The Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network is conducting two annual information and proposal development workshops focused on increasing the awareness and participation of Minority-serving Institutions (MSIs) in the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Workshop participants include two-person faculty teams from 15 MSIs with accredited teacher education programs. Each team consists of a STEM faculty member and a teacher education faculty member. Minority-serving Institutions represent a valuable source of future K-12 mathematics and science teachers who can help meet the nation's future economic challenges through the development of a more productive science and technology workforce. Moreover, MSIs are uniquely qualified to address the issue of recruiting, retaining, and developing STEM teachers for high-need schools, especially in urban areas. The Noyce Scholarships serve as an incentive to attract and retain talented students majoring in STEM disciplines at MSIs into the pre-college teaching profession. The QEM workshops provide participants feedback on their required project summaries to assist them in developing their ideas into competitive Noyce proposals. Consultants and current Noyce grantees lead discussions of best practices in STEM K-12 teacher preparation as well as in the recruitment and retention of pre-service teachers. The institutions represented by the workshop participants will use the Noyce award as a stimulus for strengthening their teacher education programs to produce high quality mathematics and science teachers who will eventually work in high-need areas.
