College of Education fellowship will support STEM education along the U.S.-Mexico border

Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the college is launching the Noyce Border Fellowship Program for middle and high school teachers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The program will create field-trip sites in rural Southern Arizona to provide students with informal STEM-learning opportunities. Congratulations to Professor Etta Kralovec, the principal investigator for the grant.

"If you're a teacher in Phoenix, you can take your students to the Arizona Science Center or the Children's Museum of Phoenix once a month," Kralovec said. "There's public transportation to these places, and there are robust educational programs for students. But in rural areas, there aren't those kinds of opportunities, and we believe that that lack of informal STEM opportunities contributes to the achievement gap that you see on the border."