Portland State biology professor Anne Thompson, right, works alongside high school teacher Heather Blair in the lab. Through the Partners in Science 2.0 program, Thompson is expanding these opportunities to a cohort of 12 teachers over the next three years.
This summer, middle and high school science teachers will trade their classrooms for research labs at Portland State University. Supported by a Partners in Science grant, PSU's Coast to Classroom program is bringing educators — along with teachers-in-training from PSU's College of Education — into marine-focused labs for hands-on research, mentorship with leading scientists and a collaborative cohort experience they can carry back to their students.
The Partners in Science program, funded by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, pairs science teachers with faculty researchers for two consecutive summers of immersive research. Since 2010, PSU has hosted about two dozen teachers through the program — but never before in a cohort model.
This three-year, $450,000 award will engage 12 teachers — six current teachers and six pre-service teachers — in two summers of collaborative marine research. PSU's faculty mentors study marine systems at every scale from microbes to marine mammals, examining biogeochemical processes, species- and population-level responses and the impacts of extreme and human-modified environments.
"We're hopeful that this new cohort model will create even more community and networking among both the teachers and researchers," said Anne Thompson, assistant professor of biology and lead principal investigator for the program. "It allows us to do what we want to do as researchers, which is make our work matter to the public, while also giving teachers their own authentic research experience they can translate directly into stronger science teaching."
Thompson, who previously hosted David Douglas High School biology teacher Heather Blair in her lab in 2017, says partnering with science teachers is mutually beneficial. Faculty mentors gain an experienced professional who can meaningfully contribute to ongoing research in their lab, while teachers strengthen their identities as scientists. That confidence and firsthand experience ripple outward, reaching hundreds of students in classrooms across the metro region.
Thompson, whose lab studies phytoplankton, says she enjoyed watching Blair follow her own path of inquiry for her independent summer project.
"Heather connected that work with some pressing societal problems like how these organisms respond to plastic pollution," she said. "That's not a direction I had taken in my lab, but it was something that Heather cared about and was interested in and tapped into some of the energy and concern of her students to address that problem."
Paola López-Duarte, associate professor of environmental science and the project's co-lead, says she is excited about the peer mentoring that will happen among the teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and research associates within each lab group.
"It's an opportunity for the teacher to see themselves as researchers, but it's also an opportunity for the researchers to see themselves as teachers," she said.
By engaging pre-service teachers — current graduate students in PSU's College of Education — early in their professional preparation, the program will help them strengthen their scientific literacy and confidence as teacher-scholars before they enter the workforce.
Beyond research, participants will attend weekly professional development workshops, join their faculty mentors in meetings with external collaborators, tour campus research facilities and gather monthly with PSU's Center for Life in Extreme Environments. The experience allows them to build lasting professional networks and connections at PSU that they can draw on long after the program ends.
"All the scientists our teacher partners meet become ongoing resources," Thompson said. "If they're teaching a topic and want to know about new studies or where to collect larvae, that mentorship continues. And from my experience, I've learned just as much about teaching from them."
By the second summer, participants may apply for up to $7,500 through a Classroom Innovation Grant (CIG) to translate their research experience into authentic classroom projects. The funding can support equipment, consumables or pilot experiments as teachers launch new curricula.
"The CIG gives them more freedom to be creative and ambitious in what they can bring to their students," López-Duarte said.
Participating faculty mentors include Thompson; López-Duarte; and Jennifer Morse and Catherine de Rivera, professors in the School of Earth, Environment & Society. Future cohorts may also include biology faculty Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Bradley Buckley, Deb Duffield and Ken Stedman.
For more information and to apply, visit the Coast to Classroom website.