SEL Partnership for Noyce Scholars

Southern University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

The SEL Partnership Noyce Scholarship Program is based on a partnership among Southern University Baton Rouge, the East Baton Rouge Parish School System and Louisiana State University. Other organizations involved in this program include the Louisiana Resource Center for Educators and Teach Baton Rouge (non-profits that offer alternate teacher certification programs). The program is recruiting strong STEM majors who are in or beyond their third year of study into programs that lead to secondary-teacher certification. Twelve new scholarships are being given each year of this four-year project, for a total of 48 scholarship awards. Intellectual Merit. The SEL Partnership program is built around three kinds of knowledge needed by effective teachers of STEM disciplines: STEM disciplinary knowledge, understanding of learners at the secondary school level, and the pedagogical content knowledge that enables teachers to make ideas accessible to others. New teachers recruited into this program are given access to these kinds of knowledge through an imaginative leveraging of resources and opportunities that replicates a model first developed and implemented at Louisiana State University. The Louisiana State University Geaux Teach program is providing resources and infrastructure such as customized courses, field experiences, and mentoring. Broader Impact. East Baton Rouge and Louisiana in general suffer from dire shortages of qualified STEM teachers. STEM teacher candidates in this scholarship program include some of the most highly qualified students at Southern University Baton Rouge, one of the largest historically Black universities in the nation. Alternative certification programs are providing opportunities needed by STEM students who have chosen to become teachers too late in their undergraduate programs to fit all of the certification requirements into their undergraduate STEM degree programs.