STEM Teacher Training Program
The UCCFS STEM Teacher Training Program engages public school teachers from across Southwest Ohio with innovative teaching concepts and techniques that enrich their classrooms, and foster new generations of students with a passion for scientific inquiry and the natural world.
Over the past five years, Duke Energy has generously supported the STEM Teacher Training Program. "The University of Cincinnati has created inventive frameworks for programs that are positively impacting our environment and the development of the STEM workforce," says Kim Vogelgesang, stakeholder philanthropy manager for Duke Energy. "Education and sustainability are the keys to sucess."
"The teacher training program lit a fire in me that I didn't know existed about outdoor education and its importance in every child's life."
Deann O'Toole
2016 Ohio Outstanding Earth Science Teacher
As a fourth-grade science teacher at Pattison Elementary in Milford, DeAnn O'Toole was working toward her master's in Curriculum and Instruction at UC.
When her adviser emailed her about the STEM Teacher Training program—Sponsored by the Duke Energy Foundation and offered exclusively at the UC Center for Field Studies—DeAnn immediately enrolled and was accepted into its first cohort in summer 2014.
DeAnn credits the classes she took as part of the program with her ability to teach science standards in new and innovation ways. She takes her science students outside throughout the year to learn concepts only the great outdoors can provide, and she leads an archaeological dig with Pattison's 100 fourth-graders to complement their studies of Ohio's early peoples.
In applying all that she learned in the summer of 2014 to her own classroom, DeAnn was honored with the 2016 Ohio Outstanding Earth Science Teacher Award. Not only did the program offered at the UC Center for Field Studies change her approach to teaching—it also changed her life.