Since 1992 the MMSA has submitted and received several grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Education and Human Resource (EHR) program, totaling over $25 million dollars, to improve science teaching and learning. These projects have provided unprecedented opportunities for teachers in Maine, New England, and nationally. Professional development and materials development projects have been funded under the divisions of Undergraduate Education (DUE) and Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education (ESIE). To read more about the National Science Foundation's EHR grant programs,
click here. The MMSA also partners with other organizations, such as WestEd and AAAS, on various NSF funded projects. Recent NSF-funded projects in science are described below.
Northern New England Co-Mentoring Network (NNECN), 2001-2005
NNECN is a four year, $2,300,000 project funded through NSF’s
Teacher Enhancement Program, that provides professional development
and support to Northern New England middle and high school science
and mathematics teachers for content-based mentoring and leadership.
Partnering organizations include The New Hampshire Coalition
for Mathematics, Science, and Technology; Vermont Institutes,
West Ed/Learning Innovations, and TERC’s Eisenhower Regional
Alliance.
Click here for a copy of the NNECN Monograph
Principal Investigator/Project Director: Page Keeley
Co-PI’s: Dr. Francis Eberle, Douglas Heuser, Dan Hupp,
Dr. Doug Harris, Susan Mundry
Web Site:
www.nnecn.org
Curriculum Topic Study (CTS)- A Systematic Approach to Utilizing
National Standards and Research 2004-2008
CTS is a four year, $1,700,000 project funded through NSF’s
Teacher Professional Continuum Program- Category C, Professional
Development Materials. The project will produce three books,
a web site, and offer national professional development to help
teachers and professional developers utilize science and mathematics
national standards and cognitive research to improve teacher
practice and content-focused professional development. WestEd
is the partnering organization.
Principal Investigator/Project Director: Page Keeley
Co-PI’s: Dr. Francis Eberle, Cheryl Rose, Susan Mundry
Web Site:
www.curriculumtopicstudy.org
Order the CTS book here.
Phenomena and Representations for Instruction of Science in
Middle Schools (PRISMS) 2005-2008
PRISMS is a three year, $850,000 project funded through NSF’s
National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program. The project
will build an annotated, metatagged collection for the digital
library of effective phenomena and representations, aligned
with standards, that can be used by middle school science
teachers. Maine middle school teachers will receive training
from AAAS/Project 2061 to use an analysis procedure to identify
and examine items for the collection. The American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the partnering organization.
Click
here to read an AAAS announcement of the PRISMS project
Principal Investigator/Project Director: Page Keeley
Co-PI’s: Dr. Francis Eberle, Dr. Francis Molina, Dr. Sofia
Kesidou
Project Manager: Joyce Tugel
NSDL Web site:
www.nsdl.org
AAAS Web site:
www.aaas.org
PRISMS Web site:
www.prisms.mmsa.org
Students and Scientists Together
Accessing Scientific Knowledge (S2TASK) 2002-2006
S2TASK is a 3.5 year, $435,000 project funded by NSF’s
Instructional Materials development Program. The project will
develop four new instructional units for GLOBE: a middle and
high school unit on Atmosphere and a middle and high school
unit on Coastal Ecosystems. It will also produce an on-line
tool, "Assemble an Inquiry," that will guide educators
through the process of developing their own customized, standards-based
units using the existing GLOBE materials. Partnering organizations
include University of New England and University of California,
Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.
Principal Investigator/Project Director: Henrietta List
Co-PI: Dr. Steve Zeeman
The GLOBE Program:
www.globe.gov
Web Site: To be announced
