Thank for for your questions!

As Noyce Scholars we visit both math classrooms and classes from the College of Education at UNO to spread the word about our Noyce Program. We also have partnered with a local community college and professors on campus to help us in getting interest for the program. Personally I was recruited by my professor while at that community college before ever stepping foot on UNO's campus. 

To better answer your question about measuring impact, I have contacted our principal investigator, who I believe can give a more detailed answer.

Sorry we are slow to the response for this question, James! We actually have two levels of participation in our program, Interns and Scholars. We recruit both through on campus events, such as our beginning of the semester welcome back "Mav Days" where we have booths/flyers/give aways to recruit undergraduate students, as well as have current Scholars give mini presentations in TED and Math courses at the start of each semester. Our current students are also a huge part of the recruitment effort, as their testimonials help to build excitement in potential recruits. 

At the internship level, we are looking for students who are highly interested in STEM/Math, and are typically in their first 2 years of their undergraduate program, where they are not 100% committed to a major yet. Internships are paid, and students are paired with faculty mentors, so often they get to experience being a Learning Assistant for a Math or Math Ed course to determine if teaching might be the right path for them before applying for a scholarship their junior and senior year. Our goal is to give them lots of opportunities teaching, working with students, etc. to help them get a feel for what a career in STEM education would be like. We were just awarded a Phase 2 Noyce Track 1 grant that has allowed us to partner with our local community college, extending internships to the community college level to recruit students before they even matriculate to UNO. Similarly to the university program, the interns at MCC are paired with a faculty mentor and act as tutors and learning assistants for math courses to see what teaching is all about.

Scholarships are typically awarded to juniors and seniors, and come with a two year commitment for Scholars to teach mathematics in a high needs school upon completion of the program. Out of our Scholars who have exited the program, 82% completed the requirements and went on to fulfill their teaching obligation in high needs districts. One participant who did not finish the scholarship switch to a mathematics major, and another is still enrolled in education classes but did not complete the scholarship. We also have an additional 7 Scholars from the Phase 1 grant on track to complete the program, as well as an Intern who graduated and is teaching mathematics at a middle school.

In terms of measuring impact beyond completion, we have also examined the engagement and activities of participants over the past five years. We have had multiple co-authored presentations and papers that faculty mentors worked on with interns and scholars, here are a select few:
1) Matthews, M., Wilson, J. (2019). Impact of Inquiry Based Learning on a Precalculus Class. Article accepted for publication in Far East Journal in Mathematics Education.
2) 

Riley, M., Matache, D., Matthews, M. (2019). Experience of A Noyce Student Learning Assistant: Nested Inquiry Based Mentorship. Article in Resubmitted after a Revise and Resubmit Status. Intended for publication in PRIMUS.  3)  Matthews, M., Gillespie, C., Seidel, H., Matthews, W. (2020). Cold War Escape Rooms ( and other Student to Student Math nights). Joint Math Meetings of American Mathematical Society and American Mathematical Society
We have collaborated with our citywide STEM Ecosystem to present on the need to recruit and retain highly qualified secondary math education majors in our city:
Gomez Johnson, K., Flesch, M., Bruckner, M., Grandgenett, N.F., & Love, B. (2019, October). Critical mass: A city-wide network dedicated to mathematics education. Presented at the National Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference, Denver, CO. And we have examined both the role of the faculty mentors in student success in our program, as well as the types of value that students find participating in Noyce:
4) Hodge, A., Rech, J., Gomez-Johnson, K., Jakopovic, P., & Matthews, M. (Fall 2019). Mentoring Future Mathematics Teachers: Lessons Learned from Four Mentoring Partnerships. The Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College.
5) What’s the Value? Measuring Value in Complex Social Learning Environments with Preservice Mathematics Teachers, Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership Annual Conference (2020)   Something we are continuing to examine is the development of a social network for our participants- this is a powerful component of the program that students express time and time again has been the most valuable part of participating in the internships and scholarships. Having a cohort of students with similar interests, taking similar courses, and participating in outreach, math, and teaching opportunities together has been a standout "take away" when we interview students, and is something we are hoping to qualify better this summer. We also hope to better examine the impact that our program and students have on the local K-12 STEM network, as a big part of the work students do off campus is to volunteer in the local schools to help with activities and events related to STEM.

