College of Education and Allied Professions      November 4, 2024

By Cam Adams

The past three years have been busy for Sloan Despeaux, professor in Western Carolina University’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and her colleagues.

Getting a grant to fund the Smoky Mountain Noyce Scholars Program took lots of meetings, lots of data collection — and lots of waiting. Getting the thumbs up from the National Science Foundation took a bit longer than expected, but their patience was rewarded.

Despeaux, the grant’s principal investigator, and co-principal investigators and WCU faculty members Nathan Borchelt, Stacey Zimmerman, Kathy Jaqua and Pam Buskey were granted $1,449,913 from the foundation over five years to support the SMNS program at WCU. 

“It’s incredibly exciting, and it’s the result of a lot of work,” said Despeaux. “The grant was 100 pages long. It was a very big grant. Big money and big work.”

The Smoky Mountain Noyce Scholars Program, which started this semester, is a stipend and scholarship program aimed at producing future high school math teachers at WCU.

Students participating in the program can start as an apprentice during their freshman or sophomore years at WCU or any North Carolina community college. Apprentices receive a $2,000 stipend each year, and in return, they do 100 hours of field work per year.

"Alison Carter, the mathematics department chair at Southwestern Community College serves as WCU's Noyce Community College coach, who will help apprentices from area community colleges plan out courses that will both meet the requirements of the associate’s degree and make the transition to WCU’s mathematics program as smooth as possible," Despeaux said.

After their sophomore year, students can apply to become scholars, who can get up to $18,026 per year, up to the cost of attendance at WCU.

Scholars also receive supplemental instruction for challenging upper-level math courses, and they participate in the Transformative Rural Urban Exchange with North Carolina A&T and the Smoky Mountain Math Teachers’ Circle’s annual summer “Math Camp.”

Following graduation, for every year of support they received in their junior and senior years, scholars must teach for two years in a high needs district within eight years. However, the program’s help doesn’t stop there, as Noyce beginning teachers receive funds and support after graduation. 

“You don’t ever finish being a Noyce Scholar because we really want them to feel like they're a part of this cohort and part of this community, and that they can keep coming back to us for resources,” Despeaux said.

This grant has paved the way for future SMNS students for the next five years, but it took a great deal of work to make it become a reality.

Despeaux and her team wrote a capacity building grant worth about $130,000 from the National Science Foundation in order to conduct surveys, collect data and find out the biggest needs to help create the best possible program.

Once the group submitted their request for the more than $1.4 million grant in August 2023, patience was key.

“It's been a lot of suspense because we didn't actually get it until this fall,” Despeaux said. “We were pretty sure we were going to get it, but when school started in August, we still hadn’t gotten the official announcement.” 

But the Office of the Provost stepped in to assist the program so scholarships could be given to get the program up and running.

“That was really, really helpful,” Despeaux said. “It was a lot of trust put in us.”

Despeaux is confident the program will attract prospective students interested in teaching high school math, a cornerstone of WCU in its early years.

“Western’s roots were a normal school. This is what Western’s heart is, preparing teachers and just being a part of a project like this that can help us reconnect with our core mission, it couldn’t make me happier,” Despeaux said.