This project represents a strong partnership across the UCLA campus, including the School of Engineering, the College of Letters and Science and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program starts with a proactive recruitment plan among sophomore science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors on the UCLA campus and STEM majors entering UCLA from community colleges. It offers the opportunity for 20 STEM students/year to explore teaching in a structured two-week September internship before the start of their junior year. Fifty-eight undergraduates are invited to begin credential preparation in their senior STEM year as Noyce scholars with a scholarship of $15,000. While completing the senior year, the students are admitted to the (Masters in Education) MEd program, which coincides with their first year of teaching and creates a cohort of Noyce scholars to network and collaborate with. Mentoring by both education and discipline-specific faculty and advisors is also a strong addition to this model. The project team contains a mix of STEM and education faculty all with a demonstrated commitment to training teachers for high needs schools. The social-justice mission of the UCLA teacher education program prepares its teachers specifically for high-need schools in which low SES and high ELL populations are the norm.
Intellectual Merit: The project is helping to assess and understand the essential components for a research institution such as UCLA, which lacks a strong presence of teacher preparation, to foster and support students who want to explore and pursue secondary school STEM teaching careers.
Broader Impact: Over a five-year span the project is providing 80 juniors with two-week classroom summer internships that foster permanent ties and mentorships with exemplary teachers and will graduate 58 Noyce Scholars to teach in high needs schools. During the induction year following the scholarship year, UCLA is continuing to provide the Noyce scholars with both a field supervisor, who assists, monitors and supports their progress and a cohort community of fellow first-year science and math teachers. This specific training focus and continuing mentorship, a part of the UCLA teacher education program, has been shown to lead to a very high five-year retention rate in urban schools and to continuing careers in education leadership for its graduates. During the second Noyce service-year, UCLA is continuing to provide networking opportunities for the Noyce scholars and ensuring that they are monitored in a district-supported Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program. Given the make-up of the leadership team the project is also providing a new visibility at UCLA for the need in California for highly qualified science and mathematics teachers and a knowledge across the campus among faculty, staff, and students of the resources that UCLA has to help students pursue this career.
