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| 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.
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...
ReplyDeleteTo 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.
ReplyDeleteAlong the same lines an underused (and not respected) major resource in the US are community college instructors. Faculty in higher educational institutions share a common graduate school experience. Community colleges focus on teaching with little opportunity for research. Faculty may easily become isolated within their fields which limits their ability to keep up with changes. The interchange would not be one sided. Community college faculty will be able to better prepare their students for transfer and link them to opportunities such as REUs. Graduate students in the research lab, some of whom will become community college faculty, would learn about those institutions and have additional opportunities to try it out via teaching a course as an adjunct. I could go on (and have) for 15 pages, but let me leave it here for other people to pick up on
ReplyDeleteEliRabett, very good point. Years ago some colleagues and I tried to organize the equivalent of a RET program for community college instructors as part of a big center proposal. We spoke with leading faculty at two of the biggest local community college systems (Houston Community College; Lonestar College), and we encountered a major obstacle. CC instructors are so overloaded and in demand that it seemed like there was no credible way to come up with a RET stipend within reasonable NSF budget parameters that would make it financially worthwhile for them to reduce their teaching and do the RET activities. Basically it seemed like they'd be taking a pay cut to engage with the program. I think this is in principle surmountable with enough planning and flexibility in program design, but copying what works for K12 teachers in the summer seemed like it would not work for CC instructors.
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