 |
| The beginning of a RET poster session |
Readers may be more familiar with the sibling Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs, which give undergraduate students the chance to work for 10 weeks or so in a lab that is very likely not at their home institution. REUs are a great way for students interested in research to get broad exposure to new topics, meet people and acquire new skills, and for some, figure out whether they like research (and maybe which topics are exciting to them). The educational goal of REUs is clear: providing direct research experience to interested undergrads, ideally while advancing a research project and for some small fraction of students resulting in an eventual publication.
RET programs are different: They are intended as professional development. The teachers are exposed to new topics, hopefully a fun research environment, and they are encouraged to think carefully about how they can take the concepts they learn and translate those for the classroom. I am very much not an expert in education research, but there is evidence (see here, for example) that teachers who participate in these programs get a great deal of satisfaction and have lower attrition from teaching professions. (Note that it's hard to do statistics well on questions like that, since the population of teachers that seek out opportunities like this may be a special subset of the total population of teachers.) An idea that makes sense to me: Enhancing the motivation and job satisfaction of a teacher can have a larger cumulative impact on educating students than an individual research project for a single student.
It would be a great shame if RET and REU programs are victims of large-scale cuts at NSF. The NSF is the only science agency with education as part of its mission (at least historically). All the more reason to try to persuade appropriators to not follow the draconian presidential budget request for the agency.
2 comments:
Columbia has agreed to bend the knee and pay $220mil to the federal government because of pro-Israeli Republicans all in an effort to restore grant money. What are your thoughts there? I can't imagine the NSF gets restored funding without forcing universities to pledge allegiance to Netanyahu at this point. What exactly should we be fighting for? Restoring funding is one piece, but the bigger picture is so much more...
To be clear, while the commonality is the present presidential administration, the federal budget process, presidential budget recommendations, etc. are distinct from the grant shenanigans at Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, etc. I think Columbia's trustees in the long run will come to regret their decision, and I think that and Penn's capitulation set terrible precedent - universities surrendering their autonomy on internal matters (detailed student discipline, things like athletics record keeping) because of the threat of defunding.
Post a Comment