Funding for CS-STEM Program

The Culturally Sustaining – STEM Teaching Program is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Faculty at PLU obtained funding to provide forgivable loans for teacher candidates and for mentoring support and for the development of an induction program.

This work was initiated when Drs. Simic Muller, Gardiner, and Seidel were awarded a Capacity Building Noyce Grant (Award Number 1758506), titled, “Building Capacity to Prepare STEM Majors to Become STEM Educators”. That program allowed for the development of a service learning course for Natural Science majors who are interested in developing and teaching science and mathematics curriculum in K-8 classrooms. The course is NSCI 350: STEM Education Partnership.

The current work is supported by a 5 year NSF grant (Award Number 1950106) that will support 21 students who enter the program as undergraduate or as graduate students. A central component of the projects is the funding that will provide undergraduate and graduate students from historically underrepresented populations with greater access to K-12 teaching careers. Other objectives of the project are to:

  • Develop CS-STEM scholars’ and teacher candidates’ content knowledge and cultural competency for teaching and working with ethnically and linguistically diverse students
  • Establish a research-based induction program from CS-STEM teachers that centers on equity-oriented ambitious STEM instruction
  • Continuously improve collaboration with partner school districts

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Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program

The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program provides funding to institutions of higher education to provide scholarships, stipends, and programmatic support to recruit and prepare STEM majors and professionals to become K-12 teachers. Scholarship and stipend recipients are required to complete two years of teaching in a high-need school district for each year of support. The program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge who teach in high-need school districts.

The program consists of four tracks: Track 1 – The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarships and Stipends (S&S) Track, Track 2 – The NSF Teaching Fellowships (TF) Track, Track 3 – The NSF Master Teaching Fellowships (MTF) Track, and Track 4 – The Noyce Research Track. In addition, there are Capacity Building awards, which may lead to the development of full proposals in Tracks 1-3.  NSF encourages partnerships between four-year institutions and two-year institutions, providing pathways leading to STEM teacher certification.

Funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation Grant No. 1950106

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.