April Bartnick received a $500 Classroom Grant from Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association for her project titled, "Community Outreach and Pollinator Habitat Restoration." The grant program provides funding to K-12 schools to support educational opportunities for students. April will share lessons learned and more funding opportunities for schoolyard habitat projects at the 2023 Science in the South Conference.
Dr. Leslie Duram and Dr. Harvey Henson, two co-PIs of our program, are part of a research team at SIU that received a $1.33 million NSF grant. The grant will fund their project titled, "Converging Earth Science and Sustainability Education and Experience to Prepare Next-Generation Geoscientists." The project will create scholarships for geoscience students to work on environmental sustainability-themed research.
MTFs Meteicha Green and Michelle Asa, along with four of their fellow Carruthers Elementary teachers, spearheaded a project aimed at reducing their students' energy usage at home. A part of the Illinois Green Schools Project, their program also won the Creative Use of Resources Award for the 2021-22 cohort.
The Murphysboro Middle School Eco Action team, founded by MTF April Bartnick and fellow science teacher Mallory Swafford, was part of the Illinois Green Schools Project. Their project includes promoting their school's recycling program and displaying posters around the school to inform the community of benefits that recycling brings.
Master Teacher Fellow Tiffany Sulser is now published! She is an author alongside Caryl Crowell and Kary Teeple in an article in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. The article highlights how literacy can be used to enhance student comprehension of environmental issues. Tiffany reflects on her role as a middle school science teacher and how she encourages literacy in her classroom to improve science lessons so that students connect with the material and prepare to tackle environmental issues.
Master Teacher Fellow April Bartnick and fellow Murphysboro Middle School science teacher Mallory Swafford brought 25 students to Riverside Park to plant 230 native oak trees. These trees, donated by Living Lands and Waters, will reduce erosion and flooding in the park. This was part of the school's Eco-Action Club, which is spearheaded by Ms. Bartnick and Ms. Swafford.
This project was submitted as a proposal, titled "Flood Mitigation on the Big Mdudy," to RISE Challenge Illinois, which strives to foster a generation of thinkers who will "improve community resilience to natural disasters." The proposal ranked in the top five in the state, so students will present a video on their project and answer questions from judges on May 4, 2022 to determine their final ranking.
Master Teacher Fellows Holly Dunderdale, Megin Rice, Tiffany Sulser, and Alyssa Weisenstein presented at the Marion Unit 2 Board of Education March board meeting about their experience in the Noyce River Region program. As part of the "Excellence in Education" portion of the board meeting, they spoke about what the Noyce program means to them and how they have utilized what they learned in the classroom. Notably, they mentioned that the program provided them with a community of fellow teachers, learning and professional development opportunities, and much-needed supplies for their classrooms.
The River Region was represented at the 2022 Midwest Annual Robert Noyce Conference in Cave City, Kentucky by five Master Teacher Fellows. The theme of this year's conference was Exploring Beneath the Surface: Going deeper into culturally relevant practices across the rural-urban continuum.
Over the course of three days, MTFs met with fellow Noyce scholars and attended keynote presentations and panels on topics of their interest. They also took guided tours of local establishments such as the National Corvette Museum, Sacred Seed Hemp Farm, and Mammoth Cave National Park. Notably, four MTFs from our program presented posters on their action research from this past year (photos below)! We are extremely proud of them for disseminating their work and for leaning into their roles as researchers.
Although many of us were unable to attend this year's conference due to a winter storm, we are so happy that we were well represented by this bunch. We are excited to see how they will incorporate what they learned at the conference into their classrooms.
2021
December
We published our first newsletter! We invite you to look through our Fall 2021 newsletter to read about highlights from our Summer and Fall semesters, meet our new teachers, and view upcoming events.
Angela Zier was one of 10 local K-12 teachers to receive a $500 Touchstone Energy Classroom Empowerment Grant from Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association for her program titled, "Eco Column Project." Congratulations Angela! These are available to teachers across the region, even those outside the Egyptian Electrive Coopertaive service area.
May
Lindsay Adams, April Bartnick, and John Casebolt, three Master Teaching Fellows in the SIUC Robert Noyce Teaching Fellowship program, created a video about a water quality unit they designed that can work across grades levels 5-12 for both general and special education populations. They did an amazing job and we are so very proud of them!!
This video is a part of the 2021 STEM for All Video Showcase. Don't miss the opportunity to view videos and learn about new, innovative work; discuss and exchange ideas with colleagues; and vote for your favorite video.
Our SIUC River Region MTF program received an award for the best video submitted by scholars and fellows at the national Noyce Summit in August of 2020. Alyssa Weisenstein, Megin Rice, Holly Dunderdale and Andrea Burzynski won the recognition for a three minute video they produced and submitted entitled: Students to Scientists: Transformative Action Research.
We know our program is exemplary and are so proud we were able to share our innovative approaches to learning and teaching science. Thank you Alyssa, Megin, Holly and Andrea for producing this video and congratulations on the accolades! We look forward to continuing to educate the scientific community about what we do and the impact we are having on STEM education.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale has selected a group of STEM-focused junior high and high school teachers from throughout the area for participation in an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded training grant. The Robert Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship is funded with a $2.2 million grant to SIU.
The AAUW Carbondale Branch will present a program by Dr. Karen Renzaglia, a research professor of Plant Biology at SIUC, who will discuss the two grants received by her research group to train highly qualified middle and high school STEM teachers in the Southern Illinois region to modernize their curricula, by addressing local environmental problems with their students.
A $2.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation will allow Southern Illinois University Carbondale to continue a program that helps highly qualified STEM teachers in the region modernize their curricula and address local environmental problems.
