East Tennessee Noyce STEM Teacher Preparation Program

There is a critical shortage of STEM teachers in high-need fields, especially in Computer Science, Engineering/Engineering Technology, in the southern Appalachian region. This paper describes an NSF funded Noyce Track 1 Teacher Recruiting program at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) awarded in 2019. The program is administered in partnership with local high-need school districts in the First Congressional District of Tennessee as well as four nearby nonprofit educational organizations, namely the Gray Fossil Site/ETSU Natural History Museum, the Hands- On Museum, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and the Bays Mountain Planetarium, and three summer science camps: the ETSU Governor's School, the ETSU Renaissance Camp, and the ETSU Computing/Technology Camp. The program has three parts: 1) a summer teaching internship program for undergraduate STEM majors designed to recruit students into the teaching profession, 2) scholarships and mentoring for a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, and 3) a mentoring program and continuing professional development for newly minted teachers to retain them as teachers. It is focused on Physics, Chemistry, Engineering/Engineering Technology, Computer Science, and Mathematics. The heart of the program is a 4+1 bachelors/post-baccalaureate program in which students obtaining undergraduate degrees in high-need STEM fields are recruited for the MAT program. Thus far two cohorts of 8 students completed the internship programs and all showed interest to become STEM teacher in their respective fields. Of them three students completed the MAT program and currently teaching in high-need schools. We anticipate that ETSU Noyce program will create a group of teachers who will be able to inspire future generations of STEM professionals in Northeast Tennessee region.