Wendy Smith - US grants

NEBRASKA MATH is to improve achievement for all students and narrow achievement gaps among at-risk populations by focusing on three key transition points along the mathematics continuum: the mathematics education of children in transition from kindergarten through early primary to grade 3; the algebra transition from middle to high school and the transition of new secondary math teachers from certification to the classroom.
The project is focused on four strategies; (i) Developing an active and mature partnership (sustained through state dollars after the end of NSF funding) by linking mathematics teachers and school administrators from across Nebraska with university mathematicians and mathematics educators and early childhood educators to improve mathematics education statewide; (ii) Strengthening the mathematical and pedagogical knowledge for teaching of participating teachers and their professional interactions with other teachers in their schools, while improving their attitudes to the teaching and learning of mathematics; (iii) Improving students' competence, beliefs and attitudes about mathematics, their appreciation of the importance of sustained effort, and their knowledge of mathematics; and (iv)) Contributing to the research in mathematics education through a mixed methods research design studying K-3 teacher's knowledge, attitudes, and leadership in relation to student disposition and achievement.
A goal of the project is to create a model partnership, both on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus and nationally, where faculty in an academic discipline (in this case mathematics) and faculty in education work with teachers and administrators from the K-12 education community, sharing expertise and resources in pursuit of a world class mathematics education system. NEBRASKA MATH partners the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with four school districts and 15 Educational Service Units (ESUs), in rural Nebraska, which provide support to 63 additional school districts. The intent is to form a permanent K-16 mathematics partnership that is sustained primarily by local dollars. Over the five years the project is to impact 900 teachers (750 at the elementary level and 150 at the secondary level) and approximately 60,000 students.

Within the feather louse genus Columbicola there are at least two groups of endosymbiotic bacteria. Although these bacteria are transmitted maternally and must be inside of a louse to remain alive, their evolutionary tree does not mirror that of the lice they live in. This incongruity might be explained by the replacement of one group of symbionts with another group in some of the species of Columbicola. Genome sequences will be produced for the symbionts of two lice species, C. columbae and C. baculoides. These data will be used to compare the gene inventory, genome organization and genome size of the two symbionts. If the ancestral symbiont has been replaced in some species of Columbicola, then we expect that these genomic characteristics will be very different for each of the symbiont groups. The genome sequences produced from this study will be the first for symbionts of insects that feed on keratin (feathers or hair).

This study will improve our knowledge of symbiotic relationships, in particular the possible replacement and subsequent evolution of bacterial symbionts. In addition, this work will provide training in the fields of bioinformatics and genomics for a female PhD student and several undergraduates. Using the cosmopolitan Rock Pigeon as a model for the Columbicola-symbiont system, K-12 students will be educated about symbiosis and the importance of genetics and evolution. All sequence data produced from this work will be submitted to the NCBI Genbank public database.

NebraskaNOYCE is a collaboration involving the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), Omaha Public Schools, Lincoln Public Schools, Grand Island Public Schools, Nebraska's Educational Service Units Coordinating Council, the University of Nebraska Foundation, and the Nebraska P-16 Initiative seeking to increase the number of high quality mathematics teachers in Nebraska's high need schools. Program objectives are to: 1) create a high quality one year (14-month) program leading to a Master of Arts for Mathematics Teachers (MAMT) degree and certification to teach mathematics; 2) recruit and significantly support 16 STEM professionals who enroll as NSF Teaching Fellows (TFs) in the MAMT degree program and continue to support them with mentoring and salary supplements while they fulfill a four-year teaching commitment to teach in a NebraskaNOYCE partner school district high need school; 3) recruit 24 NSF Master Teaching Fellows (MTFs) who commit to teach for five years in a high need school and support them with professional development, graduate level coursework and salary supplements as they become Master Teachers, able to significantly contribute to mathematics teaching and learning in their school and district; 4) provide mentoring and continuing professional development for TFs and MTFs while they fulfill their teaching requirement, creating a model for how mathematics and education faculty work in partnership with district mathematics leaders in pursuit of the common mission to improve mathematics teaching and learning in high need schools; and 5) bring NebraskaNOYCE to sustainability through the pursuit of university, private, and corporate funds that support mathematics teacher education and the university-local school district partnership. The innovative one-year masters/certification program offers an attractive option for STEM professionals who want to consider becoming a mathematics teacher. The recruitment of 16 Teaching Fellows preparing to teach mathematics, represents a 35% increase in the number of new mathematics teachers produced at UNL. The program places each TF in the classroom of a MTF for field experience. This tightly knit collaboration offers the TFs intensive, sustained field experience in diverse classrooms designed to connect theory and methods to classroom practice under the direct guidance of a MTF. The partner districts serve 31% of Nebraska's public school students, but 43.4% of Nebraska students from families below the poverty line, 78% of the state's African-American students, and 46% of the Hispanic students in the state. The project builds on a robust statewide partnership and two NSF MSPs - the Math in the Middle Institute Partnership (M2) and NebraskaMATH.

The Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program's annual Learning Network Conference (LNC) brings together teams of STEM faculty, education faculty, K-12 teachers and administrators, and evaluators and researchers from current MSP projects for active participation, community building, and sharing of scholarship related to MSP projects. This project is collaborating both with MSP program staff and with a planning committee comprised of leaders of MSP projects across the program's portfolio, to plan and organize the January, 2011, conference. The project is advancing the intellectual content of the conference by forming a coherent subset of papers presented at the conference into a special issue of a STEM education journal. The project has two primary outcomes. First, it is designing and structuring LNC activities to foster greater collaboration and sharing among and beyond MSP projects at a national level. Second, it is guiding the process of developing the conference theme and strands, and the abstract review process, to engender an intellectual environment similar to a research conference. The project evaluation is assessing links between conference participants' attitudes and experiences in relation to the goals of the conference and to the five key features of the MSP program, and is analyzing the alignment of the conference abstracts with the MSP key features and the conference strands. The project evaluation is also analyzing interviews with individuals involved in the planning and implementation process to assess the quality and value of the project.

The purpose of this study is to develop statistical models to create a coherent model of the effects of teacher professional development in mathematics on student learning. The project works closely with two partnerships of the NSF Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program, the Math in the Middle Institute Partnership and NebraskaMATH, and with the Lincoln Public Schools. Utilizing data already collected through these MSP partnerships, the study builds newly developed models to help these and other MSP partnerships and their evaluators interpret student and teacher data in statistically productive and meaningful ways.

Specifically, the project focuses on layered value-added models to estimate teacher effects, and how those models can be adapted for use with messy data, for example when different tests are administered in different grade levels at different times of year. The project is investigating the use of Z-scores, parallel processing, and binning by quantile to address issues arising with available student achievement data. The scope of the project research includes: 1) methods to estimate student achievement trajectories over time; 2) methods for best connecting these trajectories to measures of teaching quality; 3) connecting measures of student and teacher attitudes to each other and to measures of student achievement and teaching quality; and 4) estimating the impact of MSP interventions on all of the above.

MSP projects, school districts and States are grappling with how to evaluate the effects of their professional development programs for teachers on student learning. Few studies have addressed how to use value-added models to analyze achievement data that are not on a single developmental scale, and even fewer have discussed how to use information from multiple instruments in a single year that are on different scales. In addition to this work, the research findings will be disseminated widely, through presentations at national conferences, articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and a dissemination conference targeting MSP project and evaluation personnel. Utilizing value-added models increases the potential to provide evidence of high quality teacher impact in high-need schools. By helping MSP partnerships use the methods developed in this study, the project is building build their capacity to inform the nation of how their MSPs impact teaching and learning.

Members of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) community are engaged throughout the year in partnerships aimed at increasing K-12 student success in STEM, and in research, evaluation and technical assistance projects that are studying and supporting this work. The MSP program's annual Learning Network Conference (LNC) brings together teams of STEM faculty and administrators from higher education institutions and K-12 schools, education researchers and evaluators, and personnel from supporting partners including community groups, non-profits, government labs, and informal science education organizations. Through this project, a team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is organizing the January 2012 LNC, in close collaboration with MSP program staff and a national planning committee consisting of members of various projects representing the wide variety of projects in the MSP program. The project has two primary outcomes. First, it is designing and organizing the LNC. During the seven months leading up to the conference, the project team is bringing together members of a national planning committee and facilitating the committee's development of the conference theme and strands, orchestrating the conference paper abstract submission and peer review process, and developing traditional and creative, interactive activities to occur during the conference to achieve the conference goals. Second, the project is providing technical assistance to a subset of the papers being presented at the LNC, with the goal of readying these for publication in national STEM journals. During a pre-conference session, the organizing committee is helping the authors organize their papers around common themes for submission to special issues of mathematics and science education journals; papers not fitting a common theme are being encouraged to pursue other STEM education journals or peer-reviewed conference venues for publication.

