[ 9:45-11:00 a.m. EST - Round table discussions. Theme: STEM Transfer ]
Thank you. No one else say my name [ laughter ]
I would like to thank Jennifer and her team. This has been great for me because I really did not have much of an idea of how extensive, how great and what the teachers were doing. To me this was a amazing learning experience. Also I was really glad that I was able to make a connection between one of my RET and another program.
We put together a list which you all have on the table. I just wanted to mention. RET and engineering at the National Science Foundation. I am really excited to let you all know that our program is expanding. We have made up of directorates. One of our directorates computer and information science and engineering is now joining RET and engineering to make our program Diefenbaker and to the extent -- program Diefenbaker and to extend into computer science. Hopefully they will release our new program solicitation. We will have our first deadline at the end of January. The program will be about $5.5 million maybe a little bit more each competition and we have our first competition under way in January the second one will be October of 2011. So I just want to let you know we are excited about the expansion of RET at NSF.
It makes sense for me to follow, Kathleen Bergin. I come away once again feeling that I wish we had the media here to see the scientists and the teachers to talk about what they are doing and the transfer. I think if we could get -- and we struggle with this. If we could get more people to see the caliber of teachers they would feel much more positive about where we have the potential to go in education. So I commend you all for being the people that you are that are so dedicated to this work. I just love the science panel and the teacher panels. I think you.
I am going to talk briefly about the rest of the things on that sheet. What I want you to hear me say first that these -- after what may be said about the RET thing -- none of them are specific to RET. None of them have any language. Do not gloat to them for funding for a RET or TRE or anything. No. The reason they are here is because I think if you look at these programs you may see possibilities for doing TRE, RET kinds of things and be able to build around that. I want to make that clear going in. The other thing I want to make clear you have got to have data PDU will have to have evidence, evaluation associate with any proposal -- you will have to have evidence come evaluation, data associated with any proposal.
The math and science partnership is the next thing on the list could remember when I said something about $10 million? This program has funding at the $300,000 level which is basically planning up to $10 million on award. Some entities get $10 million to do work. We do not give $10 million for the same old same old. It has to be a partnership between institution of higher education and at least one school district -- not a school but a school district. Once you have an institution of higher education and a school district you can have lots of other partners. You can have labs, museums, zoos, a park. Community colleges, tribal colleges, all sorts of business and industry. The local Chamber of Commerce. The first two things you have to have is a school district and institution of higher education. From that point you are working on improving teaching and learning. And obviously they have a role in there. The current solicitation which is on here is out of date. In other words there is going to be a new one. But if you look at the current solicitation if you pay attention to the fact that you must have an institution of higher education, K-12, STEM faculty. Not a problem for you guys. You must have those things. It talks about five key features. Partnership, challenging courses and curriculum. That's about the transfer into the classroom. It talks about teacher quality, quantity and diversity. It talks about evidence-based design and evidence-based outcomes. You have to have the research or around why this works and where you are going to go. It also talks about institutional change and sustainability. When you look at those findings and you have a partnership then you build your program. There are things that are going to change in the so solicitation -- and this solicitation. Sometime after the first of the year. They are our awards that are up to $10 million so you can really do something powerful PDU can also collaborate.
I will go on to the Robert Noise teacher scholarship program. It is in the millions of dollars. I cannot remember if it's up to 3 million but some number lower than $3 million. I know there's at least $1.25 million in there. I work in that program -- you think I could remember those numbers -- this is about producing teachers. There is a preservice aspect in there. But also that aspect includes career changers. I heard some of you talking about career changers. There is also a track in there that is about teachers becoming leaders. So look at that program.
The national is center dot dot dot -- the NSDL, you might want to talk about that. I talk about students and teachers. I suggest you look at it. I do not know him a chart about it but there is a real opportunity in relation to the work that you are doing. The GK12. I think I heard people talking about their work for this could graduate students working in schools to improve what is going on there. I think you might want to look at that in terms of some of the work that you are doing. Discovery research, K-12. Again I will tell you to look at that and how your work can be expanded in relationship to that. A computer education for the 21st century. I will not say anything except look at it. The reason is not because they are not great programs. But I am not in that program and I do not want to confuse you. There are two things that are not on your paper that I do want you to add to your list of things. One is the presidential awards for excellence in science, mathematics, and engineering mentoring.
