MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — A cohort of Middle Tennessee State University faculty recently landed a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to develop local middle school teachers in the subject areas of science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM, into data science instruction experts and leaders who will go on to develop educators in their communities. 

Gregory Rushton, director of MTSU’s Tennessee STEM Education Center, leads the five-year grant project in collaboration with faculty across university colleges: Ryan “Seth” Jones, associate professor with an expert research background in data science education from the College of Education; Kevin Krahenbuhl, director of a College of Education Ed.D. program that works heavily on research and training with local school districts; and Keith Gamble, director of the MTSU’s interdisciplinary Data Science Institute and an economics and finance professor in the Jennings A. Jones College of Business. 

Rushton said their hope is to further the burgeoning field of data science education in the community through equipping these local educators with high-quality, research-backed data science instruction tools. 

“As our teachers and partner districts develop this instruction, our research on teachers’ changing ideas, practices and leadership will have the potential to contribute to both practitioner and researcher communities,” Rushton said. “We envision that this program can itself become a model for supporting and scaling data science education for other districts and universities to make use of and that our findings on teacher learning and leadership will be a much-needed contribution to the field’s research and practice.” 

Jones, who brings his own $700,000 NSF CAREER grant research in data science education to the project, explained why preparing local students in data science education is so important. 

“Data are everywhere,” Jones said. “New technologies are creating more data and new forms of data every day, and people are increasingly being asked to use data to inform their understanding of the world around them…. 

“Because of this, it is critical that schools support students to develop competencies in generating, analyzing, critiquing and making claims with data. Data science and education scholars and educators must work together to understand the important ideas students need to learn about and generate knowledge about how to best support students’ learning in and out of schools.”

Gamble said the grant will support the Data Science Institute’s mission of building a pipeline in the region to the data science workforce. 

“It will help us reach more students before they enter college by training secondary school teachers in data science and supporting them as leaders in their school systems,” Gamble said. “We anticipate that this grant will result in more students in Middle Tennessee being prepared for advanced training in data science and the data-driven jobs of the future.”

Rushton also highlighted the significance of the award for the university. 

“This award is one of the largest in our recent history and promises to impact our school partners, our institution’s reputation and contribute significantly to the fields of data science education and STEM teacher leadership.”

Learn more about MTSU’s research and grant opportunities through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at https://mtsu.edu/research/. Learn more about the Tennessee STEM Education Center at https://tsec.mtsu.edu and the Data Science Institute at https://mtsu.edu/datascience/institute/. 

— Stephanie Wagner (Stephanie.Wagner@mtsu.edu)