The primary goal of the conference - Midwest Regional Robert Noyce Connections 2014-2015: Building Communities of Practice is to continue to strengthen a network of peer support for Noyce Teacher Scholarship project personnel and Noyce Scholars. This will improve Noyce program effectiveness throughout the 15 states of the Midwest region. The project goal will be accomplished through facilitating an annual conference in 2014 and 2015 and a suite of year-round networking opportunities for conference participants that are designed to accomplish four objectives: 1) increase the personal connections among Midwest Noyce project members; 2) utilize these new and/or strengthened connections to share expertise and knowledge across Midwest Noyce projects; 3) support the professional development of Noyce Scholars; and 4) build a community of practice among Noyce scholars. The two conferences - which will be held in Omaha, Nebraska October 2-3, 2014 and October 1-2, 2015 - will continue a 2009 to 2012 tradition of bringing together 250 Noyce investigators, pre-service and in-service Noyce Scholars, school district personnel, and project evaluation and assessment experts from the 62 active Noyce projects in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin so that they may benefit from each others? experiences. Year-round networking and learning activities (e.g., online community, webinars, and workshops) will provide additional opportunities for Noyce personnel and Noyce Scholars to continuously learn from each other. As evidenced by the title, the theme that will unite this two-year project is Building Communities of Practice.

High quality teaching matters, especially for students "at risk." Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship projects attempt to address this through recruiting and retaining excellent mathematics and science teachers to work in high-need settings. This Fellowship Track Phase II Monitoring and Evaluation project will examine the longitudinal impact of the NebraskaNOYCE project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on the participants and on the professional community of Nebraska mathematics teachers. The NebraskaNOYCE program has seen much success in its initial three and one-half years, including 100% placement and retention of Teaching Fellows (TFs) in high-need districts and excellence in the professional trajectory of Master Teaching Fellows (MTFs). This project will investigate how candidate and program factors contribute or do not contribute to TFs' and MTFs' work as professionals in high-need districts, their commitment to the teaching profession, and their commitment to placement in high-need districts.

The overarching agenda of NebraskaNOYCE Phase II is: What is the longitudinal impact of NebraskaNOYCE on recruitment and retention of TFs and MTFs, and the development of their professional practice? The goals of NebraskaNOYCE Phase II are to understand the factors and resources that shaped the TFs' capacity for and commitment to teaching in high-need districts; the MTFs' development as master teachers and commitment to teaching mathematics in a high-need district; and the interactions between the TFs and MTFs that influenced these factors and resources. The project focuses on the impact of personal, social, and knowledge resources and factors on TFs' and MTFs' professional practice. Additionally, NebraskaNOYCE Phase II will evaluate the program's ability to recruit and retain teachers, the impact of the program on University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Mathematics and Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, and the impact of the program on the school districts. The knowledge that will be generated by this project has the potential to impact other Noyce projects' activities and research and evaluation designs, as well as preservice teacher education and inservice teacher professional development on a scale that extends beyond the Noyce community. A comprehensive dissemination plan will ensure that research produced by NebraskaNOYCE Phase II will be shared with the NSF Noyce community, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities' (APLU) Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership (MTE-Partnership) and the broader mathematics and mathematics education communities. Nebraska's membership in the MTE-Partnership provides the team with a dissemination platform to reach educators who are working to improve secondary mathematics teacher preparation and their induction into the teaching profession. NebraskaNOYCE's 43 MTFs and TFs have all remained in their high-need schools; understanding the supports that have helped this to happen will allow this project to make policy recommendations related to preservice teacher preparation, novice teacher induction, teacher retention, and qualities of effective cooperating teachers and mentors. This project also will contribute to the sparse literature on mathematics teacher leaders related to the development and growth trajectories of MTFs as mathematics teacher leaders in high-need districts. Data collection will include observations of teachers through the cycle of planning, teaching and reflecting, and interviews designed to address research questions associated with either preservice or master teacher participants.

