Capacity Building: Creating and Sustaining a Pathway for Engineering Majors to Become STEM Teachers

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The project aims to serve a national need for building pathways for engineering students to become grade 6-12 STEM teachers in high-need schools. The project will develop a framework for recruitment, retention, and reshaping of graduate teacher certification specifically for engineering students to become STEM teachers. The effort is a collaboration between the College of Engineering and the College of Education at the University of North Texas, a Hispanic Serving Institution. The project will collect evidence from engineering majors and advisors about interests in and barriers to careers in STEM teaching through surveys and focus groups. Additionally, stakeholders will collaboratively analyze this evidence in the context of current research on STEM teacher education and model post-baccalaureate teacher induction programs. The expected outcomes are to develop recruitment plans that will identify engineering majors and then lead them to become STEM teachers. Additionally, outcomes will include designs for a sustainable teacher induction program for post-baccalaureate engineering majors that results from collaboration between local partner school districts and the university.This project at the University of North Texas includes partnerships with six high-need school districts in the region, including Aledo, Grapevine-Colleyville, Mesquite, Plano, Roscoe Collegiate, and Sherman Independent School Districts. The intellectual merit of the project is to build, strengthen, and sustain partnerships with local high-need school districts where engineering graduates can pursue careers in grade 6-12 STEM teaching. The broader impact of this project lies in its potential to become a model for recruiting and retaining engineering students as STEM teachers through post-graduate teacher certification programs. The evaluation will assess the project's model, its planning and implementation processes, and the potential for a for a future Noyce Track 2 proposal. Dissemination includes presentation and publication of the resulting framework and program designs locally and nationally. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. 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.