An eighth grade science teacher from the McKeesport Area School District, Chris Kastronis, is a Teacher Fellow at Saint Vincent College this academic year as part of the College’s participation in a collaborative Math Science Partnership Project.

            Mr. Kastronis, a biology teacher from the McKeesport Area District’s Founders’ Hall School, is taking classes and working with Saint Vincent College faculty in course curriculum revision as part of the collaborative project.

“This has been a great experience and I’ve learned a lot,” Mr. Kastronis says about the opportunity to be a student in the classroom and to work with Saint Vincent faculty. “The worst part about that is that it will have to come to an end.”

In the fall semester, Mr. Kastronis took a class and lab in Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, and this semester he is taking a course which focuses on the biology of drugs and their effect on the body.  Both classes are taught by Dr. Michael Rhodes.  In addition to taking courses, Mr. Kastronis is working as a curriculum consultant on the anatomy course that he took in the fall as well as in a biotechnology course taught by Dr. Bruce Bethke.  In the biotechnology class, Mr. Kastronis is assisting with a group project that has students devising new biotech products and “selling” them to their classmates who can “invest” up to $10 million in this simulation of a real-life biotech business.

At his home school in McKeesport, Mr. Kastronis has been on the team of teachers working on science curriculum revisions in order to comply with state science standards. He now teaches the 12-week anatomy section of the eighth grade science program which also includes 12-week sections on astronomy and physical science. The eighth grade science program is coordinated with the seventh grade curriculum which includes 12-week sections on biology, ecology and geology.

“What has impressed me about Saint Vincent is the accessibility of the professors to the students,” Mr. Kastronis says.  “They (the professors) are so willing to engage with the students, and everybody knows everybody’s name.  That’s not what I remember about my days in college. When I am walking around this campus, I’m thinking, I wish I had been a college student here.”

To be in the classroom with college students listening intently and carefully taking notes was also a reward, he says.  “I’m so used to (middle school-age) students who don’t have anything to write with, or are talking and have trouble sitting still.”

His approach in his classes of eighth grade students is to offer as many “discovery” projects or hands-on activities as possible to keep his students focused on the lesson.  This sabbatical also has given him ideas for his classes, he points out.

Mr. Kastronis, who has taught for twelve years, is also the director of his school’s after-school program which provides tutorial assistance and enrichment classes each day for about 80 students.

A native of McKeesport, Mr. Kastronis resides in North Huntingdon with his wife, Amy, also a teacher at Founders’ Hall School, and their three children, Genna, 7, Conan, 4, and Chloe, 3.

The Teacher Fellow program is provided through the Math Science Partnership Project, which received funding of $18 million from the National Science Foundation to bring together school districts and institutions of higher education to improve the quality of teaching mathematics and science. The project, which operates under the auspices of the Math and Science Collaborative based at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit in Pittsburgh, includes 40 school districts, four Intermediate Units, three other institutions of higher education in addition to Saint Vincent College, the Carnegie Science Center and the RAND Corporation. Ultimately this five-year partnership project, which was launched in 2004, is expected to involve nearly 143,000 students and 5,000 teachers in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Teacher Fellows in the Math and Science Partnership Project are math and science teachers who take courses and work with college faculty on course curriculum changes either during a summer or an academic year on-campus sabbatical. The role of the middle school or high school teacher is to make sure that mandatory state standards required for pre-college teaching are addressed in college courses designed to train future teachers.

This is the second full academic year that the College has hosted a Teacher Fellow.  A physics teacher from Derry Area High School, Sue Malarik, spent the last academic year on campus. Five teachers have been on campus during the past two summers. This past summer, the Teacher Fellows included Steven Manges, a seventh grade mathematics teacher from Gateway Middle School; Sue Olsen, a biology teacher from Steel Valley High School; and Phil Palko, a chemistry teacher from Indiana Area High School. During the summer of 2004, Teacher Fellows included Sandy Stevens, a physics teacher from Gateway High School, and John Uccellini, a mathematics teacher from Indiana Area High School.