Graduate Teaching Opportunity Program (GTO) NSF-supported STEM Disciplines: biology, neurosciences, biomedical, marine biology, oceanography, seismology, computational science, bioengineering .
The proposal describes a collaborative project between University of California- San Diego, 2 major secondary school districts, 9 high schools, and the Emory University (Atlanta, GA) PRISM program (a previously funded GK-12 project) to develop graduate / teacher partnerships which will transfer new, inspirational activities derived from ongoing research lab activity into mainstream high school science classrooms and after-school Science & Technology Clubs. Designed to reinvigorate science teachers and stimulate underrepresented students to enter STEM careers, these activities will be developed annually at a Graduate Teaching Opportunity (GTO). The GTO model is based upon the highly visible pilot program (BioBridge) and will involve many of the same partners and hopes to clearly demonstrate the potential efficacy of an up-scaled model based upon the interaction of graduate students and teachers of science. The program seeks to catalyze a permanent alteration of the graduate student training culture at UCSD to include experience with, and understandings of, the K-12 educational process; increasing K-12 teacher knowledge of leading-edge science, interest in research, and the inquiry-based research process; inspiring student interest in STEM educations and careers; and, establishing sustainable communications and collaborations between university researchers and school/districts to increase the flow of exciting science discoveries directly into K-12 classrooms in accordance with curricula/standards dictates.
The project merit lies in its goal to establish productive, ongoing inter-institutional communities of teaching practice through collaborations among university researchers, their graduate students, and high school science teachers. GTO establishes a sustainable science education model to dramatically increase numbers of students entering STEM career pathways.
The Socrates GK12 Fellows Program connected doctoral students at UC San Diego to local high school science teachers with the over-arching goal of creating "productive, ongoing inter-institutional communities of teaching practice." The specific goals of the program were to: Institutionalize and sustain permanent changes in the training of UCSD STEM graduate students Increase graduate student teaching and communication skills Prepare graduate students for work as science education professionals Facilitate improved high school science teacher content knowledge and use of inquiry-based methodologies Increase student interest and enthusiasm toward STEM careers, particularly for educationally underserved, economically disadvantaged groups Implement permanent changes to sustain ongoing communication between school districts and university researchers/graduate students The UCSD Socrates GK12 Fellows Program had a total of 45 doctoral students participate from a variety of departments including Biomedical Sciences, Neurosciences, Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Bioengineering. Over six years, the program worked with dozens of high schools within San Diego County. The program's efforts have resulted in four publications of fellows’ work in the Journal of Chemical Education (Specht and Raley, 2013; Garcia Sega and Clarke, 2013; Blatti and Burkhart, 2012; Rios and French, 2011), and have helped fellows gain positions as postdoctoral fellows, tenure-track faculty, and science education professionals across the country. Evaluation of the Socrates GK12 Fellows program has shown that the program was successful at improving Fellows’ teaching, collaboration, and team-building skills, and had a consistent positive impact on graduate students’ communication skills in the short term (Robertson & Peterman, September 2011). The Socrates GK12 Fellows program also was successful at integrating fellows’ science research activities into high school science classes.
