"Rural PTRA" is a five-year national Teacher Enhancement project to accommodate physics and physical science teachers in a rural environment. Rural PTRA has a faculty member at a university as a Rural PTRA Coordinator to facilitate arranging and hosting PTRA instructional sessions. PTRAs from the previous PTRA and PTRA Plus projects will conduct the workshops as per the PTRA model. Following a phased plan for implementation, there will be 3 rural sites in year one, 10 in year two, 20 in year three, 33 in year four and 26 in year five. Rural physics and physical science teachers will be able to enroll in 36 workshop hours per year. During the course of the project 655 participants will receive a minimum of 108 hours and another 375 a minimum of 72 hours. Following the PTRA model the project will identify rural participants with leadership capability and content knowledge and will encourage them to apply for PTRA leader training to establish a cohort of Rural PTRA teacher leaders that can continue to serve science teachers from rural communities. In the pattern of previous PTRA projects this has led to long term sustainability.
