UT Education Leaders Collaborate to Increase the Number and Diversity of STEM Teachers
Weeks before The University of Texas at Austin and K-12 education at large would be upended by the pandemic in 2020, three of UT Austin’s education leaders — Uri Treisman, Executive Director of the Charles A. Dana Center; Michael Marder, Executive Director of UTeach; and Carol Fletcher, Director of EPIC — were tucked into a conference room with Jamie Harper, Microsoft’s Vice President of US Education, near the UTeach offices in UT Austin’s Painter Hall, deep in conversation.
The topic at hand: Eighth-grade algebra scores as an indicator of inequality.
Eighth-grade algebra is often a prerequisite for high school computer science courses, as well as for college math readiness requirements for students interested in majoring in a STEM field. However, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), average eighth-grade mathematics scores for students from under-resourced populations — as determined by their eligibility for free and reduced lunch — consistently fall below the average scores of those with fewer financial and economic obstacles. The number of highly qualified STEM teachers to provide instruction students need in their content courses has been steadily declining in Texas and across the nation.
What does this mean, practically speaking? Simply put, as Texas faces a math and computer science teacher shortage, preparing the STEM leaders of tomorrow requires reexamining the teacher pipeline today. Developing a new approach to STEM teacher preparation can help our schools improve student access to high-quality math and computer science programs — especially for under-resourced middle and high schools.
From that meeting in early 2020, a collaborative, multiyear project between the Dana Center, UTeach, and EPIC’s WeTeach_CS program, with gift support from Microsoft, was born. Together, these organizations are working along multiple strands of the STEM teaching pipeline to increase the number and diversity of middle and high school STEM teachers and to better support students interested in pursuing STEM careers — with a focus on areas and populations with the highest need.
“The United States has enormous current shortages of middle and high school science and mathematics teachers. In view of the critical importance of middle school mathematics to support equity and provide access to college and STEM careers, Uri Treisman, Jamie Harper, Carol Fletcher, and I decided in the spring of 2020 that we could address this problem by creating new pathways to middle and high school STEM teaching.”
– Michael Marder, Executive Director, UTeach; Professor of Physics, UT Austin College of Natural Sciences
Making an Impact Across the STEM Pipeline
Supported by a generous gift from Microsoft, the partnership sought first to get a clearer picture of the critical challenges that Texas educators and students are facing in mathematics and computer science.
“When the opportunity arose for Microsoft to help accelerate some of UT’s award-winning teacher preparation and development programs, our decision to invest was a quick and easy one,” said Jamie Harper, Vice President, US Education, Microsoft. “This program expands on our long-standing work with UT and we look forward to continued impact in the future.”
The partnership spoke with superintendents, principals, community colleges, universities, and UTeach network sites statewide and found that there was a strong desire for more collaboration and better alignment of STEM programs across the board. They also discovered that communities on the outskirts of large metropolitan areas experienced the greatest challenges related to STEM education access, as compared to rural and urban areas.
Keeping these perspectives in mind, the partnership began to develop a novel mechanism for recruiting, training, and certifying middle school math and computer science teachers in under-resourced regions, along all aspects of the STEM pipeline.
Engaging underrepresented students. As an initial area of focus, the partnership considered the recruitment of underrepresented students early in their education trajectory. Currently, the collaboration is working to develop a scalable model to offer an online version of select UTeach Outreach summer camps in partnership with universities and community colleges outside of the Austin area. The camps serve on average between 300 and 600 students annually and are focused on increasing STEM participation from underrepresented populations.
Developing new STEM pathways. Currently, three different efforts are being developed in tandem:
- Creating a new teaching pathway with UTeach and Austin Community College that is centered on the student experience and expected to launch in fall 2022 with an inaugural class of 20+ future STEM teachers.
- Forming an advisory panel of STEM teacher preparation stakeholders to create a scalable community college to university model that we will work to implement across Texas at multiple institutions.
- Collecting lessons learned from UTeach programs nationwide.
Reaching teachers in the classroom. To better support teachers in the classroom and enhance the STEM teaching pipeline, the partnership is working to create a greater repertoire of middle school mathematics curriculum freely available through the Dana Center’s website, which received more than 246,000 users in the past year, contributing to 1,319,000 page views and 312,000 downloads.
Real-time professional development to fill the computer science teaching gap. While many teacher preparation programs struggled for recruitment with teachers taxed from the pandemic, UT Austin’s Microsoft-supported Computing Educator Diversity Initiative cohort received over 90 applications in the four weeks that it was open. The Computing Educator Diversity Initiative (CEDI) consists of in-service teachers from historically underrepresented groups in computer science as identified by the National Science Foundation, who will work within a community of practice and together deepen their computer science (CS) content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and equitable strategies and are supported to obtain their high school CS teacher certification.
As these efforts and more continue to unfold, we look forward to sharing more details about the joint initiative’s work and growing impact.
“One of the most effective ways to help students build a CS identity is to give them role models with whom they can identify. The WeTeach_CS CEDI project is designed to proactively recruit and support a more diverse CS teacher workforce to meet this need. The CEDI project is both timely and critical, as the pandemic has made the importance of growing a digitally literate citizenry who can navigate a high-tech world abundantly clear.”
̶ Carol Fletcher, Director of EPIC (Expanding Pathways in Computing) at UT Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
A Commitment to Collaboration
Fundamentally reimagining the entire STEM teacher preparation pipeline is no small effort — and one that could not have been launched without Microsoft’s leadership and deep investment into the future of STEM training in Texas and beyond. From that initial conversation in 2020 between Jamie Harper, Uri Treisman, Michael Marder, and Carol Fletcher to the progress unfolding today, this initiative is marked by its commitment to strong collaboration at every turn.
That sense of purpose and partnership is shared across the Forty Acres and with educational institutions around the state, highlighting our connection around a common goal: better supporting and preparing the hardworking educators who, in turn, are training the next generation of STEM leaders to advance innovation, improve society, and push the frontiers of knowledge.
“Mathematics positions in K-12 schools are among the most in-demand teaching positions and often the most difficult to fill. We know there is a direct correlation between teacher preparation and student performance. As the flagship university in the state of Texas, it is our duty to respond to this growing need. The Dana Center, UTeach, and WeTeach_CS all bring deep expertise in teaching and learning, and we are excited for the collaborative thinking and innovation that will come from this partnership to support educators and their students.”
– Uri Treisman, University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics; Executive Director, Charles A. Dana Center
