This project is a three-year partnership between the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and two discipline-based organizations, the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC/PTEC, an effort of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers) and the American Chemical Society. The project vision is the creation of a large and enduring national network of colleges and universities that have successfully negotiated difficult institutional constraints to establish strong, effective, and well-sustained high school teacher preparation programs in science and mathematics - programs that respond successfully to the need for accomplished science and mathematics teachers in their states and throughout the country. Core objectives of the work are to:

a. Create and support a national leadership network of 27 institutions of presidents, chancellors, provosts and their designees who are active at their institutions in improving mathematics and science education - and especially teacher education;

b. Increase the number of disciplinary faculty who are contributing toward teacher preparation and who, through inter-departmental, inter-college and school-university partnerships, assume increased responsibility for the mentoring and induction of beginning teachers and the professional development of career teachers;

c. Address and make demonstrable progress toward overcoming the challenges that impede the ability of universities to strengthen their science teacher preparation programs;

d. Widely disseminate the results and lessons learned from this and other related projects, especially the lessons learned about: (1) changes in institutional policies and practices that enhance science teacher preparation programs and increase the participation of disciplinary faculty; (2) the programmatic features of exemplary science teacher preparation programs, (3) the features of successful Noyce Scholarship Programs; (4) securing the ongoing and active commitment of top institutional leadership to making teacher preparation - particularly in science and mathematics - a central university enterprise; (5) the role of the disciplinary societies in strengthening science teacher preparation and in the support of practicing teachers; and (6) state policy efforts that can facilitate improvement of science teacher preparation and that remove the disincentive for pursuing a career in teaching; and

e. Provide support to the national networks of MSP and Noyce Scholarship programs, facilitating communication across these and other networks of science and mathematics education programs.

The 27 participating universities:

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Auburn University
Arizona State University
California State University-Fullerton
University of California-Santa Barbara
University of Colorado at Boulder
Florida International University
Georgia State University
University of Iowa
Boise State University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of Maryland College Park
Michigan State University
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Lincoln University
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of New Hampshire
State University of New York at Stony Brook
University of Cincinnati
Portland State University
South Dakota State University
University of Houston
University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee