A Marquette University professor has received $1 million from the National Science Foundation to help train computer science teachers at Milwaukee Public Schools.
Dennis Brylow, chair and professor of computer science at Marquette, will lead a three-year project to address a “lack of adequate training and support” at MPS to implement the Exploring Computer Science program, a research-based computer science curriculum, according to a Thursday news release. The National Science Foundation grant will support Brylow’s project.
“We have found teachers in MPS consistently reporting that they do not have adequate training and support to implement the ECS program, which is key to MPS’s strategy for broadening participation in computer science among its primarily Black (54%) and Hispanic (27%) student population,” Brylow said. “We will develop and fine-tune a computer science bootcamp experience for teachers, which will include significant attention to developing their content knowledge.”
As part of the project, an existing Marquette computer science bootcamp course will be adapted for MPS teachers. This adapted course will be implemented throughout two school years with a cohort of 15 teachers.
The NSF grant supporting the project is the fourth in a series of NSF grants to Marquette University’s Promoting Innovative Systems for Computing Education Lab — also known as the PISCES Lab — since 2014.
In 2016, Marquette received a $1 million grant to certify 200 MPS teachers to teach computer science. This allowed educators in each MPS elementary, middle and high school to teach computer science.
“This a great opportunity for Dr. Brylow to continue his longstanding efforts to support and improve computer science education in public schools,” said Heather Hathaway, acting dean of Marquette’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences. “His work is at the heart of Marquette’s Catholic, Jesuit mission of expanding access to transformational education. Through this collaboration, he is serving for and with others to make a change in the community and increase the quality of computer science education available to students in Milwaukee Public Schools.”
