NCSA receives almost $600,000 to build community of science education advocates

released 03.10.09

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) recently received $599,965 from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to create a community of science education advocates who are expert in 21st century science and pedagogy and who will be well prepared to teach in today's rural high school classroom.

The funded project, called Illinois Computational Chemistry Champions (I-C3), will focus on deepening teachers' understanding of computational methods and their role in the chemistry classroom and will provide them with support to earn national recognition. Teachers will participate in a research experience to better understand the nature of science and will work with University of Illinois chemistry faculty to better prepare students for college-level work. By the project's end, participants will gain National Board Certification and the Illinois Master Teacher designation. The participating teachers will become champions of science education in their communities, school districts, and the state of Illinois.

I-C3 builds on the success of the Institute for Chemistry Literacy through Computational Science (ICLCS) began in 2006 and is a partnership among NCSA, the Department of Computer Science and the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and A-C Central Community Unit School District 262 in Chandlerville. ICLCS aims to strengthen rural high school teachers' understanding of the application of chemistry. It provides intensive hands-on training in the use of computational chemistry tools and technologies during successive summer institutes and also enables teachers and mentors to communicate and collaborate online throughout the school year. ICLCS has created a community of Illinois research faculty and rural Illinois high school teachers who work together to improve student achievement.

ICLCS has already changed classroom practices and led to improved test scores. After just the first year of the program, the first cadre of ICLCS fellows was using more computational science resources than the second cadre, which was embarking on their ICLCS training. High school students taught by both cadres took the American Chemical Society High School Chemistry exam in August 2007 and in March 2008; the students of Cadre I fellows who have begun to implement new techniques and tools in their classrooms were higher.

The first group of 10 educators selected for the new I-C3 program will be from the first cadre of ICLCS fellows, who will have completed two years of the three-year program and will attend their final institute this summer.

The principal investigators for the I-C3 grant are NCSA director Thom Dunning and Edee Norman Wiziecki, leader of NCSA's education programs. For more information on the program, contact Wiziecki at edeew@ncsa.uiuc.edu.