Salary support for the Program Coordinator position. This position is vital to the continuation of the program's ability to build on current projects and develop new ones. The Program Coordinator position is also vital to the collection and organization of the evaluation data.
With the loss of the Program Coordinator's position (and the termination of the program), scientists will lose an avenue to help the public understand their research. The scientists will also lose a 'pro bono' productive set of hands in their lab. Obviously the teachers will lose out on an opportunity to engage in authentic science research and the opportunity to be part of a unique professional learning community. Loss of HHMI funding will also directly impact students. HHMI had funded the graduate student visitation program component. The graduate students served as near peer role models and assisted the students in developing Intel type science fair projects.
We have submitted proposals to maintain this position. However, without HHMI support, the likelihood of obtaining such support greatly diminishes.
This past year the program has gathered enough standardized science exam data to be statistically significant. The reason that the data took well over a decade is because of the transient nature of teaching in NYC. Teachers move from school to school, change courses taught, no longer teaches a science course that requires a standardized exam and/or they are in a school which does not have a comparison (control) teacher.
Program participants are required to develop standards-based lesson plans based on their Columbia experience. 309 lesson plans are available on the program's website for educators to use.
http://www.scienceteacherprogram.org/tchrplan.html
Columbia's SRP was the P.I. on a multi-site NSF-funded study of teacher research programs. Evaluation instruments were developed during the study. More recently, SRP co-organized three Research Experiences for Teachers national meetings. The instruments were refined at those meetings. The instruments can be found at:
http://www.retnetwork.org/evaluation.htm
