Building Capacity by Strengthening Pathways and Recruitment Strategies for Future STEM Teachers through a Community College and University Partnership

The project aims to serve the national need of building capacity to address the challenge of teacher shortages in high-need school districts particularly in STEM areas. The intention of this proposal is to develop clear pathways from the community college into the main university campus, and to develop an understanding of student perceptions about STEM and the teaching profession to better recruit and prepare STEM teachers. The intended collaboration between Dona Ana Community College (DACC) and New Mexico State University (NMSU) will be essential for building sustainable STEM educator pathways. These partners will work together to create practices that address what STEM undergraduates need to become effective STEM teachers. To accomplish these aims, both institutions will develop STEM degree concentrations to support a future Noyce Track 1 proposal. Additionally, data analysis aimed at understanding STEM student interest in simultaneously pursuing a major in a STEM discipline and a minor in Secondary Education at both institutions will be used to develop a recruitment plan for Noyce Scholars. As one of six minority-as-majority states, New Mexico’s schooling environment exhibits the complex educational, cultural, and economic challenges occurring throughout the United States. With NMSU located within three school districts along the US-Mexico border and producing only a small number of mathematics or science pre-service teachers, this region echos the national declining trend in teacher production. At the same time, there is a state-wide need for STEM prepared employees in military, space, and agriculturally based industries. This project at Dona Ana Community College includes a partnership with New Mexico State University. Project goals include the development of teacher education pathways that allow STEM majors to minor in Education, and the development of a recruitment plan. We will draw on research about the importance of teachers having high levels of content and pedagogical knowledge and intend on centering our recruitment plans on the needs of students from underrepresented minority groups given the demographics of the students at both institutions. Additionally, we will draw on approaches to collaboration that foster organizational boundary-spanning activities that lead to new inter-institutional norms. We will collect data from students through survey research about levels of interest in STEM teaching to design a recruitment plan. This project will allow both institutions to prepare teachers so they can successfully prepare their students for STEM learning despite strained socio-economic supports. Successful strategies implemented and documented from this project can be a model for replication at similar institutions. The independent evaluation approach for this capacity-building project, conducted by the Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation and Policy Center, will be both formative and summative. Project outcomes will be disseminated through local, state, and national conferences. This 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 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.