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On Oct. 2, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $12.5 million grant to the Math Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia (MSPGP) to support improvement in secondary math and secondary education for over 100,000 students in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. Math, science and education faculty from Villanova collaborated with the leader of the partnership, La Salle University, and 12 other local colleges and universities to submit a proposal for enhancing math and science education in 46 school districts. This will potentially impact over 117,000 middle and high school students. As a recipient of the award, Villanova will receive approximately $160,000 over a five-year period to develop and market an intensive full-time,12-month master’s degree program for state-teaching certification in order to cultivate and encourage more qualified math and science teachers in the Greater Philadelphia area. In addition, Villanova math, science and education faculty will work directly with the teachers of the local school districts to provide math and science curriculum and teaching improvement.

The National Science Foundation Math Science Partnership program is part of a national education strategy to partner elementary and secondary teachers and administrators with collegiate science, technology, engineering and mathematics faculty in order to enhance the quantity, quality and diversity of science and mathematics teachers and raise student math science achievement. The MSPGP is one of the 13 new NSF awards totaling over $216 million and the MSPGP was selected from a national competition involving over 260 proposals.

Faculty from the mathematical sciences and education departments including Dr. Robert Styer (math), Dr. Douglas Norton (math), Dr. Connie Titone (education), Dr. John Durnin (education), started work on the MSPGP proposal in 2001 and have put in over 100 working hours. Villanova’s section of the proposal has a unique focus on encouraging Villanova math, science and engineering majors to consider a career in teaching. Currently, only a small percentage of these students go into the education field, according to the math and education departments’ career survey of recent graduates.

“There is a national problem of a shortage of well-prepared math and science teachers,” said Connie Titone, chairperson of the education department. “Our brightest and smartest people are not going into teaching and we don’t know why.”

Dr. Styer, former chair of the math department, suggested that there is not enough collaboration between the mathematical sciences and the education departments at the undergraduate level, but the new masters program will help math and science students receive a state-certification in teaching in a relatively short time, even if they have had no undergraduate education experience.

“At Villanova we have such an extensive, award-wining core curriculum, which I think is great, but unfortunately because of the core curriculum there is no way to get a full major in math or science and a full major in education at the undergraduate level.”

In order to stimulate more math and science people to teach, Villanova plans to aggressively market this new master’s certification program. The $160,000 grant will be specifically used by the University to design courses specifically tailored to future science or math teachers, to develop appropriate placement for the students in the master’s program, to create effective advertising for the program, including the creation of a brochure, and to underwrite the cost of travel to conferences to disseminate the success of the program.

The University plans to recruit candidates for the master’s program internally by targeting current junior and senior math/science/engineering majors. Externally, the plan calls for targeting approximately 2,300 Villanova math/science/engineering alumni who graduate between 1982 – 2002 and live in the Philadelphia area to consider a career switch. By the third year of the program the University expects to have stabilized 12 new math/science future teachers per year. Eight or more students per year would ensure that the program is self-sustaining.