The DePaul University IMSP1 was designed as a longitudinal cohort program. Two cohorts of up to 25 teachers each will be supported. The second cohort is offset by one calendar year. Each teacher will complete a sequence of 12 university graduate-level courses (48 quarter hours), over two and one-half years, leading to a Masters of Science in Science Education (MSSE) degree. Thus, all successful participants will meet or exceed requirements of the designation “highly qualified” as described in the MSSE proposal quoted here.

“The Masters of Science in Science Education program is designed to provide rich content-based professional development of middle school schools teachers in the Chicago area, in particular the Chicago Public School system. It is designed to enhance subject area mastery of science teachers in middle schools and to help create a cadre of master science teachers who will be leaders in their schools. By choosing a subset of seven courses, teachers can satisfy the content requirements for a middle school endorsement in science.” (Narasimhan, Jabon, & Beck-Winchatz, 2004)

It is important at this point to recognize that the DePaul IMSP, with the MSSE at its core, represents a more intense and sustained professional education model than is required in the base formulation of a summer institute with academic year follow-up sessions. Instead, the DePaul IMSP was designed to span funding cycles, as allowed by the program: Partnerships may be designed for single or multiple funding cycles. Each cycle must include a summer institute (Phase I) and follow-up sessions in the school year following the summer institute (Phase II). Proposals may include partnership designs for up to three sequenced, consecutive cycles, each building on the previous cycle.

As a result, the evaluation plan developed for the original DePaul IMSP proposal, and revised for the project continuation application, is based on a period of three program cycles. Pre-intervention and post-intervention assessment activities will span a greater period in the DePaul IMSP design than for programs that are contained within a single cycle. At this time, therefore, evaluation of the DePaul IMSP has focused on establishing baseline and benchmarking data.