College of Education, World Campus partnership with U.S. Army helps teach soldiers to be leaders
The Sergeants Major Fellowship Program, a partnership involving the College of Education, World Campus and the U.S. Army, has now graduated six cohorts and 90 sergeants major, with the most recent cohort graduating this past August. The seventh cohort is now in the program.
After completing their master’s of education in lifelong learning and adult education in one year, fellows teach three years in the Sergeants Major Course, which prepares the military’s next generation of leaders with the skills they need on and off the battlefield.
Graduates also have pursued doctoral degrees, been promoted to other Sergeants Major Academy and Army leadership positions, and have become business and community leaders after retirement from the Army, according to William Diehl, academic adviser for the fellowship program and associate teaching professor of education and coordinator of online graduate programs at Penn State.
Learn more in this Penn State News article.
Online course led by CSATS faculty shapes COVID-19 curriculum in schools nationwide
Earlier this year, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Penn State released an online course called “The Science of COVID-19.” Led by faculty in the College of Education’s Center for Science and the Schools (CSATS), the course was designed to give middle- and high-school students an opportunity to learn about how scientists approach and tackle a novel virus. Since then, the free course has reached about 2,500 teachers and students in all 50 states in the nation, and plans are underway to modify the course so that it remains timely and relevant for years to come.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, CSATS faculty contemplated how they could provide teachers with educational tools to inform their students about the pandemic in a free, easily accessible format. According to lead developer Matthew Johnson, associate professor of education (science education), the online course was designed for teachers who were unexpectedly thrown into remote teaching and didn’t have COVID-19 educational resources at the ready.
“This was an opportunity to help teachers with curricular material they don’t have the time or access to experts needed to develop these resources on their own,” he said.
In contrast to a traditional science curriculum that focuses on theories that were developed 50 to 150 years ago, Johnson said, the online course presents an opportunity to students “to learn about science as it’s happening.”
Looking toward the future, Johnson said, he and his colleagues expect that teachers will continue to use modified versions of the course from year to year.