Funding, Grants & Awards | News
UNC Greensboro Gets $7.7 Million for STEM Teacher Support
The
United States
Department of Education will give the University
of North Carolina
Greensboro (UNCG) $7.7 million over the next five years to
recruit, train and
support local teachers of science, technology, engineering and math
(STEM).
The
university
will get approximately $1.6 million each year from the federal
government to team up with four elementary, two middle and one high
school in
Guilford and Forsyth counties, beginning this fall.
In
each
school, UNCG will install a tailor-made Makerspace,
a technology workshop
based on the theory that students learn most effectively by
making things,
along with all the necessary technology. Beginning next summer, the
university
will host a summer Maker Camp with a new Makerspace on the third floor
of the
School of Education.
UNCG
students,
including graduate students at its Joint School of Nanoscience and
Nanoengineering, will act as content experts for classroom teachers to
advance
learning about technology and high school students will be recruited to
be
summer camp counselors.
"The
project
is not all about specific cutting-edge technology, because that
changes," said Christina O'Connor, who will direct the project for UNCG.
"It's
about how we can use technology to better prepare teachers so that
students
become more creative and more innovative, and learn by doing."
The
program
will act as a hands-on training ground for the university's teacher
candidates and as a way to recruit future STEM teachers, a major
initiative of
the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
O'Connor
said,
"We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist,
using
technologies that haven't been invented, in order to solve problems we
don't
even know are problems yet."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.
