The Science and Mathematics Education Research Collaborative Postdoctoral Program

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This project will support a cohort of postdoctoral fellows within the Science and Mathematics Education Research Collaborative (SMERC), an interdisciplinary group of STEM education researchers from physics, biology, mathematics, chemistry, science communication, and engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The postdoctoral fellows will work with mentors on a wide range of interdisciplinary research topics, and participate in professional development that includes research, classroom practice, and community involvement activities. The research and professional development opportunities are designed to help the postdoctoral fellows develop the knowledge and skills to conduct foundational research in STEM education. The interdisciplinary focus of the program will also help to bring together researchers from different disciplines, breaking down traditional academic silos and thus better preparing the fellows to conduct interdisciplinary STEM education research. A distinguishing feature of this postdoctoral training effort is its commitment to developing an interdisciplinary community of STEM education scholars. Research and professional development activities include opportunities for fellows to participate in research projects from a variety of single- and multi-disciplinary topics, to work with mentors from various disciplines, to gain knowledge of and skill with a variety of research methods (e.g., quantitative stochastic modeling and network analysis of large institutional data sets, and various qualitative methods), to participate in existing RIT affiliated programs that share SMERC’s core interdisciplinary philosophy, and to gain teaching knowledge and skills working with faculty instructors. The program also serves to build significant capacity for the RIT to develop into a regional hub of discipline-based education research.This project is funded by the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program, which is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Traineeship Track is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas, through the comprehensive traineeship model that is innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.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.