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The History of Peak Area Leadership in Science From its beginning PALS has offered monthly free professional development workshops open to all secondary science teachers in the Pikes Peak region. The Peak Area Leadership in Science (PALS) project was initiated in 1997 as a result of a three-year grant received from Hewlett Packard. Tammy Johnnie, the HP Community Education Liaison, met with Sherry Freehill, Science Supervisor of Colorado Springs District 11, to discuss the formation of a program to promote secondary science education. Representatives from five Hewlett Packard communities met with WestEd in California to develop plans for their local communities. At that time a partnership was formed with teacher representatives from five area school districts (School Districts Harrison 2, Colorado Springs 11, Cheyenne Mountain 12, Academy 20 and Lewis-Palmer 38). Three two week summer institutes were presented to Pikes Peak area science teachers, followed by monthly staff development sessions during the subsequent school years. The original purpose was to promote networking and the sharing of ideas concerning inquiry based pedagogy and other aspects of science education. In the spring of 2000 PALS received a grant from the Colorado Commission of Higher Education to expand the summer institutes and monthly workshops and to provide equipment and materials to participating teachers. We used these funds for summer institutes at UCCS and monthly programs from 2000 to 2001 and continued to provide the monthly meetings during the 2001/2002 school year using only carry-over monies. After receiving grants from Intel in 2002 and 2003, PALS continued offering highly successful and greatly desired monthly half-day and full-day science and technology workshops for the 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 school years. In January 2004 PALS received a grant from THE MIKKELSON FOUNDATION, which has continued to fund our teacher professional development program from the 2004/2005 school year through the fall 2024 school year. We have been fortunate to be able to continue our mission through the years with generous funding from Hewlett Packard, Agilent Technologies, Intel, the Mikkelson Educational Foundation, Phil Long Ford, the CAST (Colorado Association of Science Teachers), USAFA STEM Outreach Program, and donations from individuals. We also receive support from local school districts in the form of free or low-cost facilities, transportation, printing, and documentation of professional development contact hours. |