The Preparing Urban Lakeshore Science Educators (PULSE) project brings together the University of Wisconsin-Parkside as lead institution, and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and the Racine Unified School District as core partners. These partners are working with the Kenosha Unified School District and other school districts and University of Wisconsin campuses to establish a broad partnership with a shared vision to address the science achievement gap between urban and suburban students and the challenge of high teacher turnover. The partnership brings together university science and education faculty, district science teachers, and administrators from the universities and school districts, to conduct a thorough review of the literature and resources for science professional development, particularly for grades 3-8, and a comprehensive needs analysis of area teachers. The needs analysis includes collecting and analyzing survey and focus group data on characteristic teacher needs and reviewing student achievement data, with specific intentions to explore questions about teacher shortages, attrition and retention, pre-service preparation, in-service professional development, and barriers to student achievement in science. A greater understanding of the needs is guiding the development of curricula for professional development workshops. Infrastructure is being developed to offer workshop sessions in a variety of venues, including local classrooms, regional teacher academies, and internet/videoconferences.

The central goal of the project is to develop an empirically-based and replicable plan to reach pre-service and in-service science teachers of grades 3-8 with professional development focused on skills and knowledge to teach science, with particular emphasis on developing an understanding of the challenges and issues faced in urban educational settings. In the course of building the partnership across multiple higher education and K-12 institutions, the project team is also studying the process of partnership-building, with particular focus on studying how best to support different types of urban school districts. The partners intend to create an MSP-Targeted proposal designed to empirically investigate the different needs, challenges, successes, and opportunities of several public institutions of higher education in collaborative partnership with several K-12 school districts whose demographics, geography, and performance levels differ.

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside is a public, primarily undergraduate university with the most diverse campus in the University of Wisconsin system, drawing the majority of its students from an urban corridor in southeastern Wisconsin with lower income and educational levels than the rest of the state. The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is nearly three times the size of the Parkside campus, and while primarily undergraduate, also has master's degree programs. The Racine Unified School District serves approximately 21,000 students from a mix of urban, suburban, and rural communities, and includes 21 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 3 high schools. Overall, nearly half of students served are from racial minorities. The results of this MSP-Start project include collaboration-building activities, the needs assessment, and the program model. These products are to be shared publicly through conference and publication venues.