Building Up and Removing the Barriers to STEM Teaching in Virginia

The project aims to serve the national need of recruiting, retaining, preparing, and graduating high-quality STEM teachers, especially in urban public school districts in Virginia. Norfolk State University (NSU) is a public midsize Historically Black College/University (HBCU) founded in 1935. Guided by a report that having a Black teacher in a classroom increases Black K-12 students’ interest in attending college, the project aims to put more Black teachers in STEM classrooms.

NSU has a long tradition of preparing K-12 teachers to work and serve in the Hampton Roads community in Virginia. In this project, the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Secondary Education of NSU will strengthen this tradition by building capacity towards the goal of securing a Track 1 Scholarships and Stipends grant.

This project at NSU deepens a partnership with the Norfolk Public Schools and aims to build up, and remove barriers to, STEM teaching through (1) developing recruitment and retention strategies, (2) enhancing existing infrastructure for the path towards teacher licensure, (3) engaging STEM faculty in promoting K-12 teaching as a career and supporting prospective teachers, (4) strengthening its existing partnerships with local school districts, and overall, (5) building capacity for a Noyce Track 1 program. These goals will be achieved through developing training for teaching exams, performing needs assessments of NSU STEM students and local school districts, and instituting an innovative Involve-the-Professor program that informs and engages STEM faculty.

Lessons learned from this project will serve to inform not only the STEM and education communities, but other institutions striving to provide effective contributions to the educational enterprise of urban K-12 teaching. This Capacity Building project is supported through the national Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program which 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, and 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.