STEM: Education Department Offers Students a New Area of Study

Starting in the summer of 2004, members of the St. Kate’s community began working on a new STEM minor for elementary and secondary education teachers. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Tony Murphy, STEM is being developed as a minor for education majors and is being funded by a $240,000 3M Foundation grant over the course of the next five years.

Why STEM? There is a need for good science and math teachers at the elementary and secondary levels of education. Research and experience has shown that many elementary and secondary education teachers are afraid of science and mathematics. They don’t feel they have the equipment, the confidence or the content background necessary to provide solid scientific and mathematical teaching to young students. St. Kate’s wants to provide teachers with the solid background and effective methods they need to feel confident and excited about teaching math and science. The STEM minor is also part of a larger plan by the Centers of Excellence for mending the ‘Leaky Pipeline’ of girls not entering science and technology careers.

This grant provides the opportunity for a program of this magnitude to be developed. What is unusual about this grant is it will pay for faculty time versus the more traditional grant, which tends to cover equipment and other resources.

The STEM minor is being developed to incorporate disciplines of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, computer science, and education to create unique and diverse courses that are interesting to students and effective in redirecting the teaching of elementary science and math courses. The minor will consist of 4-5 courses that will begin with an interdisciplinary introductory course available to all majors in hopes of interesting other students in the STEM minor. To follow will be 2-3 hands-on courses that incorporate educational strategies with math and science concepts. A capstone course for the STEM minor will be project based, introducing more teaching methods and experiential work.

St. Kate’s is the second largest supplier of educators to the state of Minnesota. However, the problem of educator fear toward math and science is not unique to the Twin Cities or even Minnesota. Higher education faces a national problem of science and math in elementary and secondary schools. The STEM team sees this as a good opportunity to look at what other colleges and universities are doing to address this problem as well as develop their own ideas and programs.

Currently, the STEM team is examining different teaching models and is being very deliberate about not rushing in to a particular model without giving each option solid consideration. The team has seven scheduled meetings for the fall of 2004 and seven more in the spring of 2005. There may be a few summer training sessions, especially in the realm of environmental science, as January in MN is not everyone’s favorite time for outdoor investigations. Following the acceptance by the EPC of the minor, the team plans to have the introductory course available for the next academic school year. The program hopes to roll out a subsequent course each year to follow.

As the project progresses the team will be seeking a great deal of input from students, alumnae and teachers as to the planning, naming, and assessment of the STEM minor.

The STEM minor is a five-year process that has only just begun. There are many hurdles and many triumphs yet to be experienced by this program. However, with the ultimate goal of furthering the development of young minds in math and science, what can really go wrong?

The current STEM team is headed by Dr. Tony Murphy and consists of the following members; Dr. Martha Phillips – Biology, Dr. Gina Mancini-Samuelson – Chemistry, Dr. Pat Dunlop – Chemistry, Dr. Lynn Gildensoph – Biology, Dr. Jack Flynn – Geography, Yvonne Ng – Computer Science & Engineering, Dr. Terry Flower – Physics, Dr. Ken Vos, Dr. Susan Goetz, Dr. Lori Maxfield, Sherri Kreuser and other Education faculty along with assessment help from Dr. Andrea Olson – Psychology, and adjunct professor Karen Campbell from the University of Minnesota.

--Amberly Ann Krogh