The University System of Maryland (USM) in partnership with the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) will develop a sustainable K-16 professional development model for high school science teachers, prospective pre-service science teaching candidates, and college faculty. The project, ""Vertically Integrated Partnerships K-16"" (VIP K-16) has two major aims (a) To enrich science teacher knowledge in order to improve high school science instruction to better enable students to meet rigorous state science standards as measured on the Maryland Science High School Assessments, and (b) To improve the teaching skills of college science faculty in order to improve the quality of undergraduate general education science courses.

USM institutions that will participate as core partners, with commitments to institutional change, include the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Towson University. Montgomery College and the Montgomery County Public Schools complete the core member partners of VIP K-16. The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, the University of Maryland Universities at Shady Grove, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and the University System of Maryland are service provider partners. Through summer institutes and school-year collaborative sessions, small professional learning communities-vertically integrated partnerships (VIPs) consisting of teachers, STEM disciplinary faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate interns and pre-service science teachers-will collegially learn about and develop best instructional practices and instructional materials linked to high school assessments. Phasing in biology, earth/space science, and physics/chemistry over a three-year period, VIP K-16 will involve 350 science teachers serving approximately 37,000 high school students, and substantively involving 36-university faculty.

The VIP K-16 will bring together high school science teachers with their peers from Montgomery College and the USM institutions to form the ""Maryland Science Faculty,"" charged with collaboratively rethinking and redesigning how science is learned, both in high school and in college. To that end, the Partnership commits to five key goals: (1) Improve student learning outcomes, as measured by high school assessments; (2) Improve teacher content knowledge in the sciences by providing high quality professional development to inservice high school teachers; (3) Improve college faculty teaching skills by providing them with expert mentor/master teacher during summer institutes; (4) Enhance graduate student teaching skills by exposing them to expert mentor/master teachers during summer workshops, and having them complete teaching portfolios; and (5) Increase the number of undergraduate science students who choose teaching as a career