The Montclair State University (MSU) Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program is recruiting, preparing, and supporting 30 new science teachers for New Jersey's high-need K-12 school districts. The project is offering scholarships equal to the amount of New Jersey in-state tuition and fees to Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Physics majors in their junior and senior years who were recruited in their freshman or as transfer students and subsequently admitted into the Teacher Education Program. The PI team is promoting the diversification of the population of science teachers by recruiting STEM majors from three collaborating community colleges: the County College of Morris, Essex County College, and Passaic County Community College.
The Noyce Scholars participate in a Science Career Survey Experience (SCSE) that is coordinated with university partners in local biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing industries, as well as The Liberty Science Center, a nationally renowned science museum. The purpose of the SCSE component of the Noyce program is to cultivate a working knowledge of the how the curricular content of high school science classes is currently used in these careers, and the expectation is that these experiences will influence their teaching.
The project also advances discovery and understanding through a research program entitled Knowledge in Science Teaching (KiST). The KiST project is studying the way in which individuals learn to teach secondary science in diverse classrooms and examining changes in science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge over the course of the teacher preparation program and through student teaching.
