ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 22, 1996 TAG: 9611220004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Science teachers throughout Virginia will be able to draw on a new resource base from seven colleges at Virginia Tech next year named, appropriately, the Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom.
A statewide conference for teachers of science, math and technology will be held March 10-11 at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center to explain the institute's plan to link research and development projects to schools. It will showcase National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other science-related research projects. Laboratories and specialized centers at Virginia Tech that could have classroom applications also will be highlighted.
Frank Owens, director of NASA's Office of Education in Washington, D.C., and Peggy Meszaros, senior vice president and provost at Virginia Tech, made a preliminary announcement of the program to the annual meeting of the Virginia Association of Science Teachers held recently at the Hotel Roanoke. The institute is being sponsored by the NSF, NASA and Virginia Tech.
Owens said the institute could become a national model for such cooperative programs. Right now, Virginia is the only state where such a program is under way.
Joy Colbert, institute director, came away from that session with hastily written names, addresses and questions from teachers seeking further information.
"These people didn't have business cards so they were writing me notes," Colbert said. "We really had a tremendous response."
The institute was formally established last month with a small office for Colbert in War Memorial Hall on the Tech campus, but the concept of some sort of catalyst to connect research projects with science teaching had been kicked around for more than a year.
"We began talking about this on campus last spring," Colbert said. "We floated this concept through discussion with the deans and they agreed that we had to have some kind of confederation that would allow us to do one-stop shopping for schools in math, science and technology."
It also fits one of Tech President Paul Torgersen's goals for the university, to provide assistance to public school teaching where possible.
"I don't want to make it appear that people can't contact anyone on the campus at any time for math, science and technology. Certainly they can," Colbert said. But the institute will provide information on specific programs schools can use, she said, often using distance-learning telecommunications to make them available.
"We have a number of options available to us, all the way from compressed video to the Internet," she said. "While we stand ready on this campus to reach out, a lot of the public schools are not yet connected. But I think the experience has been, wherever there are programs that people want to access, they'll find a way to get them."
Colbert worked for 20 years for the Pulaski County school system, where she was instrumental in starting the Southwest Virginia Governor's School and getting technology into classrooms. She taught English courses at Tech for 10 years before that. She left Pulaski in mid-1994 to work on efforts to improve teaching statewide, and the institute is an outgrowth of that.
She found 176 research projects at Tech's various colleges sponsored by the NSF, and another 145 by NASA. "Just here," she said. "We have over 300, combined There has got to be some kind of give-back from all that to the public schools."
Some of Tech's colleges are doing that already. But it is not always easy for school systems across Virginia to find out what might be applicable and available to them. The institute was established to bridge that gap.
Participating colleges include Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture and Urban Studies, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Forestry and Wildlife Services, Veterinary Medicine, and Human Resources and Education, which is coordinating the venture. "It's a confederation, if you will, of programs that feel they do have a service interest in the public schools," Colbert said.
Programs now being planned by the institute include training people to help teachers take advantage of the research laboratory technology, and technology management for school leaders in partnership with NASA's Langley Research Center.
Wayne Worner, who holds the Quillen Chair of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at East Tennessee State University, is chairman of the institute's board.
The other members are Bill Bishop, a teacher at the Central Virginia Governor's School who is president of the Virginia Association of Science Teachers; Janie Craig, governor's schools specialist with the state Department of Education; Joe Ellis, president of CBM Technologies; Bill Lalik, a Roanoke city principal who is president of the Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals; Bob McCracken, Giles County school superintendent and adviser to the Virginia Technology Task Force; Mary Sandy, director of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium; Mike Sullivan, executive director of the Agency for Instructional Technology; Yvonne Thayer, director of Appalachian Regional Commission programs for the Southern Regional Education Board; and Herb Vitale, director emeritus of Lynchburg city schools.
Given their distances from one another, the board members conduct a lot of their business by electronic mail, video conferences and other technologies similar to those planned for use by the institute.
"Any group that has an interest in working with science, math and technology education, we want to make these services available to them," Colbert said. "The first way people can become involved is to attend the conference [in March]."
Further information is available from Colbert at 231-5467 or e-mail colbertj@2vt.edu.
"There's gonna be so much available here," she said. "It's gonna be fun."
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