Who are we interested in?

Science educators-Biology, Chemistry, Physical Sciences who are the future leaders in their profession. We are interested in both senior educators and junior educators who plan to become Master Educators at some point in their career.

What do we expect from you?

Time, effort, brain power, more effort. Ok, this is nothing new. This is a 12 credit, 1 year program in which one can finish a Leadership Certification program. The primary commitment is the summer research experience, which is a 40 hour/week commitment from June 9- August 1, 2008 (if you are still in service on June 9, please contact Mike Woller at wollerm@uww.edu; this will not prevent your participation!). Specific schedules depend on the laboratory needs, but will be as flexible as the work allows.

What can we do for you?

We can pay you while you gain the summer research experience- $5000 for 8 weeks of work. You will also earn 7 credits for this experience (you will have to pay for the credits-per credit costs listed at end of page), and gain a new insight into your profession if past experience is an indicator of what to expect here. Educators who have participated in our BEST-TERP summer program in the past have gained a lot of experience and had a good time while working at science here at UWW. Further, the follow-up course (3 more credits) will help bring participants together after the summer experience to share ideas and questions about implementation of concepts and practical applications in their classrooms.

Introduction:
The Science Education and Leadership (SEAL) Institute is intended to improve teacher quality and student achievement in science by establishing an inquiry-based, collaborative professional-development program involving grades 6-12 science teachers and university faculty. The project will address specific gaps in teacher and student science knowledge in regional school districts, with special attention to recruiting educators from districts with a large proportion of historically underrepresented and underserved students.

Objective:
The Primary objective of the SEAL institute is to implement a novel training opportunity for science educators- a 12 credit Science Leader Specialist Certificate. The details of the requirements are listed below, but basically, there are two pools of science educators who we plan to target (although this categorization will exclude NO science educators who wish to become leaders in their profession): 1) science educators who already possess an MS degree and wish to earn certification as part of their Master Teacher credentials. 2) science educators who do not possess an MS degree could apply the credits earned in the Science Leadership Certification Program to their degree program and use this experience later in their career while working toward the Master Teacher credentials.

Requirements of the Leadership Certification Program:
There are 3 main components to the Leadership Certification Program:

  1. The Summer Research Institute at UW-Whitewater:
    The center of our program is an intense summer research program in which educators work in research laboratories or in the field doing science as a means to become better teachers of science. The summer research experience is a paid research job ($5000 for 8 weeks of work, roughly 40 hours/week) in which the educators also earn 7 graduate credits toward the 12 credits needed for the Leadership Certification.
  2. The Science Leader Seminar:
    The Science Leader Seminar is the second course (3 credits) required of the program. This course spans the academic year and will involve 2 group seminars/discussions at UWW during each semester (fall 2008 and spring 2009) involving both the science educators who participated in the summer research program and faculty mentors and science education faculty plus 2 visits (more if deemed necessary) to the educator’s school to discuss and assess implementation of ideas developed to implement a research component in the classroom. There will be weekly opportunities for virtual interaction and discussion, an ongoing blog, and other opportunities to develop ideas for classroom implementation of classroom activities developed by the educator. There will be opportunities for educators and faculty with science education interests to conduct pedagogical research as well as part of this seminar course.
  3. 2 credits from the list of workshops listed below:
    The remaining 2 credits for the 12 credit Leadership Certification Program will come from a list of workshop courses that will be offered during the fall and spring semesters at UW-Whitewater at times convenient to educators (nights/weekends). These will be primarily 1 credit courses (the microscopy course will be 2 credits), and we intend to offer 4-6 of these workshops during the 2008-2009 school year.

List of workshop ideas we are developing at present:

  1. Fossils of SE Wisconsin- Hanger
  2. Microscopy (2 cr) via the Internet- Curran
  3. The Neuroscience of Learning-Woller, Waraczynski
  4. Soils of Wisconsin-Jacobs
  5. Teaching Evolution-McKinnon, Kuzoff
  6. Teaching Green Chemistry- Traore
  7. Safety in the Classroom- Rodman
  8. Science as a Foreign Language- Sherlock
  9. Field Entomology for HS students-Katovich
  10. Volcanoes and Earth Quakes-Bhattacharyya
  11. Field Biology Methods-Solheim, Eshelman
  12. Physics for Grade School Teachers-Sayhun
  13. The Galaxy in your Classroom- Benjamin
  14. GIS as a tool for your classroom-Jeffery, Botts
  15. As the World Warms- Benjamin, Hanger, Travis, Solheim
  16. Physics of Animal Locomotion-Benjamin, Sahyun

The intent of the workshops is to bring in a number of science educators from regional high schools to attend and participate-this is not limited to the summer research participants! Bring your colleagues and friends along for the fun. We plan to provide very specific scientific content in each of these courses.

We have hired 3 different assessment experts to assist us in the maintenance and improvement of this program. We are building off of our BEST-TERP program (see Biology Dept at UWW webpage) that we have run the past 4 years. This program is funded for this year only at present: we plan to apply to both State and Federal agencies to continue the program for another 2-3 years to bring it to the point it is self-sustaining.

Costs to the educator:
Tuition for credits and travel to and from UW-Whitewater are the only anticipated costs to the educators participating in this program. Current costs for graduate credits at UW-Whitewater are:

7 credits for the summer research component = $2685
3 credits for the Science Leader Seminar = $1151
2 credit workshop (microscopy) = $767
1 credit workshops = $384 each.