Email correspondence

Attachment 9c:

Focus Group Invitation for AAAS Staff

Subject: Invitation to join a Noyce Program Evaluation focus group

Dear [NAME],

We hope you are doing well. We are contacting you on behalf of WhitworthKee Consulting (WKC). The WKC Evaluation Team was contracted as a third party by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to evaluate components of the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (the Noyce Program). You are receiving this email because of your commitment to and support of the Noyce Program through your work at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

As you may already know, the Noyce Program provides funding to higher education institutions via (a) scholarships, (b) stipends, and (c) other means of programmatic support to recruit and prepare science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and other professionals to become K-12 STEM teachers and teacher leaders. The purpose of the Noyce Program evaluation is to (a) understand overall perceptions of the Program from both individuals who have applied for and/or received a Noyce award and those who have never applied and/or been awarded and (b) identify what is working well and opportunities for growth.

If you agree to participate in the evaluation, you will be asked to participate in a focus group where you will have the opportunity to discuss the Noyce Program and STEM teacher preparation/leadership with the WKC Evaluation Team as well as some of your other AAAS colleagues who are similarly involved with Noyce. We will do everything we can to keep your focus group responses confidential, and we will not share individually identifiable information with anyone (including NSF staff, Noyce project members, or other AAAS staff) outside of the WKC Evaluation Team. For example, we plan to combine AAAS and NSF responses for analysis and reporting to further decrease the likelihood of identifiable data.

If you would like to participate in the evaluation, please use the following link to schedule a timeslot for your focus group: [LINK]

Once you reserve a timeslot, you will receive a confirmation email and the meeting information. If none of these times work for you or if you have any questions, please contact [email protected] or reply to this message. If you would like additional information about the evaluation, please visit our evaluation website at this link: https://whitworthkee.com/nsf-noyce-program-evaluation/. If you’d like to learn more about WhitworthKee Consulting, you can find more information at the WKC website, here: https://whitworthkee.com/.

We appreciate your consideration and look forward to hearing your perspectives.

Sincerely,

The WhitworthKee Consulting Evaluation Team