Seattle Pacific University site leader Stamatis Vokos and students do a force-and-motion experiment.

 

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Seattle Pacific University

Seattle Pacific University, a four-year liberal-arts institution with around 3,000 students, has the potential to serve as a model for teacher preparation programs at liberal arts institutions around the country. One innovation that came out of SPU is the Visiting Master Teacher, who is essentially a part-time TIR taking on a subset of the roles of the traditional PhysTEC TIR. Like many PhysTEC sites, Seattle Pacific has made a Learning Assistant program a cornerstone of its recruitment and early teaching experience strategy. The project leaders also work closely with several progressive school districts, including Seattle and Bellevue, to provide robust, content-rich professional development for teachers. A strong spirit of collaboration exists between Seattle Pacific’s Physics Department and School of Education as well, exemplified by a faculty line split between these two units, and an interdisciplinary Science Education Task Force consisting of physics and education faculty. PhysTEC also benefits from Seattle Pacific’s NSF-funded Teacher Professional Continuum (TPC) grant to develop and improve diagnostic tools and skills, in collaboration with FACET Innovations, a company in the Seattle area that develops professional development software for teachers.

Project Report 2008

Faculty

Lane Seeley	Stamatis Vokos

Teachers-in-Residence

Lezlie Dewater 2006-2009	Sherm Williamson 2007-2008	B Lippitt 2008-2009