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M.S. in Natural Science for Teachers The Natural Science for Teachers Program (formerly General Biology Program for Teachers) offers graduate-level courses and enrichment opportunities for teachers. The program was designed to address the needs of middle and high school science teachers for graduate-level courses that meet many school districts’ requirements for salary increment credit. To date only Biology courses have been offered, but effective Summer 2012, we expect to offer a second track for Chemistry courses. In addition, we plan to expand further in the future to offer a Geoscience track as well as a Physical Science track. We will have more information about these new tracks available soon. Courses are divided into the following categories: School-year courses: Teachers may enroll in on-line courses during the Fall and/or Spring semesters through the AZ-START program. More information about upcoming online courses are listed under Courses for Teachers. Summer courses: Summer provides teachers with more time to devote to their own continuing education. Our summer courses are two- or three-unit online or hybrid courses that emphasize either biology content or biology teaching. Many are core courses for our innovative master’s degree program. However, the courses also are open to teachers not interested in pursuing a master’s degree through our non-degree program. M.S. in Natural Science for Teachers: This innovative master’s degree program takes place mostly online and over the summers, so that teachers need to complete only minimal course work while they are teaching. Teachers in the master’s degree program start out taking online courses during the first year of the program; during two subsequent summers, they do research under the supervision of University of Arizona science faculty. They write and defend a thesis, and create, classroom test, and disseminate to other teachers a lesson unit based on their research experiences. Applications to this program are due on March 1 each year. More than 60 teachers earned the M.S. in General Biology degree from inception in 1993 to 2010 when the program changed to Natural Science for Teachers. In the early years of the program, most of the participants lived in or near Tucson; however, in recent years, teachers have come from the entire State of Arizona as well as around the nation to take advantage of the summer courses. The widespread response indicates that the program does, indeed, meet an important need for secondary school science teachers. The 2012 application materials for both the M.S. Program and the non-degree program are available online.
Funding for this program is provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Science Foundation Arizona. Your comments are welcome and should be sent to warder@u.arizona.edu . The
University of Arizona
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics General Biology Program for Secondary Teachers warder@email.arizona.edu http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn
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