Program offers science students teaching opportunities, experience

by Katilin Goodrich, Contributing Writer

Article Tools

Print View

Get RSS

This spring Tech launched the Robert Noyce Scholarship Program in conjunction with Kennesaw State University with funds provided by the National Science Foundation. The scholarship is awarded to students majoring in a science-related field who intend to teach high school chemistry or physics, including students earning degrees in Chemistry, Physics, Earth and Atmospheric Science and many of the engineering fields. The Robert Noyce Scholars Program will provide $10,000 per year scholarships to KSU and Tech undergraduates during their last year of undergraduate education and during their enrollment in KSU’s 15-month Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Robert Noyce Scholars will also participate in Noyce Scholars learning communities that start during their senior year and last all the way through their first year teaching.

“During the two years that students are in the Noyce Scholars program, they will be part of a Learning Community of like-minded students. The program will provide unique opportunities to talk with teachers and school systems and to explore what teaching is really like by visiting classrooms and interacting with high school students for 20 hours/semester,” said Marion Usselman, senior research scientist for the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing and lead for the Noyce Scholars program at Tech.

These learning communities aim to ease students into their careers by training them for classroom experience while undergraduates and give the entering teachers an easier transition into the classroom. During their first year teaching, Noyce scholars will have access to teaching support tools, including two retreats with veteran teachers to discuss classroom issues and strategies for teaching high school students.

At the end of the two-year scholarship program, the program requires recipients to teach for at least two years in high-need school districts for every year they received the scholarship. Most school systems in Georgia meet this high-needs criterion. Specifically, DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton, Marietta and Paulding districts have pledged to support the program and are eager to hire Noyce Scholars into their systems. These entering teachers begin their careers at the masters’ salary scale, which adds approximately $5,000 to the annual salary. Georgia high school science teachers at the masters level are often hired into 9.5 month jobs at salaries of at least $45,000/year.

Teachers are in short supply around the country, and one of the goals of starting this program was to provide a financial incentive for well-educated Tech and KSU graduates to pursue teaching careers with their degrees. “Around the country there is a severe shortage of K-12 mathematics and science teachers, which is only going to get worse … Tech, as the center of science and engineering learning in the state, needs to come up to the plate and contribute to K-12 education by encouraging talented undergraduate science and engineering majors to pursue careers in science and math K-12 teaching,” Usselman said.

This scholarship program is one more step towards making it easier for Tech graduates to pursue teaching as a career while gaining a level of experience with students. Only this year did Tech employ a pre-teaching advisor, Beth Spencer, to help students aspiring to a career in education. Tech has had a two-semester Principles of Teaching and Learning class for some time, but this is mostly to teach students how to pass the Georgia Assessment for the Certification of Educators exam, which qualifies them to teach.

Another opportunity is the Student-Teacher Enhancement Partnership, which puts undergraduate interns into the classroom for five hours a week to try to give them classroom experience.

“Spending time in the classroom is the only way to be truly prepared to teach,” said Amanda Baskett, a former Tech student who now teaches in the Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology. The Noyce Scholarship Program will be one more way for undergraduates to gain classroom time.

Still, the Noyce Scholarship Program aims to provide more of an incentive for Tech students to use their degrees to teach math and science in K-12. “A teacher is a leader, so opportunities Tech students have really prepare them for the classroom…we’re in a math and science crunch and really need science teachers, so why not motivate content-prepared students to go in the classroom as well as give them the education they need to teach? This program should help them do that,” Baskett said.

The scholarship committee has high hopes for the success of the Robert Noyce Scholarship Program and its impact on campus. Students interested in the scholarship should visit www.GaNoyceScholars.org