Collaborative Research: Four Corners Noyce Scholars Program

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The Four Corners Noyce Scholars (FCNS) program is a Track 1 Noyce project. It will be a cross-state collaboration between Fort Lewis College (FLC) in Durango, CO and San Juan College (SJC) in Farmington, NM. It will deliver highly-qualified STEM teachers to a rural service region that overlaps three states. This project will provide one-year scholarships to 29 students who have already completed a STEM degree and will pursue Post-Baccalaureate teacher licensure through FLC or SJC. An additional 15 undergraduate students will be awarded multi-year scholarship support while pursuing licensure in conjunction with a degree in Math, Biology, Chemistry, Geoscience or Physics. This project will address the lack of qualified secondary STEM teachers in the Four Corners area. FCNS will increase the number of these teachers by recruiting and training students who are predisposed to living in rural communities. Then they will place them in high-need communities via student teacher assignments and long-term employment. The first goal of FCNS will be to increase the number and diversity of certified Math and Science teachers in the Four Corners region. Secondly, the project will provide mentorship and professional development to induction year teachers. Thirdly, the project will assess the effectiveness of the program's recruitment and support strategies. FCNS will develop a recruitment funnel that will expose promising STEM undergraduate students to instructional experiences. Selected students will receive a stipend to take part in summer internships through one of ten community partners in NM, CO, or AZ. Prior to receiving scholarship support, Noyce Scholars will attend a summer bridge program. This program will build camaraderie, create networking experiences, and address cultural fluency, literacy, and numeracy. These scholars will receive the training and induction year support needed to teach effectively in impoverished, isolated, rural communities with large Native American and Hispanic populations. A partnership between FCNS and the Navajo Nation Math Circle (NNMC) program will create exciting opportunities to recruit highly-qualified Navajo students into teaching and to provide FLC and SJC students exposure to the Navajo Nation and culture.Over five years, 44 teachers will complete certification and teach in one of thirteen high-need partner school districts. Starting in their freshman year, undergraduate students at both FLC and SJC will work with middle- and high-school students through activities on their college campus. These activities will include math festivals, chemistry demonstrations, science fair judging, and guiding visits to animal labs. Sophomore-level students will take their pre-teaching experiences into the schools. They will give sample lessons, tutor, and visit schools. The school visits will include both in-school and after-school programs through NNMC. Transfer pathways will be developed between SJC (a 2-year institution) and FLC (a 4-year institution). This will allow SJC students to receive Noyce support while completing STEM degrees at FLC. Dissemination of project results will include conference presentations by co-PIs, FCNS Scholars speaking in their home communities, and educational research results being submitted to appropriate journals and conferences. The project will seek to evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment activities, collaborative arrangements, and pathway alternatives, to generate evidence-based strategies for the preparation and retention of effective STEM teachers in the Four Corners region and similar settings around the U.S.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.