National STEM Education Leaders To Be Featured at Annual Conference

March 9, 2011

The UTeach Institute-NMSI Conference, being held May 24-26 in Austin, will feature leaders in STEM education, including Drs. Carl Wieman, Linda Rosen, Jere Confrey, and Alan Maloney.

Dr. Carl Wieman, Associate Director of Science for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and 2001 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physics, will kick off the fifth annual UTeach Institute–NMSI Conference being held May 24 – 26 in Austin, TX. Dr. Linda Rosen, Chief Executive Officer of Change the Equation, will provide the keynote dinner speech. Closing plenary speakers will include Dr. Jere Confrey, Senior Research Fellow and Joseph D. Moore Distinguished Professor at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation in the College of Education at North Carolina State University, and Dr. Alan Maloney, Senior Research Fellow and Extension Associate Professor, also at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.

This year’s UTeach conference is being held in conjunction with the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) Conference and will feature joint speakers and sessions the afternoon of May 24th. “Physics education is one of the areas of greatest need in the U.S.  Just one third of high school physics teachers hold degrees in physics or physics education. It just makes sense to bring together the 21 universities across the country currently implementing UTeach with the 17 PhysTEC institutions to share ideas and best practices related to strengthening physics education. We are looking forward to fostering this synergy during our joint conferences this year,” said Kim Hughes of the UTeach Institute.

The annual UTeach Institute-NMSI Conference offers valuable opportunities to learn more about the UTeach secondary math and science teacher preparation model and the UTeach Institute’s progress in replicating this nationally recognized program.

The UTeach Institute’s conference is open to the public. A variety of audiences attend the conference each year, including faculty, staff, and students from universities currently replicating UTeach, donors and foundations, universities working through the RFP process, and states and other universities interested in future opportunities for replication.

Each year, more than 100 workshops, roundtables, and interactive presentations across a wide variety of topics are offered. In addition to general interest sessions on UTeach and the Institute’s approach to replication, conference sessions are offered on program operations, the UTeach instructional sequence, adaptations being implemented to expand and strengthen the UTeach model at universities across the country, fundraising and sustainability, state policy issues, and parallel initiatives to support STEM education and teacher preparation.

The Institute also holds a variety of networking events to build the UTeach national community, including pre-conference retreats, special interest group meetings, and a meeting of the national UTeach Research Consortium.

A draft agenda is available here. For more detailed information on the types of sessions and events offered at the conference, see last year’s program.