The population of students in Puerto Rico that has enrolled in higher education within the last six years has been severely affected by a compound effect of the many major humanitarian crises, including a deteriorated economy since the 2006 Great Recession, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, earthquakes in 2019 and 2020, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, and Hurricane Fiona in 2022. To ensure that students can cope with the aftermath of these natural disasters, the following programs were conceived: The
Ecosystem to Expand Capabilities and Opportunities for STEM-Scholars (EECOS), the Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) and The Noyce Teacher Scholars Program – (NoTeS), all three programs are funded by the National Science Foundation. EECOS developed a support ecosystem that consists of three elements: academic support, socio-emotional support, and financial support. NoTeS. provides talented Hispanic low-socioeconomic bilingual undergraduate or recently graduated STEM majors and professionals up to two years of scholarship funding as well as academic and professional support as they complete the requirements to obtain teacher certification to become K-12 math and science teachers. This program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge to fill the need for teachers in high-need school districts. RISE-UP was conceptualized to educate architecture and engineering students to work in interdisciplinary teams to provide resilient and sustainable design and construction solutions to infrastructure challenges. To date, EECOS has directly impacted XX students and graduated XXX students. NoTeS has helped nineteen scholars and ten affiliates (participants of the activities without the scholarship) partake. Eight of the nine alums scholars now work as math or science teachers in a high-needs school. RISE-UP has had 127 scholars who are enrolled or have completed the RISE-UP curricular sequence. This paper provides effective practices and a baseline characterization that universities can use to help students overcome the effects of natural disasters and promote student success
using ecosystems of support that expand capabilities and opportunities, particularly for STEM scholars.
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How remote teaching impacted our STEM Noyce scholars: Some successes, some struggles.
Improving the quantity and quality of STEM teachers is one of the goals of the Noyce Scholarship Grant Program implemented through the National Science Foundation. Here, we examine how the change to remote learning impacted ASU'’s Noyce Scholarship program. Our research question was as follows: what kinds of successes and struggles did STEM Noyce (a) in-service and (b) pre-service scholars experience in the first year of remote teaching during the pandemic? We interviewed three different cohorts of Noyce scholars: preservice teachers, first year teachers and second year teachers. Results showed that some scholars saw benefits to remote learning including more free time for other learning activities. They also observed teachers dedicated to student success. Challenges included an inability to reach all students, a continued focus on standardized tests, and a lack of flexibility within the districts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1758368
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10319568
- Editor(s):
- Langran, E.; Archambault, L.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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