Our Welcome to You

On behalf of the faculty and staff of the Graduate School of Education, the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, and the ALPHA Center, we welcome you as a valued participant in UCR's California Teach-Science Mathematics Initiative (SMI). Through SMI's UC System- and campus-wide goals to provide an academic, mentoring, and financial support structure for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, UCR STEM students are able to take advantage of financial assistance to explore teaching as a career option as early as their freshman year.

In strengthening SMI's commitment to prepare future science and mathematics teachers, resources are extended from the ALPHA Center's expansive teacher development and college-bound programs. Focusing on two of the ALPHA Center's Programs, the California Mathematics and Science Teachers (CMST) Initiative and I Strive I Succeed (ISIS), SMI participants are able to expand on their professional networks and career-related experiences. Through its exemplary contributions to P-20, which is an education policy terms that refers to the full range of child education from preschool through post-graduate work (or the 20th grade), the ALPHA Center has brought national and state recognition to UCR.

To enable you to gain a perspective about SMI and its partnership with CMST and ISIS programs, we have compiled this comprehensive program handbook. Each of these programmatic opportunities provides hands-on learning environments to enhance the success of our future STEM teachers.

For the student participants in our program, we are confident that SMI, CMST, and ISIS will be important components of your overall UCR experience and valuable resources for helping you reach your future objectives. Because you are considering a career in teaching mathematics or one of the sciences, you are among the most valued resources in our state. You’re academic endeavors have been strongly endorsed by our campus administration, the President of the University of California, and California's governor.

For those educators that have joined SMI, CMST, and/or ISIS as Mentor Teachers, we extend our profound appreciation. By passing on your knowledge to our student interns, you have provided an invaluable asset to our programs. The legacy each of you leave will be ultimately inherited by hundreds of deserving children in California.

We hope that you find this handbook useful in navigating our programs. Again, please accept our thanks for joining us to insure a healthy future for mathematics and science instruction in our state.

Yours sincerely,

Bradley C. Hyman, Ph.D.	Pamela S. Clute, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology	Assistant Vice Provost, Academic Partnerships
Faculty Director, CaTEACH-SMI	Executive Director, ALPHA Center
Faculty Advisor, Biology Department	Lecturer in Mathematics/Education