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Going Virtual: Reflections from Research and School Educators on Navigating Professional Development and STEM Club Opportunities

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37231

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37231

Download Count

311

Paper Authors

biography

Amari Simpson University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Amari T. Simpson is a third-year Ph.D. student at the College of Education at the University of Illinois. He has worked as a STEM educator in Boston for two years, and his research interest centers on STEM pre-college program effects on students. He currently serves as a Research Assistant in the College of Engineering. He received a Bachelor's degree in psychology from Middlebury College and a Master's degree in curriculum and teaching in science education from Boston University.

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biography

Lara Hebert Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Serves as the Outreach and Public Engagement Coordinator for The Grainger College of Engineering. She brings to this position and this initiative expertise in teacher education and curriculum design.

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biography

Luisa-maria Rosu University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Luisa-Maria Rosu is the Director of I-STEM (Illinois Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) Education Initiative and a Research Associate in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A former mathematics teacher, elementary through college, her interests evolved from teachers’ professional knowledge and continuing education to the quality of teaching and the evaluation of STEM programs in higher education.

In 2014, she received a CORE Early Career Fulbright U.S. scholar award for the proposal Investigations of Quality Criteria in STEM Teacher Education and in 2016, she received the YWCA leadership award for STEM education.

Luisa received her Ph.D. in Continuing Teacher Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010. She also holds an M.A in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California (2000) and an M.S. in Real and Complex Analysis from the University of Bucharest, Romania (1996).

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Meagan C. Pollock Engineer Inclusion

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Dr. Meagan Pollock envisions a world where personal and social circumstances are not obstacles to achieving potential, and where kindness, inclusivity, and conservation prevail. As an engineer turned educator for diversity, equity, and inclusion, Meagan focuses on engineering equity into education and the workforce. An international speaker, teacher, engineer, and equity leader, her mission is to provide services, tools, and resources that inspire awareness and initiate action. Learn more at EngineerInclusion.com

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Lynford Goddard University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Tasha D. Henderson

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Abstract

Influencing the rates of women, African American, Hispanic/ Latino, American Indian/ Native American, and low-income persons in STEM occupations is an ongoing goal for various STEM fields. [removed for submission review] is a multi-year project to increase these groups’ participation in STEM majors and careers. Through content grounded in STEM equity and practices, we worked closely with middle/high school teachers, counselors, and administrators across the state of Illinois to 1) establish a network community, 2) design, extend, and implement informal STEM-learning clubs during the summer with hands-on, project-based engineering tasks, and 3) connect young people to engineering-based summer learning opportunities including industry exposure. In the face of the global pandemic, professional development opportunities for educators and informal learning experiences for students demanded new adjustments to content delivery unseen before. We discuss our leadership team’s adjustments to online content delivery and school educator’s efforts to create and sustain a virtual STEM club through reflexive practices. Specifically, we transitioned a 10-day, in-person professional development during the summer to a 5-day, blended professional development, where asynchronous and synchronous activities were led by CISTEME365 staff. Additionally, we adjusted our STEM equity and content materials for school educator’s immediate use for the virtual-formatted school year. We developed our professional development practice around remaining flexible and accessible (via check-ins, discussion forums, email, and open office hours) to school educator participants. In collaboration with school educators, we discuss the challenges and promises of virtual content delivery. We offer insight into how to deliver the best both virtual professional development and informal STEM club opportunities for all students and educators going forward. This material is based upon work supported by the [removed for submission review] under [removed for submission review].

Simpson, A., & Hebert, L., & Rosu, L., & Pollock, M. C., & Goddard, L., & Henderson, T. D. (2021, July), Going Virtual: Reflections from Research and School Educators on Navigating Professional Development and STEM Club Opportunities Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37231

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015