Can you say that again?
Yes. Presidential award for excellence, science, mathematics, engineering, and mentoring. We say PAESMEM. I find it easier to put into Google. These are $25,000 awards. It is not writing for a grant. This is to come and outstanding mentors. Mentors who are individual mentors and individuals dot Mac organizations -- and organizations. Those that are underrepresented in the sciences. We are talking about are needed students. We are talking about our African-American students. We are talking about our Hispanic students. We are talking about our students with disabilities. All right? So if you are a mentor, whether you are a scientist was mentoring or a professor who is mentoring other professors to do more powerful things with other representatives. A K-12 teacher. Please look at that program. And organizations are doing this. The other thing I want you to write down iswww.paemst.org. This is the presidential awards for teachers I think I heard yesterday someone was a presidential awardee. This is a $10,000 war to the teacher to do whatever is you want to and is also a week in Washington not sitting in a hotel but go into all sorts of things -- award to the teacher to do whatever you want and also beat in Washington not seen in a hotel but all sorts of things treated like the national stars you are. Pictures at the White House with the president. It is a very prestigious, stooges award. I know that there are teachers that are in this room and teachers that you know that are parts of this program -- a very prestigious award. So go to that website. It alternates years between commending the teachers at the 7-12 level or the K-6 level. It is open right now at the 7-12 level . You can nominate yourself for [ laughter ]
You can have Jay nominate, anybody can nominate and then you have to fill up stuff. I think I have taken up too much time.
You are fine. Thank you.
Jeff, if you want to add items or take away messages or things you see happening on the future in terms of energy?
Well, I sort of heat to follow that longest there. Wonderful things going on. One thing at the Department of energy all of our applications are open for next summer. So what I would urge the teachers in the audience to do is recommend these to your friends. Recommend these to the teachers who have not done that before. I know a lot if you have done two or three or four or more. And let's spread the wealth. Let's get some more people involved with this. Point them to all different -- all of the different opportunities out there people which brings me to my take away message. I think what I have been hearing the last several days is its more than partnerships that I would like to see us move towards. That is, we have got probably thousands of these teacher research programs of various sorts and they involve tens of thousands of teachers. But if you are a teacher, how do you find them? We need to craft a single identity that we all share with these teacher research experiences so that is easy for teachers to find out, is easy for us to share a message to a larger audience as was mentioned earlier. Why isn't the media here? Why don't we have a message that we can get out to the public about how effective this is, what we are doing with our teachers. Jay's website is a great start. But are all the opportunities there? Isn't optimized for a Google search? That is where teachers are going to go. What do they search on the? It's probably not exactly the terminology that we would use. There are many opportunities for us to use our joint resources in ways that do not involve the exchange of money to have a more powerful presence and be more effective than what we are doing. I do not know the answers are but I really think that is a direction we need to be considering as we move forward.
Thank you.
I am just going to add one quick thing here. A little bit with Jeff's message and some of the things going on with the Department of energy and I know John has been pointed out once but I will point him out again. Things are starting to come together with different interagency approaches and other programs. The more that this happens, the more we have a united front against the Chris's behalf in math and science education. If you look around this room we have enormous amount of talent and leadership that can confront that crisis and do it in a way that is unique and a way that really has some experiences that are going to be personal in those personal experiences that will translate back to the classrooms so many times over. So you know, when we hear about all of the crisis is we haven't education especially math and science being one of the answers. If we can keep our focus and keep working together we will have a great product in a very short time.
Thank you. Liz?
I think our fantastic panel has summed up a lot of great ideas and I do not have too much to add. The thing that I think has echoed the most in my brain the last couple days is sitting in this room has been really fascinating -- a fascinating way to see where we fit within the scheme of things as you guys were talking about. And teacher research experience programs are important and crucial tool inside a toolbox of so many different ways -- as you are saying -- to confront the problems we are having in the nation when it comes to education. Just this guy. I think it's an excellent start to highlight the ways that we need to keep the momentum going and to keep the grassroots efforts alive. Keep the foot soldiers, the teachers and scientists and program managers collaborating to make sure that our leaders and the people that we a lot realize the importance of how this tool is going to help build a better nation for us. So I'm kind of thinking on the higher levels because I have a hard time thinking in the middle. So it just has been an amazing eye-opening experience. I just hope we can all keep up the effort and keep having meetings like this and collaborating. And I would like to actually hear from some of you guys about what your take on this desire and if you have any specific action items for us.
