Stars and STEM Stories
Great Things are Happening in Texas!
There are now 41 GLOBE Partnerships in the state of Texas. Texas has a very unique science education organization called the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science Teaching (TRC) that provides sustained and high intensity professional development to K-12 teachers of science across the state. Housed at The University of Texas at Austin, this state office is also a GLOBE Partner and will serve as the Texas TRC GLOBE Coordination site.
There are 35 regional collaboratives throughout the state that work with thirty seven institutions of higher education and collaborate with education service centers, school districts and business partners. The TRC has a 15-year record of designing and implementing exemplary professional development using research-based methods, materials and best practices. Over one million students across Texas have benefited from TRC instruction to enhance performance of participating teachers. (See the Regional Collaboratives Map.)
This year, the TRC is focusing its professional development initiatives on earth and environmental sciences for K-12 teachers. An exemplary program currently educating students and teachers in 109 countries, GLOBE was chosen to be implemented. At the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year, 67 educators attended the first GLOBE Train the Trainer session at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
Each of the 35 collaborative sites has applied and is now a GLOBE Partner. That means that there are now 35 new partnerships in Texas! These new GLOBE Partners will train the K-12 science teachers they serve throughout their respective regions. By the close of the 06-07 academic year, the TRC expects to have 1,000 new GLOBE teachers certified.
The TRC GLOBE network, consisting of 33 GLOBE Partnerships, is working closely with the 9 original GLOBE Partners in Texas to highlight special student research projects that are relevant to Texas, further facilitating students and their teachers to select areas of investigation with which they would like to be involved. Updates and new information on the Texas GLOBE Program can be found at http://www.thetrc.org/globe.
12 December 2006