INDUSTRY

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million grant to a five-year project designed to improve chemistry education in rural schools throughout Illinois. Partnering on the project are the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the College of Medicine and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, A-C Central Community Unit School District 262 in Chandlerville, and the Regional Office of Education in Lincoln, Illinois. NCSA brings its strengths in computational chemistry, visualization, advanced technology, and education and training to the endeavor. These partners will develop a statewide Institute for Chemistry Literacy and Computational Science. The intensive, multi-year summer institute will train 120 rural high school chemistry teachers from throughout the state, building on an established chemistry curriculum with state-of-the-art science and cutting-edge technology. The first group of educators will begin their institute participation in June 2007. The goals for the institute are to strengthen the understanding teachers have (and can then convey to their students) of chemistry in the context of the most up-to-date research and practice; to increase teachers' comfort with and use of computational and visualization tools in the classroom; and to train teacher-leaders who can support their colleagues and advocate for excellence in science education. In addition to the training received during the two-week summer workshops, teachers will participate in extensive online communication during the school year. NCSA brings its extensive experience with communication and collaboration technologies to the project and will aid participating schools in effectively using tools like the Access Grid, an ensemble of resources that supports group-to-group interactions across high-speed networks, with large, high-resolution multimedia displays and advanced interactive environments. Participating schools will receive personal interfaces to the grid (PIGs), allowing teachers to participate in virtual meetings, training, and mentoring experiences uniting multiple sites in real time. The Regional Offices of Education around the state will receive mini Access Grids, providing them with the capability to connect with other state, national, and international Access Grid sites and enabling them to serve as hubs for professional development activities. The online and Access Grid aspects of the institute are particularly important for rural teachers, who are often unable to travel to off-site professional development activities during the school year. "We are looking forward to working with Illinois' rural teachers, not only to bring 21st century science to isolated areas, but also to build a community of practice and support through our use of leading-edge communication technologies," said Edee Norman Wiziecki, one of the co-principal investigators for the project and the coordinator of education programs for NCSA. The principal investigator for the project is Paul Kelter, Department of Chemistry. Co-PIs are Wiziecki, NCSA; Diana Dummit, College of Medicine; Lyle Rigdon, A-C Central Community Unit School District 262; and Jean Anderson, Regional Office of Education.