Community Alliance for STEM Teaching (CAST): Building Capacity for Recruiting and Preparing Future STEM Teachers through Community-based Research

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In this Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program capacity building project the Carthage College Teacher Education Program and the Division of Natural Sciences propose to develop a partnership with Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) to encourage and prepare the college's top STEM students to teach science in high needs schools. The outcome of this project will be a new interdisciplinary curriculum component, the Community Alliance for STEM Teaching (CAST), that can engage majors from a number of science disciplines in a community centered effort designed to increase their interest in a STEM teaching career. By engaging a variety of agents (teachers, students, administrators from high needs schools as well as college faculty and students) in the planning, the project will also help strengthen ties between the partners as they explore new ways of interacting. The project will engage such community based organizations as the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium, and local municipal water-treatment faciilties. Several aspects of the project resonate beyond the immediate audience and offer the promise of sustained community involvement in teacher education. Developing a high-profile curricular component in integrated sciences and linking it to pre-service teacher education will significantly enhance the visibility and appeal of the Carthage Teacher Education Program in a community that is embracing modern and reformed STEM-focused curricula. Dissemination of this project will occur through the traditional mechanisms of social media, web presence, print campaigns, and conference presentations, and through the physical presence of monitoring equipment in partner schools, attendance at community forums and city meetings to discuss the monitoring research on air and water, and through informal public education.