Expanding Pathways for STEM Teacher Education to Better Serve Minnesota’s Diverse Student Populations

该项目旨在满足国家对中等STEM教育项目能力建设的需求，以招募和培训更多的中等STEM教师，特别是来自不同背景的教师。存在着阻碍STEM专业学生从事中等STEM教学工作的重大障碍。例如，通常需要四年以上的时间来满足STEM学位和执照的要求，从而增加了获得学位的时间和大学成本。此外，鼓励和支持不同学生追求STEM教学事业的策略和结构有限。在这个项目中，圣托马斯大学将通过简化课程要求，识别和解决教学职业障碍，以及与社区学院合作，与更多样化的未来STEM教师建立联系，努力鼓励STEM教学职业。该大学希望这一努力能够增加明尼苏达州中学STEM教师的数量，以匹配该州多样化的城市学生人口。圣托马斯大学与诺曼代尔社区学院合作，旨在建立一种机制，招募不同的STEM专业学生，考虑在完成STEM学位的同时成为二级STEM教师。该伙伴关系旨在合作简化STEM和中学教育课程，并确定教师职业生涯的障碍。这所大学很少有学生选择成为中学教师，对于社区学院转学生来说，完成STEM和教育的双学位课程可能更具挑战性。中学教师双专业毕业率低的原因是缺乏相应的策略和支持。这个能力建设项目的目标是：1)重组STEM学位课程，允许学士学位在STEM学科和中等教师教育中双学位，使毕业在4年内；2)完成需求评估，以确定圣托马斯大学学生和转学生在完成STEM学科和中学教育的学士学位时遇到的障碍；3)与诺曼代尔社区学院（Normandale Community College）合作，调整他们的STEM课程，并制定策略，为社区大学学生提供到圣托马斯大学的无缝转学途径。该项目预计，实现这些目标可以导致未来Noyce Track 1提案的发展，为社区大学和四年制大学的学生提供奖学金支持，以完成双学位并成为STEM学科的中学教师。课程分析和需求评估的结果可以作为其他学院和大学解决课程和非课程挑战的模式，为未来培养更多的中学STEM教师。诺伊斯能力建设项目由罗伯特·诺伊斯教师奖学金项目（诺伊斯）支持。Noyce计划支持有才华的STEM本科专业和专业人士成为有效的K-12 STEM教师，并支持经验丰富的模范K-12教师成为高需求学区的STEM大师教师。它还支持对高需求学区K-12教师的持久性、留任性和有效性的研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national need for building the capacity of secondary STEM education programs to recruit and train more secondary STEM teachers, especially those from diverse backgrounds. Significant barriers exist that discourage STEM majors from pursuing careers in secondary STEM teaching. For example, it often takes longer than four years to meet both STEM degree and licensure requirements, thus raising time to degree and college costs. Additionally, limited strategies and structures are available to encourage and support diverse students’ pursuit of a STEM teaching career. In this project, the University of St. Thomas will work to encourage STEM teaching careers by streamlining its curricular requirements, identifying and addressing barriers to teaching careers, and partnering with a community college to connect with a greater diversity of future STEM teachers. The University expects this effort to increase the number of secondary STEM teachers in Minnesota that match the state’s diverse urban student population. The University of St. Thomas, in partnership with Normandale Community College, aims to create a mechanism for recruiting diverse STEM majors to consider becoming secondary STEM teachers while completing their STEM degrees. The partnership intends to collaborate to streamline STEM and secondary education curricula, and to identify barriers to a teaching career. Few students at the University choose to become secondary teachers, and completing a dual degree program in STEM and education can be even more challenging for community college transfer students. The absence of strategies and supports for these double majors contributes to the low graduation rates of secondary teachers. The goals of this Capacity Building project are to: 1) restructure STEM degree programs to allow for a B.A. double major in a STEM discipline and secondary teacher education that enables graduation in 4 years; 2) complete needs assessments to identify barriers encountered by University of St. Thomas students and transfer students to completing a baccalaureate degree in a STEM discipline and in secondary education; and 3) partner with Normandale Community College to align their STEM courses and develop strategies for a seamless transfer pathway for community college students to St. Thomas University. The project anticipates achieving these goals can lead to development of a Noyce Track 1 proposal in the future to provide scholarship support to both community college and four-year college students to complete dual degrees and become secondary teachers of a STEM discipline. Findings from the curriculum analyses and needs assessments could serve as a model for other colleges and universities in addressing curricular and non-curricular challenges of preparing more secondary STEM teachers for the future. This Noyce 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 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 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.