A FOCUS ON MATH AND SCIENCE TEACHERS
The proposal was ambitious: improve math and science achievement for more than 100,000 students at three Southern California school districts by bringing together UCI faculty, students, and K-12 teachers and administrators. It was a response to the National Science Foundation’s call for universities to work with K-12 schools and strengthen math and science education in the wake of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.
In 2002, the National Science Foundation awarded UCI a $14.2 million grant to implement the program over the course of a decade, creating new programs and making significant impacts. It was the largest grant in the Center for Educational Partnerships’ history, and received additional funding over the years, reaching a total of $15 million. Named Faculty Outreach Collaborations Uniting Scientists, Students and Schools (FOCUS), the grant supported a partnership between UCI and the Compton, Santa Ana and Newport-Mesa Unified School Districts. Together, those schools served more than 100,000 students, of whom 82 percent identified as Hispanic and 11 percent as African American. |
From the outset of the project, district leaders cited ongoing professional development of teachers as an acute priority. The Teacher Leader Cadre (TLC) component of FOCUS emerged as a linchpin of the project to successfully develop a pool of math and science teacher trainers who could provide high-quality, ongoing professional development to teachers in the 100 partner schools.
UCI faculty and teachers worked together on curriculum guides to be implemented on site, and provided on-going professional development. After two years, FOCUS added a preschool teacher training component called PreK Science, Mathematics, and Reading Training Schools (PreK-SMARTS), which shared research-based practices integrating math, science and literacy for early learners.
The Future Teacher Highway was another major element of the program, charged with developing programs to attract and train community college students from across Southern California to become teachers. For example, the Taking Education and Children to Heart (UCI TEACH) brought students from Santa Ana College to campus for a four-day summer residential program to learn best teaching practices. Meanwhile, the Saturday with Scientists program gave community college transfer students interested in STEM the opportunity to visit UCI labs and meet with faculty.
“How exciting to tour faculty labs and talk with professors and graduate students involved in research on cloning cells or measuring glaciers or nano technology,” said Robin Casselman, former associate director of CFEP. Casselman worked on FOCUS for its first seven years as project manager and eventually project director.
UCI faculty and teachers worked together on curriculum guides to be implemented on site, and provided on-going professional development. After two years, FOCUS added a preschool teacher training component called PreK Science, Mathematics, and Reading Training Schools (PreK-SMARTS), which shared research-based practices integrating math, science and literacy for early learners.
The Future Teacher Highway was another major element of the program, charged with developing programs to attract and train community college students from across Southern California to become teachers. For example, the Taking Education and Children to Heart (UCI TEACH) brought students from Santa Ana College to campus for a four-day summer residential program to learn best teaching practices. Meanwhile, the Saturday with Scientists program gave community college transfer students interested in STEM the opportunity to visit UCI labs and meet with faculty.
“How exciting to tour faculty labs and talk with professors and graduate students involved in research on cloning cells or measuring glaciers or nano technology,” said Robin Casselman, former associate director of CFEP. Casselman worked on FOCUS for its first seven years as project manager and eventually project director.
FOCUS also brought a number of existing outreach components under its umbrella, representing a range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines.
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering’s earthquake outreach program provided teachers with in-class lessons about earthquakes and structures. Then, they would bring students from schools across the region to build Lego structures and test their stability on a shake table – eliciting shouts of excitement as their buildings crumbled. “What’s most important is that these kids, who likely have never been on a university campus, get to visit a world-class research facility,” said Professor of Engineering and creator of the earthquake program, Gerard Pardoen, in 2003. “We want them to see 19-year-old students, not that much older than they are, running the shake table. Hopefully, we’ll make an impression on them, and they will start thinking about attending a university – maybe even this one.” |
That hope motivated many of the 200 UCI faculty who participated in FOCUS over the years. They remembered displays and experiments that had sparked their interest in science as kids, and they wanted to share those with the next generation of students, especially those from underrepresented communities.
In total, more than 3,000 active teachers were trained through FOCUS, and their impact reached well more than 100,000 students in the participating districts. Every year, FOCUS collaborated with a slate of external evaluators, carefully measuring slow but steady gains for students in math and science content mastery.
In total, more than 3,000 active teachers were trained through FOCUS, and their impact reached well more than 100,000 students in the participating districts. Every year, FOCUS collaborated with a slate of external evaluators, carefully measuring slow but steady gains for students in math and science content mastery.
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It is the confluence of these FOCUS components and creative leadership behind them that resulted in the programs that were leveraged to initiate UCI CalTeach in the fall of 2005. This was truly a historic new collaboration between CFEP, the UCI School of Education and the STEM schools.
Former Associate Director, CFEP |
In UCI’s final report to the NSF in 2013, Eric Saltzman, a distinguished professor of Earth System Science and a principal investigator for the grant, said that he believed the program’s major accomplishment was helping the university science departments assume responsibility for nurturing students to become K-12 math and science educators. That achievement paved the way for the next generation of teacher development and training programs, CalTeach.
“It is the confluence of these FOCUS components and creative leadership behind them that resulted in the programs that were leveraged to initiate UCI CalTeach in the fall of 2005,” Casselman said. “This was truly a historic new collaboration between CFEP, the UCI School of Education and the STEM schools.” At one of the annual celebrations for the Future Teacher Highway, the stage was filled with a group of STEM majors from diverse backgrounds, all of whom were planning to pursue careers in education. It was a scene seared in Casselman’s memory even 20 years later: “At that moment I realized the power of the partnership to really change the future, for these individual students, for their families, and for their future students.” |
The preceding story is part of the "CFEP: 25 Years of Impact" series, honoring the people, programs and partnerships that have helped impact millions of students, teachers and families over the past quarter century. View the entire series here.