By Bianca Strzelczyk
As part of Northeastern’s “Urban Outreach” program, the university, in conjunction with other area universities, was awarded a multi-million dollar grant to help improve public school education.
The National Science Found-ation (NSF) awarded the University of Massachusetts (UMass) at Boston, in conjunction with Northeastern Univer-sity, a $12.5 million grant for improving science education in Boston Public Schools. Harvard Medical School and the College Board, which are supporting partners of the grant, will also be helping with the program.
The grant will be part of a five-year Boston Science Partnership in which Northeastern and UMass will provide courses for science teachers from Boston Public Schools, specifically those teaching grades six to 12, to better their scientific and engineering knowledge. The money will be divided up amongst the partners — $2.5 million going to Northeastern over the five years.
The head director of the partnership, research professor and director of science and technology and engineering education programs at Northeastern, Chris-tos Zahopoulos, said many teachers in the Boston Public Schools are not “highly qualified” in teaching sciences. The grant will affect 442 teachers and 33,064 students in the Boston Public School system, Zahopoulos said.
These courses, which Za-hopoulos helped in part to create, will help Boston teachers “improve content knowledge,” as well as overall teaching skills.
“Our ultimate goal is to improve student achievement,” Zahopoulos said.
Northeastern officials said the program is just one instance where the university has reached out to Boston neighborhoods.
“Northeastern has a long history of giving back to the community,” said Brylee Maxfield, media relations specialist for Northeastern. “This is another example.”
The courses will employ a “vertical teaming” method, originally created by the College Board, in order to ensure that there are no gaps in the science curriculum.
The courses will be available at Northeastern for teachers starting this summer semester. Following the completion of the courses, teachers will have to pass a state exam in order to become “highly qualified.”
At the end of five years, Zahopoulos believes that “80 percent to 90 percent of science teachers will be highly qualified,” in the department.
Schools interested in receiving grants send in formal proposals to the NSF laying out their ideas and how much money they need in order to fund their programs, said M. Mitchell Waldrop, NSF media contact.
“The NSF then decides which schools receive the money by calling in a group of elite professional science researchers which evaluate the proposals and rank them in the order which they find of most importance,” Waldrop said. “They have a check list which they go by and rate the ideas. The ones with the highest ranking receive the money.”
In addition to creating courses, Northeastern will be using RE-SEED (Retirees Enhancing Science Education through Experiments and Demonstra-tions). RE-SEED, which has been in effect since 1991, has put in approximately half a million hours of time and has affected 100 school districts, Zahopoulos said.
“[RE-SEED] recruits and trains retired science professionals,” Zahopoulos said. “We will send them to schools as volunteers to help teachers in classrooms.”
Boston Public Schools, in response to the low grades on state tests, initiated the proposal for the grant. The NSF received 136 proposals from different schools nationwide for the fund and only five received the money. The other four schools that received money were the University of Colorado at Denver, City University of New York, Arizona State University and Birmingham Southern College, Waldrop said.
This partnership will not only help Boston Public Schools, but will set a standard for other schools, Zahopoulos said.
“We would like this to be a model for other urban school districts in the country,” he said.
