West Virginia is one of the states featured in the Linking Leaders Community for Change Book. Click the image to go to the Linking Leaders book main page and learn more about West Virginia's Linking Leaders program activities.

2006 Highlights

Three of the state's eight regions have reported significant educational activity   

• RESA 1 (southern part of the state) sponsored a STEM Fair. STEM Fair is designed to reinforce classroom efforts to stimulate enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and career-related skills through academic competition and events.   Students bring STEM to life as they explore investigative questions and scientific concepts through a variety of mediums, thus facilitating their development and demonstrating their interests and strengths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  
• RESA VI (northern panhandle) has sponsored a variety of professional development opportunities for teachers through the West Liberty State College SMART Center. One example of these activities was a state-funded workshop called MAPIT (Mathematics Applications and Physics Integration for Teachers) for grades 4 - 8. Results of this extended workshop were very positive, enabling additional funding for a repeat of the workshop in the summer of 2007.  
• RESA VII (central portion of the state) works through the NASA Educator Resource Center located at the NASA Independent Verification and Validation Center in Fairmont. Combining with the WV High Technology Consortium Foundation, this group sponsors teacher workshops and provides other support, such as sets of GPS units that are available for loan.    

Linking Leaders: The Linking Leaders program helped to revive an existing state consortium that had become stagnant. Although the organization has not reached its full potential, efforts continue to be made toward making the group viable and useful. In addition to participating in Linking Leaders organized events, the group has met at statewide math and science teacher conferences.

Education leaders at NASA Langley worked with the consortium and NASSMC to develop a pilot NASA Systemic NEW workshop in August 2001. The theme of the workshop was Understanding Systems. The program was built around NASA expertise in systems design and program management. These techniques were examined as a model for education systemic improvement. The pilot workshop brought together representatives of West Virginia's eight Regional Education Service Areas.

The workshop also put in place a regional leadership network to make better use of NASA resources and the state’s education service centers and to foster broader participation in SDE programs such as the NSF-funded project to improve the teaching of science. The Center for Education Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit University has partnered with the West Virginia State Department to develop a comprehensive plan to design and deliver improved mathematics, science, and technology education (MSTE) to teachers and students in all parts of the state.

A website has been developed by Space Grant personnel at West Virginia University at the request of the Consortium. This site links West Virginia K-12 and postsecondary to each other and to a vast array of NASA and other MSTE resources.