This REU Site award to Northeastern University, located in Boston, MA, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2015-2017. The REU program is open to all undergraduate students who are citizens, nationals, or permanent residents of the United States. Students from underrepresented groups, from schools with limited opportunities for research, and with military backgrounds including cadets, reservists, and returning veterans, are encouraged to apply. The focus of the REU site is interdisciplinary research across biological levels. Pairs of participating students will work in interdisciplinary research teams and explore related research questions from different perspectives. Example projects include extracellular matrix-guided differentiation of adult stem cells, microbial biofilm assembly and DNA damage response, behavioral and molecular aspects of social immunity, organismal survival under extreme conditions, links between circadian rhythms and regeneration, and mitochondrial DNA inheritance in developing oocytes. Students will participate in joint workshops on ethics and responsible conduct of research, proposal writing, presentation of talks and posters, applying to graduate school, and career opportunities in science. At the end of the program, students will present their research in a summer research symposium. Students will be housed in new dorms on campus in the heart of Boston. The effectiveness of the training program will be assessed with a common web-based tool used by all REU programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure (Directorate for Biological Sciences).

It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained. Students will learn how research is conducted, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences. Students will use techniques at the cutting edge of biological research to answer new questions, and will enhance their abilities to lead and perform in research teams.

Students are required to be tracked after the program and must respond to an automatic email sent via the NSF reporting system. More information is available by visiting http://www.northeastern.edu/cos/biology/undergraduate/reu-site/, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Wendy Smith at w.smith@neu.edu) or the co-PI (Dr. Rebeca Rosengaus at r.rosengaus@neu.edu).

Overwhelming evidence from education research has shown that active learning instructional techniques generate significantly greater student learning than traditional approaches in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. To date, though, few college and university faculty employ active learning approaches in their introductory STEM classes. This disconnect between practices with established higher effectiveness and actual classroom teaching is particularly troublesome in mathematics because student success in all STEM disciplines relies on a strong mathematics foundation. This project will investigate environments at six institutions that have successfully improved student learning in the Precalculus-to-Calculus 2 (P2C2) sequence by employing active learning in mathematics (ALM). The results of this work will lead to important strategies for adapting, implementing, supporting, and assessing ALM in P2C2 courses. In order to meet the needs of institutions wishing to improve their mathematics instruction, the project will produce multiple options for implementation based upon case studies of the successful institutions. Overall, the project will benefit the mathematical sciences community by: improving student success in high-enrollment undergraduate courses, better preparing those students who go on to STEM majors, and improving the teaching of future faculty through the mentoring of graduate students. Faculty members at the University of Colorado at Boulder (1624628), San Diego State University (1624639), and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1624643) will collaborate with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) (1624610) to research and advance how to influence and sustain educational change in mathematics departments--ultimately, at national scale.

A fundamental goal of the project is to develop a better understanding of how to enact and support institutional change for implementing ALM in undergraduate learning environments. The underlying research question is: What conditions, strategies, interventions and actions at the institutional, departmental and classroom levels contribute to the initiation, implementation, and institutional sustainability of ALM in the undergraduate P2C2 sequence across varied institutions? Project team members will work as part of APLU's ALM Research Action Cluster to advance understanding of the factors that influence and enhance institutional change as manifested through implementation of models of ALM in the P2C2 sequence. Research will follow a design research methodology linking qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis to capture the iterative and cyclical processes of institutional change. The project will be carried out in two phases, with Phase 1 consisting of the aforementioned case studies at six institutions and Phase 2 consisting of longitudinal case studies of nine diverse institutions that set out to infuse and institutionalize ALM in the P2C2 sequence. Phase 1 will offer the field a retrospective account of ALM models of change that worked, and Phase 2 will develop theory and insights into the processes by which change focused on ALM can unfold over time, along with the affordances and constraints related to institutional change. The project will proactively disseminate its results and findings across APLU's large network of member institutions and beyond to promote adoption of ALM approaches.

The Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership (MTE-P) is a collaborative of over 90 universities organized by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. It has worked to create solutions to significant problems in secondary mathematics teacher preparation. However, as noted in the Standards for the Preparation of Teachers of Mathematics prepared by the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), creating programs that achieve the vision of well-prepared beginning mathematics teachers will be challenging. Such efforts will require a continuing focus that acknowledges the ongoing and cyclic nature of improving mathematics teacher preparation program. This project aims to address the challenges of transforming secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs to meet the recommendations outlined in the AMTE Standards. The project will address this challenge by weaving together two mutually-reinforcing areas of work using a networked improvement communities approach. A group of institutions involved in the MTE-P will develop approaches to effectively enact program transformation, drawn from research on institutional change and enacting the networked improvement communities design at an institutional level. The design of this project will thus be a network of networks, incorporating work across the institutions. Simultaneously, work will begin on developing a system to manage knowledge generated by the project and by the MTE-P more broadly. Through this project, a comprehensive approach will be developed to meet the national need of transforming secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs to meet the national vision of secondary mathematics teacher preparation.

