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Texas Tech Announces New T-STEM Center

Center for Engineering Outreach One of Three Founding Partners

Texas Tech University has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Texas Education Agency to create one of five regional T-STEM Centers to enhance science, technology, engineering and mathematics teaching in grades K-12.

T-STEM – Texas Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – is a $71 million, state-wide initiative designed to improve instruction and academic performance in science and math related subjects in Texas schools.

Developed by the Texas High School Project, T-STEM is a $261 million public-private initiative focused on increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates in Texas communities.

"The T-STEM initiative focuses our efforts where they are needed most – in areas where there are a high number of disadvantaged students who are too often left in the shadows of opportunity,” Gov. Rick Perry said. “This initiative will help us close the science and math gap that exists in our schools today before it becomes a salary gap for tomorrow’s workers, and an opportunity gap for Texas families.”

Texas Tech sees T-STEM as an opportunity to address this serious gap in the math and science foundations of high school students.

Only 35 percent of the freshmen who entered Texas Tech’s College of Engineering in 1999 graduated with engineering degrees, according to university figures.

“The truth is there are a lot of students that are interested in those areas,” stated William M. Marcy, provost and former dean of engineering. “The problem was a lack of preparation in science, technology and mathematics.”

Addressing that lack of preparation is exactly where the university will start, by developing project-based, engineering curriculum that gives students and teachers new opportunities to learn math and science.

“The grant is going to allow us to develop curriculum that makes sense to everyone,” said John Chandler, Ph.D., one of the center's two directors. “Math and science are subjects that so many students have difficulty with – simply because they don’t understand how it can be used.”

“The idea is that engineering projects are going to provide a way to illustrate the concepts that students are getting in their academic classes, in their math classes, in their science classes,” Chandler continued. “We can develop curriculum that can be engaging, that everyone will be involved in, that we can support.”

The T-STEM Center will provide support for the new classroom curricula by providing professional development workshops for K-12 teachers and offering mobile labs that can visit schools with all of the engineering equipment needed to start learning. Online resources will also be available through the center’s Web site.

The center is partnering with a number of education and industry partners from the West Texas area, including Lubbock ISD and Education Service Centers in Abilene, San Angelo, Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland.

“Our partners will play a major role in developing the engineering-based, design curriculum for this project,” said Dean Fontenot, Ph.D., who is also directing the center. “Their expertise and knowledge will ultimately give K-12 teachers an advantage when they train with us and use our curriculum in their classrooms.”

The new center at Texas Tech draws upon the successes of current K-12 programs at the Center for Engineering Outreach, Outdoor School, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Center for the Integration of Science Education & Research.

Fontenot and Chandler will direct the T-STEM Center in addition to their work with the Center for Engineering Outreach. The co-directors will be advised by an executive board made up of project collaborators from each of the founding centers.

Workshop training dates and other events will be announced by the center at a later date. For more information, K-12 educators and administrators are encouraged to visit the center's Web site at www.tstem.ttu.edu.

- Robert D. Waller