This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
Creating STEM Teachers for Arkansas' Future (C-STAF) is an educational opportunity attracting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors into the teaching profession. Through a collaboration of Arkansas State University's (ASU) Colleges of Science and Mathematics, Engineering, and Education, C-STAF is providing full scholarships for one to three years to ASU juniors and seniors majoring in STEM fields. Scholarship recipients are completing both their STEM degrees and teacher licensure and are providing 25 new STEM teachers for high-need schools. In addition, C-STAF is attracting to the teaching profession ASU students committed to STEM fields by offering credit for a new "Try-out the Classroom" course, and a summer training program. The C-STAF program has two primary impacts. First, ASU students dedicated to STEM fields are being encouraged to consider teaching as a viable and rewarding career choice, thus increasing the number of highly trained STEM teachers for the future of Arkansas, a historically educationally disadvantaged state, particularly in the Mississippi River delta and Ozark foothill regions served by ASU. Second, by taking the approach of placing specifically trained scientists/mathematicians/engineers into Arkansas classrooms, a deeper knowledge of these fields are available to future Arkansas students, thus increasing future STEM practitioners and the depth of their knowledge in and enthusiasm for their STEM-related fields. In addition, the experience and data obtained in the project are valuable additions to the knowledge base of STEM education, and benefit related future programs.
