Conference: BIORETS workshop

This award will support a BIORETS Workshop planned to be held in January, 2024, at Florida International University in Miami, FL. BIORETS is the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Site program offered by the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO). The BIORETS program enables active research by cohorts of middle school teachers, high school teachers and community college faculty. BIORETS sites focus on using the teachers’ research experiences to develop curriculum, with the goal of enriching the teachers’ classroom teaching practices and inspiring a broad swath of students to consider higher education and careers in STEM. The workshop will bring together mentors and teachers supported with an active BIORETS awards. Approximately 40-60 participants will represent awards made in FY22 and FY23. The goals of the workshop are to create a national BIORETS community of practice, enhance networking between and among Sites, and share promising practices in teacher engagement, curriculum development, and mentoring. There will be discussions on sharing data resources and tools. The deliverables from the workshop will include a report of promising practices, tools, and other suggestions that will be valuable to both the BIORETS program participants and the NSF. A major goal of the BIORETS program is to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in biological research to enhance ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). 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.