A new year is always a time of deep reflection. Even though our staff has remained small, we have had the great privilege and honor of training more than 3,000 teachers and 500 Department of Defense (DoD) scientists and engineers from 33 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico) in more than 134 congressional districts throughout the U.S. Since 2006, approximately 300,000 students have been impacted by our educational programs. When you factor in our various support services, many, many more have benefitted from our combined efforts.
Years of commitment, dedication, sacrifice, and resilience by our staff, colleagues, partners, friends, and family have brought us to this pivotal place in time. As we begin a new decade, nCASE is proud and appreciative of its considerable past accomplishments and enthusiastically anticipates the tremendous new opportunities ahead.
Just a few of our most notable achievements include:
- developing a vast nationwide STEM DoD network of effective state points of contact, scientists, engineers (S&Es), and military leaders among the Army, Navy, and Air Force
- creating and implementing rigorous, innovative, and relevant inquiry-and design-based STEM curricula and programs in our nation’s classrooms
- positively impacting the futures of so many educators and students, including those underrepresented in STEM, via our dynamic, customized educational and support services that supplement the usual STEM curriculum and include a student-centered, 21st-century vision
- creating important national STEM dialogue via panel discussions and programs, like the Summer Teacher Training Institutes and Student Workshops, that assemble local, regional, state, and national partners representing education, government, military, economic development, non-profit, and private business to create and deliver effective teacher training and serve as a catalyst for change in our STEM learning throughout the nation
- integrating industry-based STEM professionals, including scientists and engineers, to bring relevancy to the classroom learning environment
- partnering with Army and Navy by providing oversight management and direct assistance for the development and implementation of summer student STEM internship programs at the DoD laboratories mentored by DoD scientists and engineers
- providing much-needed resources to schools, teachers, and students, especially in rural, impoverished and underserved areas of the country
- identifying what works and what is needed and to find innovative solutions for current and emerging challenges in STEM education
- using distance learning technologies to provide online curricula as we did for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for its DTRA-Joint Science and Technology Institute in Prince William County, Virginia, STEM Club Program (STEM Club). After-school STEM Clubs were created to educate students about future STEM careers, including those within the U.S. Department of Defense.
- engaging, encouraging, and mentoring thousands of educators and university partners as they tackle the extreme difficulties and challenges found in today’s classrooms
- affecting positive economic growth of the community by elevating the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and critical thinking skills of students to enable them to become stronger members of the global workforce
We are especially excited about a unique initiative that we piloted last summer. In June 2019, nCASE partnered with California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U) to deliver a STEM professional development model with great promise. The two-week Summer STEM Teacher Training Institute and Student Workshop pilot was so successful, that we will be offering the program again this summer as part of a five-year strategic plan.
Teachers attended from our region as well as from throughout the U.S., and students attended from our local area. The world-class, DoD-approved STEM teacher/student curriculum reinforced essential workforce skills that employers have identified as necessary for success--teamwork, critical thinking, higher-level questioning, responsibility, and innovation--while broadening knowledge of STEM.
The hands-on, inquiry- and design-based curriculum emphasized an interdisciplinary approach to STEM learning. nCASE master led teachers in instruction (in teams) during week one. These teachers then practiced what they learned while delivering the curriculum to the students during week two. The teachers were given the rare opportunity to immediately apply their newly-acquired knowledge and skills prior to classroom implementation while benefiting from the oversight of the national training team.
The teachers and students benefited from interaction with nationally-recognized STEM keynote speakers and guests during the program. During week one, Elsa Bolado, principal of Hollenbeck Middle School in California, shared her experiences as a former student of Jaimie Escalante, the teacher who brought transformational change to mathematical teaching featured in the movie, “Stand and Deliver.” She explained how this life-changing experience positively influenced her classroom teaching as well as her academic leadership.
The speaker for the second week was Sarah Korona, Silver Snoopy recipient and extravehicular activity officer in the Spacewalk Division of United Space Alliance at Johnson Space Center in Texas. She engaged the audience with a very personal hands-on presentation as she discussed the steps she took to achieve her engineering degrees and to attain her current job--training astronauts about their spacesuits.
PTC, an international leader in the Internet of Things and augmented reality innovation, has become a wonderful corporate partner and served as a sponsor of the institute. Its Uniontown office is led by Aaron Tuomi, a Cal U graduate. Aaron and his team added strength and relevance to our program by offering evening technology session for our teachers.
An outside evaluation was performed by ProEvaluators, LLC out of West Virginia, and the results were stellar. Both the teachers’ and students’ knowledge of math and science increased as a result of the training. Their 21
st-century skills (information literacy, problem solving, creativity and imagination, communication skills, collaboration and teamwork, and leadership skills) increased. Teachers also indicated they would be using the skills and materials they acquired during the workshop in the upcoming school year, thus increasing the number of students impacted by the institute.
Results from this two-week initiative were published in the proceedings of and presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Education in January 2020. Master instructors, Drs. Laura and Anthony Pyzdrowski, represented nCASE at the conference and presented a sample workshop and an abstract of the evaluation.
We continue our decade-long collaborative efforts with the outstanding organization, Great Minds in STEM (GMiS) headquartered in California. nCASE has delivered professional development programs during its annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC), the nation’s most prestigious stage for honoring excellence and building and reinforcing networks. The HENAAC Conference is the place where thousands of the finest minds from top executives and innovative professionals, to the brightest STEM students convene. This incredible annual event inspires our nation by recognizing the achievements of Hispanics and other role models in STEM.
nCASE also annually attends the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC). At the world's largest modeling, simulation and training conference of its kind, nCASE joined its Orlando Navy colleagues at the STEM pavilion the entire conference. Exhibit displays included: computer-based 3-D graphics, flight simulators, convoy trainers, SCORM, information technology, advanced distributed learning, aerospace, communications, public safety, and many more. Approximately 17,000 people attend, which includes 500 exhibiting companies and nearly 2,000 international registrants from 50 countries. This year’s nCASE demonstration team included Nancy, Michaelyn Conley, Ashley Davis, and me.
There is so much more I could share, but I decided to limit my remarks to some of the most significant highlights of our programs and activities over the years. As you see, nCASE has quite a diverse portfolio.
We are always accepting new clients, establishing new partnerships, and developing new best practice initiatives that support our primary goal of
strengthening the nation’s workforce by improving the STEM skills of middle and high school students resulting in a more effective, world-class workforce that empowers the U.S. to remain internationally competitive.
Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Stephen M. Priselac
nCASE Executive Director
