Mt. SAC is the recent recipient of a three-year $624,668 grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a program to encourage and train future science teachers.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Teacher Preparation Program will provide academic support, enrichment activities, teaching opportunities and research experience for current Mt. SAC students who are interested in becoming science teachers.

“The goal is to get science students to become science teachers,” said chemistry professor Iraj Nejad, who is helping to get the program off the ground along with chemistry professor Charles Newman.

The program will operate with two cohort groups of 15 to 20 students each and has plans to collaborate with research programs at UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton.

Part of the program will include a summer camp in which Mt.

SAC students will gain experience as supplemental instructors teaching science to middle school students. The students will also gain instruction experience as tutors in other settings.

The first step will be to recruit Mt. SAC science students this fall for the first cohort group. By fall 2015, the program plans to have students working on research projects.

The long-term goal of the program is that, once it is developed and implemented, it will be sustained by Mt. SAC’s Teacher Prep Institute.