Higher Education

The Boston Science Partnership was a five-year NSF-funded Math and Science Partnership project designed to improve science teaching and learning in Boston’s middle and high schools, enhance university-level teaching by STEM faculty, and ensure the university partners’ continued support for and faculty involvement in science education. The Boston Public Schools, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Northeastern University are the principal partners. Harvard Medical School and the College Board participate as supporting partners.

The Center helps college and community leaders develop, implement, and evaluate programs and policies to reduce student problems related to alcohol and other drug use and interpersonal violence. In order to produce enduring, large-scale changes that will make students’ social and cultural environment healthier and safer, the Center supports a comprehensive approach to prevention, grounded in environmental management strategies that address the institutional, community, and public policy factors related to these problems.

This project is developing a series of online professional development modules for school counselors—middle grades, high school, and postsecondary student service professionals—that focus on career counseling and college preparation. The modules use a learning community approach where school counselors will participate in the project as a cohort and engage in structured online discussions with their colleagues and the instructor during each of the module sessions.

The PALMS project seeks to increase the number of Latino students who pursue education beyond high school. Through high-quality materials, such as Tools for Latino Family Outreach: Supporting Student Success in the Middle Grades and Beyond, the project equips school and community leaders to work effectively with Latino families and students. In September 2006, PALMS began working with Helen Tyson Middle School (Springdale, Arkansas) and Hommocks Middle School (Larchmont, NY) to document how leaders at these schools use the tools to develop replicable parental outreach models.

EDC is designing and facilitating a process involving eight Roman Catholic seminaries in the development of assessment measures for seminarians. The project draws upon EDC’s previous work in developing skill standards and assessment tools based on those standards. The project will result in an occupational analysis, rubrics that integrate both the occupational responsibilities of priests and the behavior attributes promoted during seminary formation, and a framework for designing portfolios rooted in these materials.

With community colleges across the country, EDC is developing a common curricular framework for teaching basic information technology (core) applications in career and academic programs at community and technical colleges. Project resources include innovative approaches to instruction and assessment, including “Rubrics to Assess Basic IT User Skills,” lesson templates that interconnect the use of the “IT Core Applications” with program content for eight of the most commonly used IT applications, and a library of problem-based scenarios for each of the clusters/program areas.

This project, through a cooperative agreement with the NSF, is establishing and maintaining the Discovery Research (DR) K–12 learning resource network, known as CADRE, with the aim of advancing the state of research and evaluation in STEM education and promoting the goals of the DR K–12 program. CADRE provides support services to grantees of this program, which enhances student and teacher learning of the STEM disciplines through the development, implementation, and study of resources, models, and technologies.