September, 2011
Contact: Professor Todd Grundmeier
(805)756-1658 tgrundme@calpoly.edu
Cal Poly's Noyce Scholars Program Sending Math Teachers
to High-Need Schools
Noyce Math Scholars (l-r) Alyssa Hamlin, Shawn Garrity,
and Alyssa Eubank
SAN LUIS OBISPO -- The Cal Poly Math Department is looking to expand a scholarship and training program for new math teachers funded by a $425,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
The Noyce Scholars program is helping Cal Poly retain top students and train them to be math teachers in high schools and middle schools in disadvantaged districts. The NSF grant program offers scholarships of $10,000 a year for one or two years to students seeking California math teaching credentials. Recipients also get additional training and support on how to successfully teach math to underprivileged teens.
The Noyce Scholars, in return, agree to teach from two to four years in “high needs” school districts – those having one or more schools with more than 50 percent of students qualifying for the federal free lunch program. So far, Cal Poly’s Noyce math teachers have gone to high schools and junior highs throughout California, including Oxnard, Bakersfield and Santa Maria.
Led by math professors Todd Grundmeier and Elsa Medina the math department has awarded 19 Noyce Scholarships during the four years of the program. The department is going to reapply for the grant and hopes to expand the program.
In addition to producing top math teachers, “We’re trying to keep our really strong math teaching students here for our credential program. A lot of them leave after graduation because it’s expensive to live here,” Grundmeier said. The approach is working – the average undergraduate GPA of Noyce Scholars is 3.4, and top students from the math teaching concentration are making the cut to receive a Noyce Scholarship.
"We’ve had two engineering majors and one statistics major also receive scholarships, but the rest have been math majors. And all of them want to teach math,” Grundmeier said.
The NSF Noyce grant also includes funding for the department to host a summer workshop for Noyce credential candidates and “Noyce alumni” who are now practicing teachers. Participants receive a $500 travel stipend to come to Cal Poly for the three-day event.
In July, Cal Poly held its fourth Noyce workshop and hosted 15 practicing teachers and 12 prospective teachers from Cal Poly and other CSU campuses. Medina, Grundmeier and four workshop participants led exercises designed to illustrate practical math lessons that work in high-needs districts.
"The focus is on creating materials the Noyce Scholars can take into the classroom with them,” Grundmeier said.
This year, the workshop started out with catapults. Participants broke up into teams of three, assigned to foot-long waffle-ball catapults clamped to tables. Their task: to determine how the resistance of the catapult’s rubber bands and the catapult arm angle affected the wiffle-ball projectile’s arc and range. The Noyce Scholars also had to predict outcomes for a series of catapult angle and tension settings.
"The ball makes a parabola – a curve – as you change resistance and angles. The exercise lets you see patterns, and ask questions about what settings will allow the ball to reach specific heights,” explained Alyssa Eubanks, a Cal Poly math senior and workshop participant.
Eubanks and math seniors Alyssa Hamlin and Shawn Garrity are among the most recent Noyce Scholarship recipients. Each received $20,000 in scholarship funding to pay for their senior year at Cal Poly and for their year of coursework in the Cal Poly College of Education credential program.
All are committed to teaching math to teens in underprivileged school districts for at least four years.
"I grew up in Tulare, which is definitely a high needs area,” said Eubanks. “I’ve been in that environment my whole life. Teaching in a high needs area would be a good fit for me.”
Garrity grew up in Manhattan Beach, but has no qualms about teaching in a high-needs district. “I like everything about math. It’s just really, really fun. It’s like solving puzzles to me. And you can apply problem solving skills to other areas of your life.”
Hamlin grew up in Lompoc and wants to return there to teach at her old high school. She’s majoring in math even though she says she doesn’t like it. “I’m different. I don’t like it. But the logic appeals to me, and I enjoy finding solutions to problems. So I can relate to students who don’t like math. For a lot of students, that’s their hardest subject,” she said. “I want to be that one teacher who teaches your hardest subject, but makes it not quite so bad.”
For more details about the Noyce Math Scholars program at Cal Poly, visit:
http://www.cesame.calpoly.edu/noyce/noyce-math-program-description.html