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UF doctoral student leads Florida elementary school with nation’s top-rated STEM program

Kristy Moody, principal of Jamerson Elementary

Kristy Moody

A UF College of Education Ph.D. candidate is in the national education spotlight for leading a Pinellas County elementary school honored for having the nation’s top U.S. STEM program.

Kristy Moody, principal of Jamerson Elementary in Pinellas County, accepted the STEM Elementary School of the Year for 2016 award on behalf the school. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The award was presented last week in Orlando at the Future of Education Technology Conference, an annual gathering of education leaders and technology experts from across country.

Moody is a graduate student in the University of Florida’s College of Education Leadership in Educational Administration Doctorate (LEAD) program, which caterers to working professionals seeking to earn a doctorate in four years of part-time study. The cohort program offers classes online, with periodic weekends at UF and other locations across the state.

Conference organizers said STEM awards are given to the nation’s top elementary, middle and high schools based on an evaluation of the use of interdisciplinary curriculum, collaboration, design, problem solving and the STEM experiences offered.

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P.K. Yonge, COE professor team up to align math curriculum with Common Core standards

JacobbePKY

UF mathematics education associate professor Tim Jacobbe (second from left) joins P.K. Yonge teachers to discuss the new math curriculum implementation process.

As Florida schools prepare for the official implementation of the Common Core standards next school year, UF mathematics education associate professor Tim Jacobbe and P.K. Yonge, UF’s K-12 developmental research school, have been teaming up since 2009 to ensure the school is ready to meet the more rigid math standards. With Jacobbe’s help, P.K. Yonge implemented a new math curriculum for the elementary grades for the 2013-2014 school year. 

Jacobbe has facilitated faculty discussions and needs assessments to determine how to align teaching practices at P.K. Yonge with the rigor demanded by the Common Core standards for math. He also led a weeklong professional learning workshop for K-8 math teachers, focusing on deepening their content knowledge and grasp of the math practice standards. 

“Tim had such background in what P. K. Yonge was doing. He led discussions about curriculum adoption and supported P. K. Yonge’s next steps. All of this laid incredible groundwork for moving through the adoption process” said Marisa Stukey, P.K. Yonge’s program development and outreach specialist. 

The new adopted math curriculum at P.K. Yonge strengthens students’ perseverance, strategies and reasoning skills specifically related to problem solving. These teaching practice standards had not been explicitly addressed before in P.K. Yonge’s curriculum or in the teaching of math, Stukey said. 

“Math is about thinking,” Jacobbe said. “Math is about problem solving, not just knowing math facts. Just knowing facts won’t help students succeed in life.” 

In the past, P.K. Yonge’s overall math achievement has been high on standardized tests like the FCAT. These tests, however, assess understanding of basic math concepts, rather than measuring conceptual understanding of more complex math, which is demanded by the Common Core. 

Jacobbe will continue making weekly visits to P.K. Yonge to study student work before and during the new curriculum in order to understand how to further help teachers and students gain a deeper conceptual understanding of math. He is working with school math teachers faculty to develop a new middle school math curriculum for the 2014-2015 school year. 

“It’s important to make sure we have a cohesive plan between our elementary and middle schools,” Jacobbe said. “The P.K. Yonge teachers are tremendous professionals. The foundation of our work has been laid by good early curriculum decisions and is only possible because the teachers are willing to take on the challenge of helping the learners of today be successful in math in a new way.”

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION’S FLORIDA GATOR: Stacy Carlson

Alumni Association’s Florida Gator
Fall 2013
Stacy Carlson (PhD ’11)

The UF Alumni Association profiled alumna Stacy Carlson, who is the program director of a STEM grant awarded to the Lastinger Center for Learning, in their fall magazine’s “Pathfinder” section.

Story not available online.

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UF doctoral candidate receives $20K grant for dissertation

LianNiuLian Niu, a doctoral candidate in higher education administration at the University of Florida, was awarded with a $20,000 grant from the Association for Institutional Research that will fund her dissertation research.

