Hi there Bellarmine University!,

I greatly enjoyed your video and the use of the different footage from the classroom environments. The collaboration you describe with the sixteen community colleges sounds like a great win-win for both them and your university.  The 2X2 plan that was mentioned is interesting to me - is there a common outline of gen eds that are offered at all of the community colleges that articulate and transfer easily to your program?  Also, I would be interested in how any education classes that transfer ensure alignment and not repetition of or missing content areas.  Thanks in advance!

I'm interested in knowing more about two components of your plan:

1. What might the summer camp with Kentucky Science Center look like? How would you engage your Noyce Scholars with the camp?
2. What are the various means by which you'll be working to recruit high school students into your STEM education programs?  The prospect of the Noyce scholarship is obviously enticing, but how will you get the word out to them?

Thanks so much for sharing with us!

What a great way to leverage the power of partnerships for an innovative solution to an important problem! 

I see this multi-part project as having even more benefits than those you describe. It seems the camp would provide a rich opportunity for your prospective teachers to have extended experience working with kids. In addition, your pipeline may help to diversify the teaching workforce. 

I would be curious to hear how you plan to measure impact along the way, since the timeline from HS to teaching is long. What indicators will signal to you that you’re on track with preparing teachers for a satisfying career in STEM teaching? 

Many thanks for your support! You are correct that the pathway from HS to teaching is long, so many supports have been put in place along the way. Some of these include learning communities to support Education + STEM students, RSOs (i.e. "Educator's Rising") students can be involved in that draw from high school and college students with similar interests, Maker Fairs with the campus and external communities, professional development on high-leverage strategies in STEM teaching, strategic placement in diverse field settings, internships at the Science Center, and more. 

Thanks, so much, for the work you are undertaking and the really thoughtful way you've represented it in your video. I want to build off of several people's wonderings with two additional questions related to your partnerships with community colleges. I really appreciated what the VP featured in the video talked about with respect to the broader societal motivation that makes such a partnership worthwhile. You also talked about the importance of ongoing communication in building the strength of the partnership. Do you have one or two specific examples of ways (in process) that you have been able to forge those meaningful relationships? Were there existing individual relationships, for example, that you leveraged? Common interest that brought you together? Learning more about how people forge these kinds of relationships I think is really helpful.

Separately, the video mentioned that for some an "early entry pathway" is the preferred approach. What are you all learning in understanding the implications of going all the way through the first 2 years at a community college and then transferring compared with an earlier departure approach?

Appreciate all that is going on at Bellarmine in this space!

We tried to have the early courses of our STEM ED courses at our local community college but really struggled with numbers and it ended after a few years.  One issue was our early courses have field experiences (we are a UTeach replication)  What strategies do you use to get your community college students into STEM ed?

Hi Jan,

We do have some recruitment happening at the community colleges through foundations courses, but we really rely on our efforts once they arrive at our university in their junior year as a STEM major. At this point, we introduce them to education-focused internships, maker fairs, education RSOs and learning communities. Our 2x2 plans are mapped to allow students to move seamlessly into the Early Entry Master of Arts in Teaching program if they decide teaching is of interest to them.