PA College Gets $1 Million Grant for STEM Teacher Training Program

To help increase the number of qualified secondary STEM instructors, Westminster College in Pennsylvania has received a $1 million grant for its IQ  STEM teacher training program.

The grant was made through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program of the National Science Foundation, which focuses on encouraging science and math majors to become secondary educators and supports scholarships and academic programs at various colleges of education.

At Westminster, the grant is expected to help increase the number of qualified STEM teachers in western Pennsylvania by more than 50 percent, with a cohort of 20 educators specialized in teaching in areas of high need at the end of five years.

The college plans to offer related workshops, research projects, and a course "designed to address the racial, cultural, and economic needs of school districts trying to narrow the achievement gap," according to the school. It will also collaborate with local, high need school districts in surrounding areas and offer a scholarship for undergrad STEM majors who can commit to teaching in high need districts.

About the Author

Stephen Noonoo is an education technology journalist based in Los Angeles. He is on Twitter @stephenoonoo.

Featured

  • woman surrounded by virtual hologram icons

    Beyond AI Adoption: Designing Learning for an Age of Abundant Intelligence

    Higher education was designed for a world in which access to knowledge, expertise, feedback, mentorship, and authentic learning experiences were inherently scarce. By making many forms of intelligence increasingly abundant, AI is inherently redefining the existing paradigm.

  • Hootsuite

    Beyond the Feed: How Higher Ed Turns Social Media Into a Measurable Enrollment Engine

    More than half of prospective students research programs on social media before visiting a university website, and nearly half will skip applying to a school that looks inactive online. Hootsuite, the all-in-one social OS platform trusted by more than 2,000 higher education institutions, helps campus teams turn everyday posts into measurable outcomes, from applications to alumni giving.

  • businessman holding tablet with holographic AI icons

    Google Moves AI Agents into the Mainstream

    At its recent I/O developer conference, Google presented artificial intelligence agents not as a distant research project, but as a product strategy spanning Search, personal assistants, productivity software, developer tools, and smart glasses.

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.