Western Regional Noyce Alliance

San Francisco State University, San Francisco CA

Investigators

Abstract

A national shortage of STEM teachers is still a reality. According to 2016 report from the Center for Public Education, "Fixing the Holes in the Teacher Pipeline: An Overview of Teacher Shortages," STEM teaching vacancies remain the hardest to fill nationwide. Schools with a high percentage of minority or low-income students find it much more difficult to hire and retain STEM teachers (Center for Public Education, 2016). The overarching goal of the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program is to increase the quality, diversity, and number of the nation's STEM teachers who are well prepared to engage students in high-need school districts. Another critical need is continued engagement of outstanding Noyce teachers to support them in persisting in the teaching profession. To continue to meet this goal, the Western Regional Noyce Alliance (WRNA) proposes to provide Noyce participants in twelve western states with four tiers of professional growth opportunities. These opportunities include three annual regional conferences, eighteen regional networking workshops, six mathematical and summer institutes, and research experiences for Noyce Scholars and Fellows. The states in the western region are California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Wyoming, and Montana. This project intends to support nine institutions to provide the coordinated professional development over three years. These institutions are San Francisco State University (as the lead), California Polytechnic State University, California State University-Fresno, Northern Arizona University, San Diego State University, the University of Arizona, the University of Portland, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Wyoming. Over the three-year project, WRNA conferences are expected to serve about 950 Noyce participants. In addition, the project intends to reach 150 Noyce teachers through summer institutes and 1,200 participants through regional networking workshops, and to engage nine additional Noyce participants in immersive summer research. The WRNA is expected to help increase the number of future STEM leaders in the region's high-need school districts who are well-prepared to effectively implement the Next Generation Science Standards and/or the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, as more Western Region states fully adopt or include similar standards in their STEM curricula. Noyce leaders will have more opportunities to gain a better understanding of Noyce evaluation and research efforts both nationally and locally. Noyce projects that have had years of success will mentor and support newer projects. This effort may help sustain Noyce influence at each of the western region campuses over time and beyond the lifetime of the award. Supporting the continued growth of Noyce teachers as outstanding STEM professionals is expected to assist in their persistence as classroom teachers and instructional leaders. The indirect impact of WRNA is expected to be that hundreds of thousands of students in high-need school districts will receive a high-quality STEM education from teachers who are well-trained in new and exciting directions in STEM education. Moreover, the findings from the robust project evaluation conducted by the American Institute of Research (AIR), along with an individual educational researcher, has the potential to assist other STEM educators to provide effective professional growth opportunities, in support of retaining outstanding teachers in the teaching profession, particularly in those serving 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.