Niu is one of 10 doctoral students from across the country that received the dissertation grant, which is funded by the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Science Foundation and the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative.

In her research, Niu is exploring the predictors of college students’ enrollment patterns in science, technology, engineering and math majors by looking at students’ family socioeconomic status and financial resources.

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INDEPENDENT FLORIDA ALLIGATOR, GAINESVILLE SUN: National Science Foundation scholarships

Independent Florida Alligator, Gainesville Sun
1-30-13, 2-4-12
National Science Foundation scholarships

The Independent Florida Alligator and the Gainesville Sun wrote articles about a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant that was awarded to the College of Education to fund scholarships for STEM majors in the UFTeach program. Tom Dana and Dimple Flesner were quoted in the reports.

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GAINESVILLE SUN, STATE IMPACT: STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

Gainesville Sun, State Impact, The Times of Alapachicola and Carrabelle
10-16-12, 10-31-12
STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

The Gainesville Sun, State Impact, a reporting project of local public media and NPR, and The Times of Alapachicola and Carrabelle reported that the Florida Department of Education awarded the University of Florida’s College of Education with a $2 million grant. The grant will fund the creation of a statewide support system for science and math teachers in middle and high schools, as well as a new Florida STEM-Teacher Induction and Professional Support Center.

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FLDOE: STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

Florida Department of Education
10-15-12
STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

The Florida Department of Education posted a press release about its awarding of a $2 million grant to the University of Florida’s College of Education. The grant will fund the creation of a statewide support system for science and math teachers in middle and high schools, including the new Florida STEM-Teacher Induction and Professional Support Center.

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Workforce council recognizes UF-Teach math-science program

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—UF-Teach, an innovative teacher-preparation program that recruits some of the University of Florida’s top science and mathematics majors into the teaching profession, recently received STEMflorida’s Best Practices Award for excellence and accountability in targeted STEM teacher recruitment and retention efforts.

STEMflorida is a business-led statewide council created in 2009 by Workforce Florida, the state’s workforce policy and oversight board. (STEM is common shorthand for the technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, considered vital workforce skills in today’s competitive global marketplace.)

The award was presented recently during the STEMflorida Think Tank meeting in Orlando and recognized the UF Teach program’s role in addressing the critical shortage of math and science teachers in Florida.

UF-Teach master science instructor Griff Jones (left) helps a student on a class lesson.

UF-Teach is a collaboration between UF’s College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the goal is to recruit the very best math and science majors and prepare them to teach effectively. The program is funded by a $2.4 million grant over five years from the National Math and Science Initiative and a $1 million endowment from the Helios Education Foundation based in Tampa.

“In UF-Teach, we have master science and math teachers who induct the students into the community of teachers by showing them the most effective, research-proven teaching methods in the given content areas and exposing them to supervised classroom experiences with schoolchildren beginning in their first semester,” said Tom Dana, associate dean at UF’s College of Education and co-coordinator of UF Teach with physics professor and associate dean Alan Dorsey of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The program, now in its fourth year, offers students education minors for their efforts in hopes they will take to teaching. Their degrees qualify them for teaching certification in Florida schools.

Dana

The first UF-Teach class of 41 students enrolled in 2008. By spring of 2011, enrollment jumped to 224 students. Dana said projections for 2013 call for UF-Teach to graduate more than 30 students who will be certified, and highly qualified, to teach middle and high school math and science in Florida schools.

“That number should double to 60 graduates by 2015. By then, the number of middle school and high school math and science students served by UF-Teach graduates should top 7,500 and continue to grow each year,” Dana said.

For more information, contact Dana at tdana@coe.ufl.edu or Dorsey at atdorsey@ufl.edu, or visit the UF Teach website at https://education.ufl.edu/uf-teach/.

CONTACTS
SOURCE: Tom Dana, UFCOE associate dean and co-coordinator, UF Teach, tdana@coe.ufl.edu.
WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, COE News & Communications, llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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