University of Texas at El Paso
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National Science Foundation Projects
NSF GK-12
The National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year grant totaling $1.78 million to the College of Science to create a partnership between UTEP and the El Paso Independent School District to explore the environment of our border region. The project aims to significantly improve science learning among middle school science students by teaming teachers with 10 UTEP science and engineering graduate fellows each year. The fellows will serve as scientists and mentors to students in the classroom, while enhancing their own graduate training by learning about teaching in our public schools. As part of the project, teacher-fellow teams will develop and deliver hands-on science lessons designed to be relevant to the environmental challenges in our region and to increase students’ interest and understanding of science.

The project is led by Dr. Kate Miller, Associate Dean of Science, in collaboration with UTEP Co-Investigators: Drs. Eric Hagedorn, and Jerry Johnson and EPISD Middle School Science Program Assistant, Mary Beth Harper. The long term goals of the project are 1) to develop a model for university-district interactions that will increase the capacity of teachers to improve science learning by students and that can be applied within other regional school districts and 2) to create a cadre of graduate students with a greater awareness of the important role that professional scientists and engineers can play in supporting K-12 science education.

http://science.utep.edu/gk12/