K-12 Educational Development

Sun, sand and surf are all good, but Paige Petrine is challenging herself this summer in a different way. The Paradise Valley High School senior was furiously jotting down observations from her busy morning in the Biomedical Device Design and Protyping Lab, where GCU Biomedical Professor Dr. Jeff La Belle innovates, designs and protypes medical technologies. She is one of more than a dozen high school students who are part of the inaugural High School STEM Internship Program, developed by K12 Educational Development. They spend eight hours most days researching in various fields, from anatomy to biomedical engineering, software development and health and nutrition. They also sit in on professional development sessions organized by the Honors College. Said Petrine, “The lab is my happy place.”

When Ellen Mari heard from her students that they were interested in computers, she was on it. She took a Linux course at a community college and now she’s one of 23 teachers from 17 high schools who are sharpening their cybersecurity skills at GCU’s GenCyber Summer Camp. Dr. Brandy Harris, Assistant Dean in the College of Technology, said a there’s a dire need for cybersecurity professionals in the industry. One of the ways to increase those numbers is to educate more teachers who might inspire their students to enter the field. “We want to get more students trained in cybersecurity and start filling these gaps,” she said.

Scott Wade was a lawyer but fell in love with teaching four years ago and is in the classroom under an emergency certification. Lisa Baird has taught off and on for 20 years, also without being certified. They are among the first 14 teacher candidates who graduated recently from the Canyon L.E.A.P. to Teach program, which offers an alternative pathway to licensure during a time of severe teacher shortage. “The ultimate goal is to get more certified teachers into Arizona classrooms,” said Carol Lippert, Executive Director of K12 Outreach and Education Program Development.

Setting a $3.2 million pledge goal was lofty in a year of uncertainty, said Dr. Tacy Ashby, Senior Vice President of K12 Educational Development. Yet despite the roadblocks COVID-19 has presented, GCU and GCE employees reached that ambitious objective. “We’re thrilled to have reached the goal, and it is a reflection of the caring and committed GCU community,” Ashby said.

Students in grades 7-12 can learn more about science and technology and GCU’s programs in those areas by joining K12 Educational Development’s first MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement) Virtual STEM Camp. Sessions in the free camp are scheduled for 5-8 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 10 a.m.-noon Saturday.

HSLDA Compassion’s New and Used Curriculum Sale isn’t quite like any other book sale. Instead of focusing on cookbooks or comic books, the organization — the charitable arm of the Home School Legal Defense Association — takes donations of math and history books, lab materials and the like and makes those educational materials available to the home-schooling community. It’s an event sponsored annually by K12 Educational Development, which continues to wrap its arms around the home-schooling community.

There’s a national teacher shortage, a numbers problem GCU is helping address. GCU’s K12 Educational Development hopes its webinar training on teacher certification tests adds up to a solution. Wednesday’s training was the first virtual session on a subject tough to so many across the country trying to pass the certification — math.

With coronavirus-prompted school closures becoming a reality, it also became an inevitability that educators would have to teach in a different way. They would have to turn to online instruction in this new era of distance learning. That’s when GCU’s K12 Educational Development Department started to think of things it could do to support teachers. “We just leaped into action and said let’s put it on a YouTube Channel; we know we can do this,” said Corinne Araza, the department’s Director of STEM Outreach and Program Development. It’s where educators can find webinars and Tip-of-the-Day videos, and where parents can find educational tips, too. The department is also supporting teachers through various social media outlets.

The Association of Christian Schools International’s first international job fair at GCU brought representatives from 28 countries to campus Tuesday. “We have a variety of job fairs and career fairs, but mostly they’re local and national. This is opening up the door in a large way to the number of professions in that international sphere,” said Dr. Tacy Ashby, Senior Vice President of K12 Educational Development. “The College of Education is really excited about this because it affords incredible ministry opportunities while allowing their students the opportunity to serve in Christian schools abroad.”

Women only make up 24 percent of the STEM fields, according to VEX Robotics, which is why it launched its Girl Powered initiative. Inspired by that initiative, GCU’s Robotics Club is bringing back its Girl Powered STEM Workshop on Saturday in the Technology Building for girls in fourth through eighth grades. “We want to have that awareness at an early age that STEM is not exclusive to boys,” said Ed Koeneman, the Robotics Club’s advisor and an instructor in electrical engineering technology.