Winter 2015 Newsletter

Dear Colleagues:

The CADRE team wishes you a productive professional year in 2015!

In the fall, we welcomed the newest cohort of Fellows to the CADRE community. They are an exceptional group of early career researchers and developers, and you can see their bios on our website. They met each other at an orientation at EDC, and have already connected with several PIs who have graciously participated in early Fellowship activities. As always, we will be looking for PIs and Co-PIs who enjoy serving as informal mentors. This usually entails a few conference calls, email exchanges, and/or meet-ups at national conferences. To those who have already volunteered, we will be in touch if there is compatibility between Fellows' interests and your expertise.

We are also putting additional resources and programming in place for early career professionals beyond the Fellows group. NSF's Karen King, accompanied by CAREER grant awardees Gloriana Gonzáles Rivera, Tina Grotzer, and Alicia Alonzo, will present on CAREER grants in a webinar to be held on February 24th at 1:00pm ET. We think there will be great interest in this topic, as the CAREER grants seem to be a bit of a mystery for many! This webinar is the first of a series of events and resources that specifically target young researchers and developers. Priority for participation in this series will be given to DR K-12 project members. If you would like to recommend any of your staff to participate, please send us their contact information so that we can notify them regarding this and other events related to early career professionals. If the CAREER webinar is of interest to you, we welcome you to register here.

This month’s Spotlight on the CADRE website is also devoted to young scholars' needs and interests, with a special focus on mentoring. Highlights include the PSA brief which we announced in our prior newsletter, selected mentoring resources, and a virtual poster hall showcasing active CAREER grants. If you have a story to tell about mentoring, or a well-conceived mentoring plan, please let us know. Examples from the community may be able to inform the work of others.

In response to requests from awardees who want to identify others doing similar work, or at least work in a similar field, we have included lists of DR K-12 projects that are organized by keywords describing the project focus. We are also including information on upcoming events and other newsbites from DR K-12 and other NSF networks. If you wish for us to disseminate any of your reports or project information, let us know (cadre@edc.org). We are in continuous touch with other NSF networks, active on Facebook and Twitter, and would love to share your products and progress.

Sincerely,

Barbara Brauner Berns

Projects & People

CADRE Fellows Update

The 2014-2015 CADRE Fellows are having a busy winter! In November, this year's Fellowship kicked off with an in-person meeting at EDC in Waltham, MA, Fellows learned about each other's work, connected with a panel of DR K-12 PIs and Co-PIs, and heard from NSF's David Campbell about the agency's funding priorities and programming for new researchers. In December, they participated in a webinar on academic career pathways led by grantees working in university settings, and later this month, they will attend a follow-up session on alternative career pathways. Future topics for exploration include dissemination, with an emphasis on academic publishing and proposal writing.

CADRE would like to thank the following grantees for graciously sharing their time and expertise as part of the Fellowship programming: G. Michael Barnett, Malcolm Butler, Cory Buxton, Dan Chazan, Marilyn Decker, Corey Drake, Lynn Goldsmith, Marlene Kliman, Kate McNeill, Carlos Mejia Colindres, Steve Schneider, and Michelle Wilkrson-Jerde.

Learn more about the CADRE Fellows program.
Become an informal mentor to the CADRE Fellows. If you have insights or experience that might align with Fellowship programming (e.g., writing for publication) or a particular area of STEM education research (e.g., assessment), let us know by emailing cadre@edc.org.

Spotlight on Early Career in STEM Education R&D

Since last fall, CADRE has been laying the groundwork for an ongoing strand of work that focuses specifically on early career researchers and developers in STEM education. Our goal is to provide resources and support to early career professionals in our community as well as the PIs and more experienced grantees who mentor them. The latest in CADRE's series of web Spotlights highlights several ways in which this work has already started - the CADRE Fellowship, recognition of CAREER grantees, and the first in what will be a series of webinars targeting the early career community.

The Spotlight on Early Career includes:

Brief on early career researchers and developers in the DR K-12 program
Webinar and virtual poster hall highlighting NSF's CAREER grant program
Information on the CADRE Fellowship
Podcast on mentoring for early career R&D (coming soon - preview available!)

Keep an eye on your inbox and future newsletters for more developments in this special focus area. We welcome the names of early career professionals on your project so that we may include them on invitations to events related to early career interests and other targeted communications.

Visit the Spotlight on Early Career in STEM Education R&D.
Recommend a member of your project for participation in upcoming events and to receive resources related to early career STEM education research and development.
Have you experienced successful mentoring as either a mentor or early career professional? Share your story or your project's mentoring plan by emailing cadre@edc.org.

