The project is building the capacity in the greater Philadelphia area to strengthen all aspects of the STEM teacher pipeline. Seven regional colleges and universities that currently hold Noyce grants, Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Drexel University, La Salle University, University of Pennsylvania, Saint Joseph's University and Temple University, are partnering with the Philadelphia Education Fund to create the Philadelphia Regional Noyce (PRN) Partnership. The institutions in the partnership represent a broad array of Noyce programs impacting undergraduates, career-changers, post-baccalaureate students, and Master Teachers. With this range of Noyce programs, the partnership has the critical mass necessary to successfully develop a model demonstrating how multiple Noyce programs in the same geographical region work together to add value to what their individual programs offer. The intellectual merit of this project lies in understanding what initiatives lead to robust and productive synergies. The project has the potential for broad national impact as a model that could be adapted by other STEM teacher preparation consortia around the country.
The PRN Partnership is developing Asset Mapping and Needs Assessment of the region's STEM teacher preparation programs, is using these data in a year-long planning process, and is pilot testing a variety of initiatives that bring together the partners' Noyce educators, representing all stages of the STEM teacher continuum, to learn from one another in a community of practice.
The development of the partnership is inspired by theories of social network analysis which suggest that positive and unexpected synergies will occur and social capital will increase when trusted relationships are built between previously unconnected individuals and organizations.
(PRNP) is a collaboration between the Noyce programs of Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Drexel University, LaSalle University, Saint Joseph’s University, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania and also includes the Philadelphia Education Fund. The Partnership members have worked together over the past three years to strengthen all aspects of the STEM teacher pipeline: recruitment, pre-service preparation, induction, and ongoing professional development and growth through a teacher’s career. These initiatives were funded by a NSF Noyce Capacity Building grant and fit under the unifying theme of creating a Community of Practice among all levels of Noyce educators in the Philadelphia region. In 2011 the PRNP began its work together as a group of eight distinct Noyce projects. Each had their own concerns about recruiting, preparing and developing great STEM teachers and each were looking to determine how to make their own programs stronger. The group meet monthly and, for the first year, focused on identifying the needs of the region’s Noyce Scholars and determining the ways in which the partnership could meet these needs. The participants also shared updates on what their programs were doing and information about STEM developments in the region. This information sharing proved very valuable to the participants and helped build trust and community among the members. In year two of the partnership, PRNP initiated a number of pilot projects to test out the partnership concept. One area in which the partnership added value to the individual programs was by sponsoring workshops. Classroom management was identified as the number one need during the year one Needs Assessment. In response, PRNP sponsored a three part series of workshops on classroom management techniques that was open to scholars, both pre-service and in-service, from all partners. Based on post-event evaluations, Scholars reported a high level of satisfaction with the content and facilitation of the workshops. Several of the Noyce programs worked with Master Teachers. These Master teachers were brought into the project to serve as resources for the Noyce scholars who were starting out: in some instances, pre-service scholars did internships with the Master teachers or did their student teaching in the classrooms of the Master teachers. The initiatives of the partnership were also linked with the activities of the individual partners. When a Noyce program hosted an event for its scholars, it made the event available to all the scholars in PRNP. As trust grew among the partners, the partners started contributing funds from their individual Noyce projects to support the PRNP wide programing, thereby expanding the amount of programming that PRNP could undertake. Ties were strengthened between the partners. For example, scholars from one of the programs were able to use their scholarship funds to enroll in the graduate program offered by another of the partners. The Philadelphia Education Fund’s Teacher Residency Program had been providing mentoring to the scholars from the University of Pennsylvania; other partners recognized the value of a central organization providing mentoring and, rather than developing their own small mentoring program, contracted with the Teacher Residency Program to provide mentoring. The group worked together to ensure that all scholars who were looking for teaching positions could find jobs by pooling their contacts and developing a process that was carried out by the program coordinator. This unified approach proved more successful than earlier efforts by individual partner in finding job placements for their scholars. The Philadelphia School District was in a period of transition when the PRNP started. Over time, the Partnership was able to build a working relationship with the District and now works closely with the District in recruiting scholars to teach in the District. The fact that PRNP represents seven colleges and universities has enhanced our standing in the eyes of district administrators and has aided in our efforts to open lines of communication with the district. The experiences of the past three years demonstrated that the concept of a regional partnership was viable. The partners found a variety of ways that by working together they were able to support their Noyce scholars in ways that their individual programs could not. As a result of the success of the partnership, the participants have decided to continue working together. In evaluating the ways in which a regional partnership can support STEM teaching, the group decided that its top priority should be supporting new teachers so as to keep them in the profession. As a result, PRNP submitted a second Capacity Building grant in March 2014 to develop a regional model for new teacher support that includes a program to train mentors. This grant was funded, the new teacher support program is now being implemented and the Philadelphia Regional Noyce Partnership is exploring additional ways to continue supporting STEM teaching in the region.
