Building Capacity to Close the Loop: From High School STEM Student to High School STEM Teacher

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This project aims to serve the national need of building capacity to recruit, prepare, and support certified STEM teachers, with attention to increasing the number of certified minority STEM teachers. This problem is important given the existing shortage of qualified minority STEM teachers, the changing demographics of the K-12 student population, and the positive impacts of teachers’ with similar demographics as the students they teach. The project intends to create a pathway to close the loop from high school STEM students to high school STEM teachers, by preparing STEM teachers who will teach in the same or a similar high school from which they graduated. It also includes plans for collecting baseline data to determine need, interest, and capacity for recruiting STEM majors to become STEM teachers. The expected outcomes of the project are: (1) a plan to recruit students from partnering Early College High Schools; (2) a model for preparing these students via learning communities; and (3) a plan for a comprehensive program to support this students as they return to teach in their high schools. It is expected this work will establish a replicable model within the partnering high-need educational agencies.This project at Prairie View A&M University, a Historically Black University, includes partnerships with Aldine Independent School District, Houston Independent School District, Royal Independent School District, and Sheldon Independent School District. Project goals include: (1) developing evidence-based, innovative strategies to recruit, prepare, and support candidates from high-need local educational agencies with existing Early College High Schools to increase the diversity of the pool of STEM teachers in Texas; and (2) advancing knowledge and understanding of models and strategies for recruiting, preparing, and supporting new STEM teachers in high-need educational agencies through learning communities at a historically black university. The project has the potential to benefit society by establishing the necessary infrastructure for implementing a future Noyce Track 1 proposal to encourage the full participation of underrepresented minority groups in STEM. 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 STEM teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness 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.