FRCC to join effort to improve STEM education

FORT COLLINS — Front Range Community College will participate in a cooperative grant to improve undergraduate teaching in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The National Science Foundation grant will be run jointly with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

The project is formally called “Collaborative Research: Promoting Research-based Instructional Methods for Enhancing and Reforming STEM Education”. The primary goal of the project is to move undergraduate STEM instructors toward instructional methods that are more centered on the students. This approach to teaching fosters more active learning by using an existing evidence-based professional development program for STEM teachers.

The grant is funded by the science foundation’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education initiative. This initiative supports projects that have the potential to improve student learning through new curricular materials and methods of instruction.

Geography professor Patrick Shabram is co-principle investigator for the project and FRCC’s lead on the project. He will collaborate with the project team to customize a professional-development program, peer-mentoring program and roundtable discussion series for FRCC’s full-time faculty and part-time instructors at all of the college’s campuses. Shabram will also  assist in recruiting participants, co-facilitate roundtable discussions at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the University of Colorado Boulder, and help analyze the program’s effectiveness.

Front Range Community College has campuses in Boulder and Larimer counties, Westminster, Brighton, and online.  

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