz New Teacher Center mentoring model to work with Noyce Scholars during the year-long residency and critical first years of teaching. Focused efforts are made to attract and support a diverse group of participants. The long-term goals of this VCU Noyce Initiative are to recruit top science students to teaching, to decrease turnover and stabilize secondary science teaching faculties in high-need schools, to facilitate partnerships between science and education faculty, and to enrich community partnerships.