Which is exactly what I was going to say. So before you do that I want to remind you we will post all of the information from this meeting online as well as a conference reports that this committee is going to be so happy to write with us as a group. A summary. So for those of you who do not see your names in the binders we are going to get your names and e-mail addresses out there so people can contact you in the presentations including all of the videos. So every time there was a webcast of Craig there will be a video online you can refer to the including candles video from yesterday or talk from yesterday. So what do you want to see?
My name is Mel Morris and I work at Brookhaven national laboratory. This was a feel-good meetings certainly and everybody's working hard and doing good things but I guess this group is kind of an ad hoc group and you meet every five years or so to come together. But we know that teacher research programs work. We know that they are effective. We need to be able to prove that to our friend, the agencies. I know with some of the programs of the Department of Energy there are some issues in terms of funding for some of these teacher experience programs. I think it would be really helpful if this group could make some kind of a statement that we can use for funding agencies to say, this is what we think you should be using when you evaluate teacher research programs. These other things that you may want to evaluate me be our kind of bogus and cannot be evaluated and to stop it already -- maybe our kind of bogus and stop them already.
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Thank you. To give you a bit of context this group was created not because there is a meeting every five years but just because of this meeting. It was because of another committee above us that her that we were interested in doing it that asked us all to participate in it. So I couple weeks ago had told the planning committee that we were having our last meeting before the conference and then I have to reiterate to them later it was the last meeting before the conference but not our last meeting. So it's our goal, the NOAA education office to continue these discussions at the multiagency level and to the types of things that you are talking about providing something concrete that you can use when you apply for grants that is the sort of -- is not obscure.
I want to say something and I don't want it to be the last thing in the meeting because it is kind of a negative thing.
Say it now.
I thought that Kendall was fabulous yesterday. I thought it was terrific. There was one piece in their that I would take issue with and that was the story where the story kept getting expanded and it ended up being a blind one armed something. There is no difference then putting a person with a disability and frame as ethnic or anything else and I do not think we should take that piece home. Sort of a downer, but --
We want you to be completely honest. I know that the room is cold sometimes and sometimes it was not. I am also interested in content so if you do not get a chance to say what you want out of this we want you to be specific about it. We have evaluations here that you can do now and turn it and go on to your next project. We will also provide you a link so you can do them online if you want to take more time. It does not have to be feel-good, my skin is somewhat tough thing I did teach high school for quite a while so I am used to being criticized to say the least.
I am Laura Mori from the University of Maryland and I want to thank you all again. I did not go to the last one of these conferences but this one has really, really brought together a community that is interested in the same aspect of a very important feature that we have all worked on for many years in some cases. Some fewer years. And if we could in some way have these conferences a little bit closer together than five years I think that would help us all. Because I have learned so much from everybody else that is here and this is I guess, ending on a positive thing if we could have it a little bit more often I think we would be able to move it forward in a broader sense than just this community that we have right now. Thanks.
Volunteers?
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We have had those discussions and I know we always have spooked to folks -- has spoken to folks at energy to maybe have energy be the next one in a couple years. So we have had that discussion.
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Thank you Pete and also regional approaches. I do not think there is a problem with having some smaller regional types of work. I think those are some things that we definitely are taking back and we'll start looking at how we can publish them. We do things online now, too. With some great -- we have PolarTREC back always doing things online so I think we can do things to get together less than five years.
On that note I want to thank you for all of your time and energy and efforts. We are just thrilled that you are here. But you will give us some great feedback to improve our jobs and how we can better work together. There will be a few things -- thank you again, committee members. I will do logistic stuff if you want to step down. Thank you, committee.
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A few logistical items. We will have a break. So for those of you who have some time and can fill out the evaluations. Elizabeth and I are here to answer questions about travel if you are supported by NOAA could remember some of you are supported by NSF.
Baird is your caption or again am just making sure the webcast went out on a welcome you finished the whole day that okay I Craig -- okay. Thank you. Goodbye.
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