The beltway traffic was nuts. Thanks to relatively low humidity, it was toasty but comfortably so– if that’s a thing but I am so glad that I made my way into Baltimore City to attend the 2-day intensive summer workshop on Morgan State University’s campus for the Maryland Collaborative for Research in Urban STEM Education (MD-CRUSE) grant.
In 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a three-year Building Capacity in STEM Education Research grant (ECR: BCSER) to Morgan State University (MSU) (Award no. 2025280). With the grant, MSU is implementing a very hands-on Institute in Research Methods to build capacity in mixed-methods, with an emphasis on K-12 STEM education in an urban setting. The institute is being managed by STEM faculty members at MSU, PI, Drs. Roni Ellington and Co-PI, Vanessa Dodo-Seriki with Marc Stein from Johns Hopkins University, in a partnership involving the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC at JHU) and several Maryland’s public schools. The grant is supporting about 20 STEM educators/leaders and faculty (“Fellows”) across various MD-based school districts and universities.
The overarching goal of MD-CRUSE is to enhance Fellows’ STEM education research skills and competencies, stimulate research projects that will build knowledge in K-12 urban STEM education, and inform STEM education practice and policy. By doing so, the project is responding to the need to cultivate expertise among educators to analyze primary and large administrative data sets to better understand the unique STEM learning needs of the urban student population in Baltimore and other areas and to better inform future research to improve the quality of STEM education among diverse students. In addition to expanding the pool of STEM education researchers in the state of Maryland, MD-CRUSE is also building transdisciplinary Community of Practice (CoP) among educators.
Grant abstract: https://lnkd.in/d-nX77B
We are proud to be the external evaluators on this grant and are looking forward to reading all the interesting research projects taking shape this year.
More to come!
