CHASE = Collaborative in Houston to Advance Science and Engineering: Creating Master Math Teachers to Prepare Future Engineers

The biggest barrier we currently have is funding. We need two more sponsors or oil industry partners at $75K each to fund Phase 3, which is ready to begin Fall Semester 2011. There are a number of STEM initiatives in the Houston area, and we don't want to bump heads with them in garnering financial support.
We also need to grow our Advisory Board from three to twelve members. One has already volunteered, and more may be recruited at the SPE Annual Kickoff meeting in the volunteer breakout session.
One major challenge we face is raising awareness in area school districts about the program and having the districts lobby on our behalf to gain corporate sponsors. We need to sit down with administrators and explain what we are doing and quantify the results we are seeing, then they will be more supportive. We are in the middle of upgrading our website so that school district administrators and potential sponsors can get a clearer idea of what CHASE is all about.
Another barrier is that real life sometimes gets in the way of teachers completing our program. For example, one might have a baby, another might have to take care of an elderly parent. There's not a whole lot we can do about that other than provide a continuous program that they can complete when their circumstances permit in the future.

CHASE is all about partnerships. The original instigators, Ken Arnold and Bart Sheinberg, established a partnership between Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and Houston Community College (HCC). The University of Houston – Victoria was brought in to teach the graduate courses for Phase I as part of an existing program that involved NASA and the Texas Regional Collaborative.
Ken Arnold got Mark Peavy, another SPE member, involved, and Mark got his Executive MBA class at Rice University involved. One of his classmates there, SPE member Skip Koshak, worked at Shell, and he got Shell to help fund the second cohort of teachers in Phase 2.
Phase 3 will be managed and administered by the University of Houston – Central Campus, rather than HCC. Dr. Marshall Schott, Assistant Vice President of Outreach, serves as the primary contact for the program and coordinates activities associated with the effective delivery of the program. Dr. Jennifer Chauvot in the College of Education provides instructional leadership for the program. SPE has three members serving on the Advisory Board and will help find other sponsors in the oil industry for the CHASE program, as well as form partnerships with more school districts in the Houston area to recruit teachers for the program.
The teachers in the CHASE program take the Master Math Teacher standardized test administered by the Texas Education Agency, and the five courses taken by the teachers are specially tailored to help them teach the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). All of these courses may also apply toward a master’s degree.
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Society of Petroleum Engineers, a professional trade organization, and Shell, an oil industry business, are each contributing $75K for Phase 3 (third cohort of teachers in the two-year program). SPE is looking for two more industry sponsors at $75K each for Phase 3.