A National Science Foundation (NSF) Noyce grant-funded $1.2 million in 2014 for the Sustaining Wyoming’s Advancing Reach in Mathematics and Science (SWARMS). This will cover tuition and fees for a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) student’s senior year and will cover tuition and fees for a student’s post baccalaureate program (3 semesters), in order to receive their secondary teaching certification in either science or mathematics.
Those who already have a past degree in STEM fields and want to teach can also receive funding through this program.
“I have two things for STEM Graduates: money and a job,” Assistant Professor of Education Andrea Burrows, the Principal Investigator for the grant award, said.
The NSF Noyce grant is a five-year grant (2014-2019) and is running in its fourth year. The hope of the SWARMS Principal Investigator team is to extend the grant funding a year after the official end date.
“The NFS Noyce Grant program SWARMS can pay for the three semesters that it takes to obtain a teaching certification,” Burrows said. “Summer, Fall and Spring are completely paid for–all tuition and fees–but there is a short time frame for students to apply.”
“It is a good thing that College of Education is connecting its skills with STEM students and graduates and developing more opportunities,” Abby Mitchell, majoring in Nursing, said.
Scholarship recipients are required to teach for two years anywhere in the United States in a high-need school district, which is usually defined as a school district that serves an elementary or secondary school characterized by: high teacher turnover rates; high percentage of individuals from families with incomes below the poverty level; high percentage of teachers not teaching in the content area in which they were trained to teach.
“Most schools throughout the US qualify as a high-need school based on one or more categories,” Burrows said.
Within six years after graduation, SWARMS recipients must fulfill the teaching requirement or pay the money back as a loan.
The potential SWARMS candidate can be a STEM graduate from any University and working in a STEM field.
“It doesn’t matter if they have been working for 20 years, if they want to come back to earn science or math certification they can,” Burrows said. “It can be anybody.”
The ultimate goal of SWARMS is to increase the number of qualified science and math teachers and certify 70 teachers through the program.
“We actually have 25 SWARMS Scholars that have gone through the program and they are spread out from Wyoming, Idaho, Iowa and so on,” Burrows said.
Andrew Fox, majoring in Engineering, said, “This is [a] great opportunity for STEM seniors, if we change our mind and want to change our career to teaching, there is still a chance without any huge loss.”
