Noyce Scholars travel to Washingnton, D.C., to talk STEM
On May 23-25, an enthusiastic team of 12 educators and students from CUSP's Noyce Scholarship program represented the SouthCoast at the seventh annual NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Conference in Washington, D.C. Team members presented three well received workshops to an audience made up of over 500 attendees from across the country.
Promoting excellence
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| Kym Welty (UMD Noyce Program Coordinator), Kate McDermott (Noyce Scholar), Matt Huberman (Noyce Scholar), Dr. Trina Crowley (PI for UMD Noyce Scholarship Program), and Michelle Pound (Noyce Scholar) pose in front of the Capital Building during their trip to D.C. |
The invitation only conference focused on excellence in teacher training in the high needs areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Members from the local team headlined three workshops:
- Former Noyce Scholars and local teachers James Knuutila, Michelle Pound and Katherine McDermott gave an encore presentation of their successful “Survival Guide for the First Year Teacher,” which was also a big hit at last year’s conference.
- Trina Crowley, CUSP Associate Director, Dr. Tesfay Meressi, UMD Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, and Noyce Scholars Justin Mare and Matthew Huberman presented a workshop about strategies to successfully recruit engineering majors to become great teachers.
- Tyra Lopes-Mendes, Program Director of CUSP’s NSF TEACH! SouthCoast program, ran a workshop on using the Teacher Performance Assessment tool to evaluate teacher candidates.
Inspiring action
When they weren’t presenting, team members stayed busy with a jam-packed schedule of panels, poster presentations, and a selection of over 50 workshops. The conference also included a rousing keynote address on personalized student learning and STEM education by Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow.
“This conference was a truly inspiring and educational event,” says Kym Welty, NSF Noyce Program Coordinator at CUSP. “Our team shared some great resources with other scholars from across the country, and we learned so much from them as well.”
UMD receives funding from the Robert Noyce scholarship program for two key projects: the Robert Noyce Teaching Scholarship Program, headed by Dr. Patricia Crowley and coordinated by Kym Welty, and the new NSF TEACH! SouthCoast, a Teaching Fellow/Master Teaching Fellow program, led by CUSP Executive Director Karen O’Connor and Associate Dean, College of Engineering Dr. Meressi from UMD.
