An Asset Model Approach for Building Capacity in a Rural Region for the Recruitment, Mentoring, and Licensing of Math and Science Preservice Teachers

The project aims to serve the national need of producing high quality STEM math and science teachers. This project intends to build capacity to create a pathway from high school to science or mathematics teacher certification with a focus on students in rural locales. This project will serve national interest and the Noyce program’s intent through implementing an asset-based approach that builds upon the strengths of a rural community in the recruitment and mentoring of students to fill much needed positions in STEM teaching.

Significant to this project is the identification of how the unique strengths of a rural region can be leveraged to create a pathway for students from high school to STEM teacher licensure. This is important because rural regions across the nation are struggling with recruiting and retaining high quality STEM teachers. This project proposes to both capitalize on the strengths of the local community and to implement a series of steps towards the creation of a pathway to recruit, mentor, and prepare STEM students for teacher certification.

This includes working with the local community, the newly aligned two-year college branch campuses that tend to serve primarily low-income students, and high school students’ own enthusiasm for mathematics and science. This project has the potential to provide useful information on a different, more direct approach for recruiting students along with how to create a pathway from high school to STEM teacher certification to address the need for more high-quality science and mathematics teachers.

This Capacity Building project at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, a comprehensive public institution, is in partnership with its two 2-year branch campuses, UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County and UW-Platteville Richmond. The project’s overarching goal is to create a “grow-your-own” program, designed to recruit promising high school seniors, and to then provide innovative, continual support as they travel on the path to becoming highly-qualified high school STEM educators.

The project will achieve this by building partnerships, creating a cohort-centered mentoring program, and systematically gathering and analyzing data. The project’s intellectual merit includes the use of an asset model approach to leverage the strengths of a rural community in the recruiting and supporting of STEM students seeking education licensing.

The project’s broader impacts will provide other institutions, particularly those in a dynamic post-secondary state system, the steps necessary for creating a pathway that eases rural students’ transition from high school, to a two-year institution, to a four-year institution, then to the classroom as high-quality, licensed science or mathematics teachers. The work will be evaluated by examining the effectiveness of the proposed Capacity Building approach that leads to the creation and submission of a future Noyce proposal.

The findings will be disseminated through established regional and national networks focused on improving science and mathematics K-12 teachers. 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 persistence, retention, and effectiveness 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.