Dr. Al Byers Achieves Five Years of Impact at the Center for Innovation
June 18, 2023
Al Byers, Ph.D., departs the VCU School of Education after five years of service launching and directing the VCU School of Education's Center for Innovation in STEM Education (CISTEME).
John Fife, Ph.D., associate professor of STEM at the School of Education, will serve as interim director of CISTEME.
Dr. Byers was charged with leveraging the assets and resources across VCU to bring high-impact STEM experiences to the highest-need students and the teachers who serve them. He is moving to northern Virginia to support his wife, who has a new position with Fairfax County Public Schools. Dr. Byers is semi-retiring with several consultant advisory roles, including the Virginia Department of Education, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Louisiana State Board of Regents.
"My time at VCU has been a time of personal renewal, growth, and inspiration. The faculty and staff at the VCU School of Education are inviting, passionate, and dedicated individuals, including the faculty and administrators across the entire university, said Dr. Byers.
"It provided an environment to launch and grow CISTEME. I will remember VCU with the fondest of memories and our mission 'to be a leader in responsive, needs-driven and research-based educational practices that transform the lives of those we serve in our communities, especially those who have been historically marginalized.' We don't change the world by looking at it but by how we choose to live in it," he continued.
“We are grateful to Al for the incredible contributions he has made to the School and to VCU in launching CISTEME. He has left an impact on our community and will be missed,” said Kathleen Rudasil, interim dean of the School of Education.
VCU School of Education’s CISTEME: A Brief Retrospective
Over the last five years, he developed a proposal and secured approval to launch CISTEME. Through this effort, he developed partnerships supporting the local school districts and with Capital One, Bank of America, Carmax, and entities like the CodeRVA Regional High School. CodeVA was part of the Student Innovation Series CS Showcase (VA DoE grant), where students were recognized locally and across multiple years at the International Conrad Challenge as "Innovators." CISTEME developed and posted a series of lessons related to that grant via the CS lesson collection at the VA DoE Go Open OER portal.
CISTEME took students to the state lawmakers to share their local stewardship environmental action projects as part of a NOAA grant in collaboration with our colleagues at the VCU Rice Rivers Center and the VCU Center for Environmental Studies (which also includes five collections posted on the VA DoE Go Open OER website), and NOAA's desire to feature our modules as "exemplars" on their national education MWEE web. Similarly, CISTEME generated a series of 27 science lessons in partnership with the VA DoE drawn from student assessment data of the highest need areas (also posted at Go Open VA).
CISTEME enjoyed the collaboration between two NASA Centers, VCU CISTEME, and four school districts where 27 middle school science teachers participated in a virtual teacher professional learning experience across several days tied to their needs, Virginia standards of learning, and NASA's unique and compelling content during COVID.
CISTEME collaborated with district leads and Dr. Kimberly Brush, Director of K12 STEM Engagement at NASA Langley Research Center, and Dr. Joyce Winterton, Senior Advisor for Education & Leadership Development at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Dr. Byers contributed to local school board STEM district redesign efforts for several new STEM middle and high schools for Richmond City Public Schools and in helping Richmond City with their FIRST Tech Challenge securing VCU grad school mentors and serving as a judge, in addition to generating suggestions for parents to engage younger students in STEM during COVID.
Most recently, CISTEME secured the opportunity to host the Metro Richmond Science and Engineering Fair. Through this collaboration and in partnership with five separate units across VCU that included: a) the VCU College of Engineering, b) VCU School of Education Center for Teacher Leadership, c) VCU Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success, d) the VCU Foundation, e) VCU College of Humanities and Sciences and f) VCU Life Sciences, where CISTEME sent two grand award winners directly to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair AND one winner from Metro Richmond advanced to ISEF from the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair. One Metro Richmond Science and Engineering Fair Grand award winner, Anooshka Pendyal, placed third in the international mathematics competition where over 5,000 students compete.
Finally, Dr. Byers represented VCU several years ago on the Governor's STEM Education Commission. VCU served as the statewide host for the STEM Leadership Summit in cooperation with four other Virginia universities (George Mason, James Madison, University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech), inviting many non-profit, for-profit, government, and military agencies across VA, generating a white paper of K12 STEM Ed Recommendations.
In the future, Dr. Byers may be reached via LinkedIn or email: alsbyers@gmail.com.
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