Building a Partnership in New Orleans: Paving the Way for STEM Teachers

Dillard University, New Orleans LA

Investigators

Abstract

The project aims to serve the national need of building capacity to prepare well-qualified STEM teachers, particularly to serve high-need school districts in New Orleans, Louisiana. This project will work toward developing an innovative undergraduate degree and licensure program to address STEM teacher needs in the following foundational disciplines: Biology/Life Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics. While centered at Dillard University, the project includes partnerships with Delgado Community College and Xavier University to help plan and build capacity toward a distinctive multi-institutional curricular pathway. This pathway could encourage and support talented, diverse students to pursue K-12 STEM teaching in local high-need school districts. The project will establish capacity for a strong transfer pathway from Delgado Community College, a two-year urban institution, to Dillard University, an urban HBCU in New Orleans, and finally to Xavier University’s master's program for a teaching certificate. The project goals include: (1) a needs assessment for STEM teacher education in the New Orleans area, (2) the establishment of strong partnerships between the three institutions and several local high-need schools, to be identified in the planning year, and (3) the design of new STEM major courses offering a specialized teacher training emphasis and culturally responsive curriculum. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention 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.