Over a period of two years, the project will build a basic infrastructure that has potential to be scaled up to support transformation efforts across the MTE-P and create a model that can be used throughout the nation. The project will engage secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs at five institutions (Auburn University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Kentucky, Mississippi State University, and California State University-Fullerton). Transformation of these five, diverse secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs has the potential to positively affect over 350 preservice teachers and over 25,000 K-12 students. The initial infrastructure created by this project will be the basis for future scale up to a larger number of sites. This project will also generate a knowledge management system to capture validated products and approaches useful in transforming secondary mathematics teacher preparation. Project leaders aim to extend access to the lessons learned and materials developed through this project to other institutions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This project extends a successful researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Lincoln Public Schools to other school districts in Nebraska. The primary goal is to study how a computer science (CS) curriculum for K-8 students is adopted by school districts with different strengths and challenges to broaden participation in computing. The project will also develop instructional capacity for K-8 CS education with diverse learners. The specific aims are to support new, partner districts by 1) adapting and implementing the existing CS curriculum, learning progression models, and assessment metrics for their needs; 2) customize the current professional development model to their educators; (3) create a teacher virtual network support model for ongoing logistical and content support; and 4) adapt, develop, and validate instruments to measure CS knowledge and self-efficacy.

The project will be conducted as part of a research-focused networked improvement community (NIC) grounded in design-based research. During the project's iterations, the researchers will study 1) how the K-8 curriculum/resources implemented in diverse partner districts, and 2) how useful are the curricula and resources in supporting teacher and students CS knowledge, attitudes, and practices. The studies will pay particular attention to the similarities and differences that occur between various subgroups (i.e., underrepresented minorities, male/female). The project will result in case studies of rural, highly underrepresented, and Native American schools that guide other states and districts seeking to infuse computer science into K-8 education.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Research literature in STEM education related to teacher effectiveness, persistence, and retention is extremely inadequate. This project serves the national interest by fostering additional research projects related to these three important areas. The overarching objective of the Persistence, Effectiveness and Retention Studies in STEM Teaching (PERSIST) project is to bolster the rigor and creativity of Noyce Track 4 research proposals through participation in community-building that leverages and shares resources and forms mutually beneficial collaborations that further the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program's agenda. The pool of teachers who have participated in various Noyce Track 1, 2, and 3 projects includes over 10,000 individuals, whose collective experiences and knowledge could generate a wealth of understanding about improving STEM education in high-need schools. Yet, this potential is largely untapped due to the structure of typical Noyce scholarship and fellowship projects. The PERSIST project will be conducted in two phases. During the first phase, project leaders will invite current NSF Noyce Track 4 Research Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs to participate in a 1-day meeting immediately preceding the Annual Noyce Summit. Following the Noyce Track 4 PI meeting, the ideas generated will be synthesized and resources will be collected. These will be compiled into a published magazine-style brochure intended for use in guiding discussions and dissemination efforts during the second phase of project. During the second phase, the outreach phase of PERSIST, half-day pre-conference workshops will be developed to take place at three national STEM education conferences in 2020. By encouraging researcher partnerships to design research projects related to STEM teacher recruitment, preparation, and effectiveness in high-need school districts, this project will help move the field forward in ways that will help broaden STEM participation.

