Science Educators Get New Degree Opportunities

(R-L) Raymond Price, Sarah Lubienski, Barbara Hug of the College of Education

Two new Illinois State Board of Education Grants Announced

Science educators in Illinois will soon have a couple of new master’s degree options at the University of Illinois thanks to two grants from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) awarded to researchers in the Colleges of Education and Engineering. ISBE named two different projects from the Urbana-Champaign campus among 15 statewide as part of their Mathematics and Science Partnership program. This program is designed to increase the classroom achievement of students in math and science by enhancing content knowledge and the professional skills of their teachers.

Barbara Hug, Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction; Sarah Lubienksi, Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction; and Ray Price, William H. Severns Professor of Human Behavior in Engineering (and the 2007 Interim Head of Curriculum and Instruction) serve as lead investigators on the projects along with Patrick Grenda, the project director of the Nano-CEMMS research center in the College of Engineering.

Hug and Lubienski will be working to develop a master’s program that will deepen elementary teachers’ knowledge of math and science, while Price and Grenda will develop a master’s degree for current secondary science educators. Both programs seek to combine the world-class research expertise in science and engineering of the campus with the College’s leadership in teaching and learning to lead to better prepared science educators.

“We are very excited to be the home of two of the programs ISBE selected as new models for science and math education in Illinois. It certainly illustrates how powerful the collaboration between the sciences and education on this campus can be,” said Lizanne DeStefano, the Executive Associate Dean for Research in the College.