Hopefully this gives some background on our work. I am happy to tag in one of the other Co-PIs on the grant if you have further questions. Cheers.  

Absolutely! What you saw in the video was our Harry Potter themed escape room that we ran as an after school activity. We do not have our "puzzle web" which broke down each puzzle and our process of making the room anymore, but I do have our solutions as well as how each puzzle fit together. If you would like anything in more detail feel free to email me a GregLawson@UNOmaha.edu and I can send out our solutions and materials list.

I would say that a major advantage that we have as Noyce Scholars is having the chance to get more hands on experience working with students compared to our College of Ed. peers who are not in Noyce. 

For me personally, I was a bit nervous working with kids at first, but by the time I was in my first practicum it seemed like I was more comfortable with it compared to my peers.

I think that the types of actives that work best for both student understanding and for preparing teachers are IBL type lessons. Students seem to remember content better if they discover it themselves and to create a lesson like that the teachers have to be comfortable with both their content and working with students. 

I couldn't agree more!  IBL lessons are wonderful.  We use them in our project as well.

 

We found that having a theme for our activities helps keep students interested so we always include a one for our escape rooms. Harry Potter was definitely a hit with the middle schoolers!

Our list of activities that we bring to schools for outreach includes a mixture of things we have made and tested ourselves and as well as activities that we have found online. For example, we have made things like ozobot/ceenbot mazes and straw rocket activities for students. We have also found things online like Towers of Hanoi and hexaflexagon activities. We try to have everything we do be both hands on and feature a math element. 

We also make a new escape room each semester and invite kids to our campus to try and escape the room. That is one of our larger projects each semester that we create from scratch. They have gotten so popular that we have to run the rooms two Fridays each semester to accommodate around 60 students that sign up each semester!

We have both Noyce Interns and Noyce Scholars. To be an intern you have to be an underclassman so it would max out at 4 semesters. To be a scholar you have to be 4 semesters away from graduation. So by the end most of those in our Noyce Program will have been a part of it for about 3 years on average. Since we are such a close group we have stayed in contact with past scholars who have graduated so in way you can stay involved for years after graduating! 

Proud...our students and the amount of impact they are able to have on our campus and community. They not only develop their own knowledge, skills, and disposition, but they serve in so many capacities to enhance pK-16 activities and programs.  

Challenge: Recruitment...we always need more math teachers! For everyone, time management is obviously a popular response.

I can imagine that recruitment would be a challenge. I would hope math teachers would see all the benefit to being involved in a project like this.  It's wonderful ! What an impactful project!

Recruiting is a challenge each year.  We rely on faculty teaching math classes to have one-on-one discussions with students and encourage them to consider the program.  Also - our math advisor and education faculty engage with students to inform students and prompt them to apply for the program.

One unique aspect of our mentoring program is that we try to give all scholars both a Teacher Education and Mathematics faculty member as a mentor during their two years. This structure helps diversify the experiences and also give our teacher candidates more than one faculty member they feel they have developed a relationship with on the leadership team. A couple other lessons learned: 1) meet weekly, 2) set goals, 3) co-construct work both are interested in doing.  These may seem simple, but they have been a finding in our reflective work evaluating the project.  Thank you very much for your question.

This program definitely empowers us as preservice teachers, which is great for preparing us for our future classrooms!

Currently being in the program and talking to other scholars, current and former, I would say that the feedback we give is about all of the ways the program has prepared us for our future classrooms. One thing that I am personally proud of with the UNO Noyce Program is that if we had an idea or concern involving Noyce, we know that we would be heard and the our leadership team is very open and approachable.

Top takeaways: Friendships made with other's in Noyce, exposure working with students (especially in innovative ways), networking with local teachers and professors at UNO, the opportunity to continuing working with our cohort after graduating, learning leadership skills, and the opportunity to go to conferences around the country both as precentors and as attendees.