W&M receives grant to help recruit STEM teachers

William & Mary recently received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue recruiting math and science majors to teach in local high-needs schools.

The grant for the university’s Noyce Scholars Program will fund the recruitment, preparation and support of 25 new teachers over the next five years. Participants receive a scholarship of up to $26,000 to complete a double undergraduate major or a master’s degree. In return, they commit to teaching for two years in a high-needs school. William & Mary partners with Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg-James City County, New Kent, York County and Gloucester school divisions.

STEM positions — those in science, technology, engineering and math — have historically been difficult to fill.

“When you major in a STEM field, you have plenty of opportunities for higher paying jobs,” said Meredith Kier, an associate professor in the School of Education and principal investigator for the grant.

It’s even more difficult to staff these positions in high-needs schools, Kier said. These schools have added challenges, such as populations with high poverty rates or a lack of advanced-class options. Kier, who taught science at a high-needs school before moving into higher education, has been involved with the Noyce program for almost 10 years.

“The access and opportunities for students to have good teachers is really important to me,” she said.

The program has seen success in recruitment and retention. It has placed about 120 science and math teachers since receiving its first grant in 2009. More than 70% of the first two cohorts stayed in teaching for five or more years. All participants in the most recent cohort, which ran from 2019 to 2023, are still teaching.

Surveys and interviews with Noyce alumni have shown that those who view themselves as advocates for justice in education were more likely to continue teaching, Kier said. Feeling a connection with the school community was also a factor that contributed to strong retention rates.

Melissa Temple is a seventh-grade science teacher at Gildersleeve Middle School, where she’ll start her sixth year in the fall. She never pictured herself as a teacher. But while working as a biological technician in wildlife science in New York, she began working with students during afterschool programs to teach them about conservation efforts.

“I ended up loving it,” she said.

While looking for ways to work more directly with kids, she found out about the Noyce program and William & Mary and returned to Virginia. Temple, who attended Hampton and Newport News schools, wants to show her students that science is for everyone.

“I really love where I am currently.”

Dom Ciruzzi, an assistant professor of geology and a co-principal investigator on the grant, said it’s important to have subject matter experts in K-12 schools.

“Geology, we call it a found major,” he said. Students often find it by chance, such as while trying to learn more about climate change. He hopes K-12 students will discover their interest in science earlier if their teachers are passionate about the content they teach. Part of his role with the Noyce program is recruiting. He says one of the places he pitches the idea is in his “Earth Science for Environmental Justice” class, during a module about how students can work for change.

Paul Heideman, a professor of biology, has been involved with the program since the first grant. He has a background in neuroscience and teaches a course for the program about how students learn.

Heideman said a big part of their recruitment efforts has been to change the message that math and science majors hear. Previously, advisers would sometimes tell students interested in teaching, “You can do much better.”

Now, those students are referred to the Noyce program rather than discouraged. Heideman hopes that having subject matter experts in the classroom will show K-12 students that STEM subjects are not about memorizing but are about “solving problems with the facts and principles that you know.”

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com