Mission and vision

Mission

Our mission is to have a deep and lasting impact on science and STEM education and educators in Arizona and beyond through all of our degree programs, scholarly activities, innovative STEM partnerships, and a variety of non-degree programs and services.

Vision

We seek to be an international leader in STEM education by:

• continuing to strengthen first-time secondary science and mathematics teacher preparation through our nationally recognized undergraduate NAUTeach program;
• helping to alleviate science teacher shortage by providing initial secondary science teacher preparation to college graduates and career changers through our MAT-S master’s degree program;
• continuing to offer professional learning opportunities including early career induction support, professional development, and graduate degree programs for STEM educators;
• maintaining a rigorous research and evaluation agenda in STEM education;
• continuing to provide STEM-focused coursework, thesis research support, and mentoring for STEM educators in the PhD program;
• continuing to support, strengthen, and advance the work of the Center for Science Teaching and Learning (CSTL), which offers a wide variety of research, evaluation, professional learning, and outreach programs aimed at developing school-wide leadership and capacity building in STEM education; and
• continuing to partner with and provide leadership for local, state, national, and international and initiatives for ongoing advancement and improvement of STEM education.