Sharing Your Work

We would like to celebrate and share your project's progress. Please tell us about your DR K-12 work by filling out a quick survey on recent publications, upcoming presentations, and project websites (including social media sites). The information you provide will be added to the CADRE website and included in our next newsletter.

Share your project's publications, presentations, and websites by completing this survey.
View a list of upcoming education-related conferences.

EVENTS

NSF CAREER Grant Informational Webinar

Date/Time: February 24th, 2015 / 1:00 PM EST

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Led by NSF's Karen King and CAREER Grantees Alicia Alonzo, Tina Grotzer, and Gloriana González Rivera, this webinar will provide an informational overview of the program with perspectives from the NSF and PIs on active CAREER grants.

RESOURCES

NSF "Nuts & Bolts" Slides and Recording

Thank you to NSF Program Director David Campbell for leading the 2014 NSF Nuts & Bolts webinar. This session was designed to introduce DR K-12 awardees to the ins and outs of project management, including information on evaluation and reporting, advisory boards, Institutional Review Boards (IRB), and more. For those who weren't able to join us, the webinar recording and session slides are available on the CADRE website.

Access the 2014 Nuts & Bolts webinar materials.

Topical Listings of DR K-12 Projects

Are you writing a proposal for a conference session or future project? Are you looking for potential collaborators? Or, do you just want to learn about what others are doing in your field? CADRE has compiled sortable lists of DR K-12 projects that work in a particular topic area or with a particular target audience (e.g., algebra, pre-service, or measurement). These lists were created using the search tools and current project information available on cadrek12.org.

Note that those responding to the recently released STEM-C RFP might find the list of computer science projects helpful in preparing your proposal.

Explore the topical listings of DR K-12 projects.
Search for projects working in additional topic areas using our traditional site search or Project Smart Search.
If you have questions or suggestions regarding the keywords used to categorize your project, email cadre@edc.org.

Newsbites from DR K-12 and NSF

We regularly solicit and share updates from the work that's happening in DR K-12 as well as our sister resource networks who serve other NSF funding programs in STEM education (ARC, CAISE,CIRCL, MSPnet, and STELAR). In addition to disseminating this information on our website and social media, we are also excited to provide a digest of newsbites in our upcoming quarterly newsletters.

News from DR K-12 Projects

New DR K-12 Preschool App Released: The Next Generation Preschool Math (NGPM) project has created a series of apps that are designed to help young children develop number sense and prepare them for mental math, while having fun.
Findings from DR K-12 STEM School Study (S3) Project: Outlier has released initial findings from S3 that include the 8 Elements of inclusive STEM high schools, an infographic exploring how these elements are enacted, an interactive Roadmap of the path to STEM school success.
Journal Article: Evidence for Effective Uses of Dynamic Visualizations in Science Curriculum Materials: The VISUAL project's research on dynamic visualizations was recently published in the journal Studies in Science Education.
Algebra Activities From SmartGraphs: The Concord Consortium has developed 19 free activities for teaching and learning algebra that are available online or as an app for iPad or Android tablet computers.
New Game From the Leveling Up Project: EdGE at TERC has released Ravenous, a game modeled after real world ravens and the adaptations that help them survive. EdGE plans to measure the development of players' tacit understanding of science concepts infused into successful game play.
Contributions of DR K-12 Projects to Research on Science and Mathematics Education with English Learners: CADRE, in collaboration with Okhee Lee (NYU), is disseminating updated findings from a review of DR K-12 projects and current literature on science and mathematics education with ELs. We are pleased to announce that Teachers College Record has accepted a paper summarizing these findings in an upcoming issue. Stay tuned!

Want to share news from your project? Email cadre@edc.org.

News from NSF Networks

Participate Virtually in the Cyberlearning 2015 Conference: While registration for in-person attendance is closed, CIRCL (the Cyberlearning network) is offering webcasts of the January 27-28 meeting for those who sign up.
ITEST Data Brief: Project Strategies to Engage Underrepresented Populations: STELAR (the ITEST network) just released a data brief that explores strategies used to engage youth who have been traditionally underrepresented in post-secondary STEM education and the STEM workforce.
Making Sense of Measuring Implementation in Educational Research: Next month (2/25), MSPnet is offering a webinar, led by Jeanne Century and Amy Cassatta, that will provide an overview of key issues related to implementation measurement.
Resources on Informal Science and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): A recent blog post on informalscience.org highlights the site's growing repository of resources related to partnering or providing support around NGSS and other science education standards.

Contact Us

If you want additional information on CADRE or have specific questions, please email cadre@edc.org. Join us on Facebook or Twitter to receive the latest news and information from CADRE.