Three goals guide this project. First is to familiarize participants with the NSF Noyce program, particularly the recently added Track 4, which focuses on research related to STEM teacher preparation, effectiveness and persistence. Second, the project seeks to create and foster a collaborative community among Noyce Track 4 projects. Third, the PIs will generate synergy across Noyce-funded research with the intent to extend knowledge of highly effective approaches to recruiting and retaining effective K-12 mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science teachers in high-need local education agencies. Pursuit of these goals will lead to four outcomes. First, the meetings will connect workshop participants (researchers not currently engaged in Noyce) to one another and to the Noyce community, as a basis for potential future collaboration. Second, interactions at the meetings will enable participants to discuss and disseminate critical areas for research in STEM teacher preparation and retention. Third, participants will find opportunity to discuss and disseminate methodological approaches for the study of STEM teacher effectiveness and persistence. Finally, meeting attendees will share with the NSF Noyce program, the Noyce community, and other interested STEM teacher education researchers the leading-edge questions and needs that emerge from the collected Noyce Track 4 program's research arena. By helping to generate additional research into STEM teacher preparation, effectiveness, and persistence, and by broadening the pool of researchers engaged in pursuing important research in these areas, this project ultimately has the potential to advance STEM teaching and learning, especially related to teacher effectiveness, persistence and retention in high-need school districts. Thus, the potential to broaden participation in STEM of underrepresented groups in STEM is high.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This project aims to serve the national interest in excellent undergraduate STEM education by improving students' training in modeling and quantitative skills. Workforce sectors from advertising to life science research are drowning in data and lack employees with the critical thinking and technical skills to manage, process, analyze, and interpret it. Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education, calls for an increase in technical and systems biology training, reflecting the shift in life science research to incorporate mathematics and computer science. Traditional methods are inadequate for teaching complex subject matter. Thus, it is increasingly important for life sciences education to evolve to equip students with skills to reason mechanistically and quantitatively, and to answer emerging life science questions. The long-term goal of this project is to transform the way biology students learn about complex living systems by enabling them to use computational modeling, both to acquire and to apply scientific knowledge. The project will build on successes from previous NSF-funded efforts that resulted in a new simulation- and modeling-based approach to learning about complex biological processes. This effort is facilitated through Cell Collective software that makes computational modeling accessible to any student and instructor, regardless of setting or prior modeling experience. This project will extend previous work involving Cell Collective by focusing on training and engaging instructors in its use with undergraduate students.

The project will develop a framework for understanding the barriers and impact of instructors deploying computational modeling and simulation lessons via Cell Collective to students across institutions with demographically diverse student populations. Teaching and learning challenges will be simultaneously addressed and minimized through new user-centric features in the Cell Collective software. Examples of features already identified include accessibility of the technology and streamlined access for students to modeling and simulation lessons across different life science courses. Furthermore, this project will provide professional development for 50-80 instructors about how to overcome challenges to integrating computational modeling and how to implement these tools in the classroom. It is expected that instructors who participate in the project will be better prepared to support the shift toward more quantitative and systems-level education in life sciences. It is also expected that the broad adoption of Cell Collective for teaching undergraduate life science topic will, over time, help to transform biology instruction so that it better prepares students to enter the modern data-driven workforce. The project thus has the potential to support United States innovation and economic growth. Resources developed in the project will be made available to researchers and instructors interested in incorporating computational modeling into their own learning technologies and methodologies. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need. Over five years, this project will fund two- and four-year scholarships to 124 STEM students who are pursuing associate degrees at Southeast Community College or Western Nebraska Community College and bachelor degrees at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The project will recruit, educate, and mentor cohorts of academically talented, low-income students, with the goal of supporting the graduation of Scholars who have expertise in mathematics and computer science and who are prepared to enter the STEM workforce or pursue graduate education in a STEM field. The project will emphasize recruiting women, underrepresented minorities, first-generation students, and rural students, thus contributing to the diversity of the STEM workforce.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. At all three campuses, Scholars will take special sections of computer science and mathematics courses during their first two years. Faculty from the three partner institutions will collaborate to implement active learning approaches and to use open education resources that are currently being developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Scholars will take a one-credit seminar designed to help students develop leadership potential, gain valuable academic skills, become informed about available support services, and build a supportive peer community. In addition to staff advisers who will support all students, each S-STEM Scholar will have faculty and peer mentors, who will contribute to building a supportive network that can attend to S-STEM Scholars' academic and non-academic needs. The project's mixed methods efficacy research study aims to answer the research question: To what extent are project activities and structures helping the scholars persist in their selected STEM majors and STEM career pathways? Findings from this research will advance understanding of factors that affect the retention, academic success, and graduation of academically talented, low-income STEM students, with a special emphasis on factors that affect students who transfer from a community college to a four-year institution. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This project aims to serve the national interest by convening a conference focused on increasing the number of higher education institutions that are committed to improving secondary mathematics teacher recruitment and preparation programs, ultimately improving access to high-quality mathematics instructions for 6-12th grade students. The Association of Mathematics Teacher Educator’s (AMTE), Get the Facts Out (GFO) taskforce, and the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership (MTE-P), will use this conference as a vehicle to address issues related to recruiting diverse mathematics teacher candidates, exploring transformational efforts relevant to teaching, and examining the role of equity in secondary mathematics teacher recruitment and preparation. New and existing partners will share tools and strategies for solving common challenges and develop ideas for local program transformation efforts. Broadening participation in who becomes mathematics teachers is vital; therefore, the project will approach recruitment and program transformation efforts from an equity perspective.

