East Tennessee Noyce STEM Teacher Preparation Program.

There is a critical shortage of STEM teachers in high-need fields, especially in Computer Science, Engineering/Engineering Technology, in the southern Appalachian region. This paper describes an NSF funded Noyce Track 1 Teacher Recruiting program at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) awarded in 2019. The program is administered in partnership with local high-need school districts in the First Congressional District of Tennessee as well as four nearby nonprofit educational organizations, namely the Gray Fossil Site/ETSU Natural History Museum, the Hands-On Museum, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and the Bays Mountain Planetarium, and three summer science camps: the ETSU Governor's School, the ETSU Renaissance Camp, and the ETSU Computing/Technology Camp. The program has three parts: 1) a summer teaching internship program for undergraduate STEM majors designed to recruit students into the teaching profession, 2) scholarships and mentoring for a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, and 3) a mentoring program and continuing professional development for newly minted teachers to retain them as teachers. It is focused on Physics, Chemistry, Engineering/Engineering Technology, Computer Science, and Mathematics. The heart of the program is a 4+1 bachelors/post-baccalaureate program in which students obtaining undergraduate degrees in high-need STEM fields are recruited for the MAT program. Thus far two cohorts of seven students completed the internship programs and all showed interest to become STEM teacher in their respective fields. Of them one student completed the MAT program and currently teaching in high-need school. We anticipate that ETSU Noyce program will create a group of teachers who will be able to inspire future generations of STEM professionals in Northeast Tennessee region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]