| Abstract | West Virginia University recently completed the third year of its NSF GK-12 Project. The project is titled TIGERS, Teams of Interdisciplinary Graduate fellows Engaged to Reinvigorate STEM in WV middle schools. Teams of 2-4 graduate students from Science, Mathematics, and Engineering disciplines worked with teachers in regional middle schools to develop interactive learning experiences for pupils. Each team focused on a particular theme, such as watersheds or forensic science, around which to build exercises that simultaneously delivered content from science, mathematics, and engineering. The project was designed with goals to be accomplished at every level from graduate education for fellows, to continuing education for middle school teachers, to middle school education for the pupils. Graduate fellows were tasked with using their research experience to develop the projects under the guidance of the teachers. Active involvement of teachers and pupils in the graduate fellows research was sought. In turn, graduate fellows developed improved skills in the delivery of scientific content to nontechnical audiences. They quickly learned how to take a complex concept and present it in a format with examples of relevance to rural middle school students. A key to the success of the project was the collaboration between the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Education. Faculty from the various colleges served as mentors to the graduate students while learning something about middle school education themselves. |
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