At the 2022 MTE-P & GFO Conference, participants will engage in focused discussions about the significant work of transforming preparation programs to more closely align with the AMTE’s Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics. The conference will be offered in a hybrid format, with participants invited to fully engage either in-person or online. The in-person portion will be held in the same location as the 2022 AMTE annual conference, one day prior to the AMTE conference. An evaluation effort will examine (1) the ways in which the conference has expanded the network of partners who focus on secondary mathematics teacher preparation beyond the GFO and MTE-P communities, and (2) the degree to which the sessions address equity, diversity, and inclusivity; recruitment strategies; as well as supports for and dimensions of program transformation. Information and materials from the MTE-P & GFO Conference themes and sessions will be disseminated through the AMTE newsletter and the Teaching Mathematics Teachers podcast. By utilizing ideas of improvement science to support institutional transformation, participants will impact STEM educational experiences across K–12 and post-secondary contexts. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program support research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

2201486 Abstract<br/><br/>The disparity in achievement and access for students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM are well documented, but there remains a lack of attention to what to do with this knowledge and how to measure the impact of improvement efforts beyond pass rates and demographics. While many university mathematics departments value providing diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) student experiences, the faculty often do not have the professional training to engage with DEI work or measure its progress, which can lead to disengagement from these initiatives. Achieving Critical Transformation in Undergraduate Programs of Mathematics is a Level II, Track II ECR Broadening Participation in STEM project. This project aims to conduct foundational research to identify the mechanisms and structures that best support mathematics stakeholders in making data-informed decisions to promote DEI and critically transform introductory mathematics courses and programs. Addressing issues relating to DEI in introductory mathematics courses are important to broadening participation in STEM disciplines. Mathematics departments are not only capable of engaging in these issues and improving the mathematics experiences for students from underrepresented populations but are significantly well-positioned to do so because of the elevated role that mathematics plays in students’ STEM careers, STEM identities, and sense of belonging in the classroom.<br/><br/>This project builds on the strength of two prior national studies of introductory mathematics programs, Progress through Calculus and Student Engagement in Mathematics through an Institutional Network for Active Learning. Researchers can leverage this existing body of quantitative and qualitative data to engage key stakeholders in improvement cycles. This project aims to deploy a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) model to bring together three undergraduate mathematics department teams in partnership with educational researchers to analyze their local data, in comparison to the national sample. Utilizing a NIC framework, researchers will provide professional development and technical assistance to the department team, along with focused research to interview students, faculty, and instructors across these communities to inform departmental transformation efforts, as well as empower sites to develop the structures needed for lasting change. In a broader sense, this project will also serve as a model to assist members of other institutions, including community colleges, and other STEM fields working to address experiences and outcomes related to DEI in STEM education.<br/><br/>This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad, and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. The program supports the accumulation of robust evidence to inform efforts to understand, build theory to explain and suggest interventions and innovations to address persistent.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The workshop aims to provide guidance for conducting ethical and responsible research with marginalized individuals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields in higher education. The workshop includes both virtual and hybrid components for educators and researchers to identify best practices in the ethical and responsible research for under-represented communities. Identification of research considerations for marginalized individuals in higher education will assist researchers in STEM to ensure implementation of ethical, confidential, and appropriate research for vulnerable communities. Workshop products will be of interest to educators, researchers, students, administrators, and vulnerable research participants.<br/><br/>The workshop brings together subject-matter experts to discuss salient research ethics, create resources for educators and researchers, and to draft guidelines for ethical and responsible research involving under-represented groups in STEM. Products will include a checklist-style resource of considerations and an initial set of materials to use in ongoing professional development in STEM higher education contexts. The project include a brief pre-conference survey, idea generation virtual workshop series, an idea synthesis hybrid workshop, and idea propagation activities. Working groups composed of participants will focus on roadmap building and developing materials for dissemination of current best practices to appropriate audiences to ensure broad participation in STEM.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.