With support from the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce), this Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends project aims to help address the national shortage of highly qualified STEM high school teachers in high-need school districts. This project has three parts: 1) a summer teaching internship program for undergraduate STEM majors, which is designed to recruit students into the teaching profession; 2) scholarships and mentoring for a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program; and 3) a mentoring program and continuing professional development for newly-minted teachers to retain them as teachers. An innovative feature of the project is its plan to support 40 summer teaching internships for STEM undergraduates, as a pathway to recruit students into the MAT scholarship program. Through this effort, undergraduate STEM majors will serve as teaching interns at science museums, summer science camps, and local non-profit science educational organizations. While interning, the students will be actively mentored by University faculty, staff at the partner facilities, and local high school teachers. These internships are intended to help students gain confidence in their ability to teach and inspire them to continue participation in the project as Noyce Scholars in the MAT program.
Over five years, this project plans to provide scholarships to 30 STEM graduates to support their entry into and completion of the MAT program. The MAT program will provide pedagogical knowledge and residency experiences to prepare STEM graduates for a career in teaching. The project will target graduates in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering Technology, Computer Science, and Mathematics, which represent the highest need STEM fields in the region. This program has three sequential goals to recruit, prepare, and retain highly qualified STEM high school teachers in high-need districts in eastern Tennessee. The summer internship will be an essential component of the recruitment program. To capture the impact of the internship, the Noyce team will use regular journal entries written by the interns and a survey developed by the American Physical Society to investigate whether participation in such internships changes undergraduate attitudes toward teaching as a profession. The results of this study will be disseminated to the STEM education community at science education conferences and submitted for publication in science education journals. Once the STEM undergraduate students graduate and are recruited as Noyce Scholars, the MAT program will provide them with a comprehensive background in education, including STEM teaching strategies and pedagogy. When the Scholars transition to full-time teaching, the project will provide three years of induction support to enhance their success. The recruitment, training, and retention strategies used in this program will build a strong network and develop partnerships that will support a long-term goal of increasing the number of highly-qualified STEM teachers who are placed into high-need schools. The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 STEM teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
