by Carol Sowers

Seven outstanding science education students are among ASU’s first recipients of the prestigious Robert Noyce Scholarship, a program funded by the National Science Foundation to send badly needed science teachers into high-need high school classrooms. 

Anne Lasswell, Ayesha Brewster, Carly Mohr, Aaron von Lindern, Michelle Mass and Sarah Scheg, all pursuing masters degrees in education, are enrolled in the Teacher Education for Arizona Math and Science (TEAMS) program, a 10-month intensive program leading to secondary school certification (grades 7-12), middle school endorsement (grades 5-9) and a master’s degree in secondary education. George Cardenas is an undergraduate physics major scheduled to graduate and earn his initial teacher certification this fall.

The 10-year-old TEAMS program, established by the Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, runs annually from July to May.  The program, now administered by ASU’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership, prepares about 21 secondary science educators a year, said TEAMS Program Coordinator Karen Wellner. Wellner worked as a clinical microbiologist and middle school science teacher in San Diego before joining the faculty at ASU.

TEAMS is one of many programs representative of ASU’s continuing push to have science, math, engineering, and technology students and professionals consider a career in science education. Those efforts were rewarded with a recent $750,000 NSF grant, which in 2008 established the Noyce Science Teachers for Arizona (STARR).

The program will provide $22,000 for graduates and $14,000 for undergraduates per year, which covers tuition and other education-related expenses. The scholarships will be available through June 2013 or until the grant funds designated for scholarships are exhausted.

The grant-funded STARR Noyce initiative is the result of collaboration between education and science faculty and administrators across ASU’s four campuses. Included in the project are scholarships, a recruitment course, and a teacher induction program geared for science educators.  Julie Luft, a professor of science education in the Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, is the project’s principal investigator.

“The STARR Noyce scholars represent the future of science education in Arizona,” Luft said.  “They’ve come to the profession of science teaching with a strong knowledge base, and they are enhancing those experiences by participating in our undergraduate and TEAMS programs.”

Luft said the STARR Noyce Program will support and enrich the recipients’ academic experiences at ASU by providing “not only financial support to acquire their teaching certificate, but it will also create a community that will ensure they are supported as early career professionals.”

Twenty-two-year-old Carly Mohr, a TEAMS scholarship recipient, said without the award, she would have had to take on “the burden of loans.” Mohr graduated last spring from Utah Valley University in Orem with degrees in biology and zoology, a reflection of her love of her grandfather’s farm animals and pets at home.

But it was martial arts that inspired her to teach. “Nearly a black belt,” she said she started the exacting training in the ninth grade, and gradually began helping younger students. “I decided I wanted to combine teaching with science,” she said. In part, she said, she wants to teach to inspire more girls “to go into science,” adding: “At the university I was often the only girl in my science classes.”

She left Orem for ASU where her fiancé is majoring in astrophysics. 

Digging into ASU programs, Mohr discovered TEAMS, calling the masters program for secondary science education a “perfect fit.” 

“I’m more excited than nervous,” she said about diving into the TEAMS program. “I just hope I can be a good teacher.”

The STARR Noyce scholarship recipients were chosen because they excelled in their undergraduate classes and in essays talked about their passion to teach in high-need schools in Arizona for each year they accept the award.

High-need schools are typically those in which a large percentage of the population live below the poverty line; have a high number of secondary teachers not teaching in their field; and/or experience high teacher turnover rate.

It is not difficult for school districts like Scottsdale or Chandler to lure science teachers, Wellner said, “but it is really hard in rural areas.” The work will be challenging, Wellner said. The STARR Noyce recipients “are going to have to put in the time after work.”

Like Mohr, Noyce recipient Aaron von Lindern, 27, of Boise, Idaho, said he could not have enrolled in TEAMS without the scholarship, as the program is geared for students who are available for full-time instruction, five-days a per week from the first of July through to program completion in mid-May.

Von Lindern, who once flirted with the idea of becoming a baseball major leaguer, instead turned to teaching almost by accident.  He was a walk-on catcher for the University of Arizona, but said he was “always interested in science.” He earned his undergraduate degree in physiology and chemistry in 2005 at the UofA.

A member of a family of educators, von Lindern got his first taste of teaching during an internship in Yorkshire in northeastern England. There he had the unlikely job of teaching baseball to elementary and high school soccer players in a program sponsored by the British Baseball Federation. “They had never even been taught to throw,” von Lindern said. When his dreams of becoming a major league catcher struck out, van Lindern decided to “give that up. There was only a one percent chance of being selected anyway.”

But he didn’t abandon fitness and sports.  In 2007 he earned his first master’s degree in kinesiology at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He said he didn’t know much about the artful science that explores human movement, but he said, “It was kind of interesting to me.”

Later, he saw first-hand how many inner-city kids wrestle with the complex questions of science and math, kindling his interest in TEAMS and a career in the classroom. After he finished his work at Cal Poly last year, a friend told him about a job as the Coordinator of Health and Physical Education at the Metro Phoenix Boys & Girls Club, a position he accepted in January 2008.

“I helped kids with homework every day in sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade math and science,” he said. “They were always coming to me with questions. They were really struggling with school.’’ The intense homework sessions paid off for von Lindern and the struggling students. “I really enjoyed teaching,” he said, “and got experience teaching the kids Noyce is designed to serve.”

Sarah Scheg, 24, a Noyce recipient with a 2007 biology degree from the UofA, spent a semester watching the wonder in high-needs elementary students’ eyes as they dipped their hands into a tide pool to pluck out star fish, sea urchins or snails, or dissected a three-foot-long dog shark to uncover the mysteries inside.

“I found it satisfying to teach high-needs children,” she said. “I saw them excited about something and I really liked it.” Scheg said her desire to teach deepened as “week to week, I watched the children grow,” adding,  “I really enjoyed their curiosity and being able to satisfy their interests.”

Scheg had seen good teaching first-hand when she was a child in Rochester, N. Y., as she explained in the essay portion of her STARR Noyce scholarship application: “Some of my fondest memories are of the times I was able to go to work with my mother and be part of her fourth-grade class.”

As for the $22,000 scholarship, she said, “It will definitely help.”

For more information on the STARR Robert Noyce Scholarship, visit: http://education.asu.edu/noyce.